“The Anomaly” by Herve Le Tellier (translated by Adriana Hunter)

This novel is a page-turner that is part mystery and part philosophical meditation on the meanings of life. It follows a dizzying cast of characters, most aboard the same Air France flight 006, bound from Paris to JFK, when turbulence ensues and a mysterious event occurs. “To understand why Adrian Miller must answer the bulletproof charcoal-gray smartphone on this June 24, 2021, we must rewind to September 10, 2001, the day when, as the youngest postdoctoral researcher on Professor Robert Pozzi’s probabilities team, he was celebrating his twentieth birthday at MIT…. Adrian and Tina inventoried all the variables that could affect air traffic, and attributed them statistical values. They specified anything that could cause a catastrophe—even simply upsetting traffic flow—and surpassed the Pentagon’s expectations. Their model took into account absolutely everything: chains of events, means of communication, language barriers, different units (feet or meters?), pilot error, mechanical failure, technical problems, weather, sabotage, diversions, software piracy, faulty signaling, shortcomings in maintenance, and so much more … The two researchers identified thirty-seven basic protocols, with, in each case, between seven and twenty contingent pathways, in other words nearly five hundred basic situations, and as many responses…. But in April 2002, ten days after the report was submitted, the DoD sent it back with a question written in red felt pen: “What if we’re confronted with a case that fits none of the situations covered?””

The main conceit of the novel revolves around Nick Bostrom’s idea that all of humanity is actually living in a computer simulation of a higher intelligence. Assuming the energy of compute power in the future is cheap enough, that is actually statistically probable. “Adrian loathes this idea of a simulation, bearing in mind that he adopted Karl Popper as the leading light of his epistemology studies—the stalwart Popper, who felt a theory could be attributed no scientific weight if there was nothing to refute it … But Adrian can look at this question from every angle as much as he likes: all things being equal, the simplest explanation is often the right one. The simplest but the most uncomfortable: this plane’s appearance can’t be a bungle in the simulation—it would have been so easy to “erase” it, to rewind by a few seconds. No, it’s obviously a test: How will billions of virtual individuals react when confronted with their own virtuality?”

In the style of many novels these days, this plot-line goes meta—enveloping a book within the book. At least the fictional author doesn’t share a name with Le Tellier, “The anomaly is unlike anything Victor has produced before. It isn’t a novel, or a confession, or even a succession of unconnected dazzling sentences or brilliant truisms. It’s a strange book, thrillingly fast-paced, unputdownable, and between the lines she could see all of Miesel’s influences: Jankelevitch, Camus, Goncharov, and so many others.” Miesel, himself, later pontificates, “Nothing will change. We’ll wake up in the morning, we’ll go to work because we still have to pay the rent, we’ll eat and drink and make love just like before. We’ll carry on behaving as if we’re real. We’re blind to anything that could prove that we’re fooling ourselves. It’s only human. We’re not rational.”