Scott Hutchins

While working on what he hopes will be the world's first sentient computer, Neill Bassett tries to deal with unresolved feelings for his ex-wife as well as an intended one-night stand who is turning into much more. 75,000 first printing.

A Working Theory of Love

Working Theory of Love

Recently divorced, thirty-six-year-old Neill Bassett has got a lot of questions. Not the run-of-the-mill insolubles - Why am I here? Who am I? - but the pressing questions of adult life: Really? and Are you sure? and Now what? He's about to get some answers . . . By day, Neill is engaged in an extraordinary experiment: painstakingly helping to create what might become the world's first sentient machine, an artificial intelligence that is based on the personality of his dead father. By night, meanwhile, he is coming to terms with his own emotional shortcomings, reconciling his newfound bachelorhood with the unexpected attractions of a vulnerable but intriguing young woman called Rachel. So the question is: What does it take to be a real human being? and, more alarmingly, what if he succeeds? Set in contemporary San Francisco, where anything goes (and regularly does), this recklessly witty, formidably funny, outrageously honest novel captures the exquisite agony of the most important relationships of our twenty-first century lives.

Mit Mitte dreißig steht Neill Bassett jr. wieder ganz am Anfang. Seine Frau hat ihn abserviert – jetzt muss er sich auf erniedrigende Single-Abende einlassen, nur um Anschluss zu finden. Ein neuer Job im Silicon Valley bringt zunächst zumindest Ablenkung: Bei einem Software-Unternehmen arbeitet Neill ausgerechnet daran, den ersten Computer zu entwickeln, der Gefühle verstehen und äußern kann. Ob ihm das hilft, bei der schrägen Kollegin Rachel zu landen?

Scott Hutchins

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