Acts of God

The smartest person in the world gets regularly flummoxed by an incompetent private eye in debut novelist Gill’s mischievous satire on the ability of simulated life to tackle real problems. Genius Dr. Krishna keeps rebuilding an illegal computer simulation to perfectly replicate real-world actions and their consequences—but it always crashes in the same spot thanks to the bumbling intervention of P. Manjunath, a private investigator living in the simulation who unerringly spikes Dr. K’s plans. (“I owe all my success to never wondering what the point of what I was doing was,” Manjunath asserts.) Each time, Dr. K must personally interfere, via an Act of God, which itself spoils the simulation. Damned if he’ll ruin another simulation, Dr. K sets out on a search for answers that leads to real-world danger and simulated-world angst. Gill flips facile formulations about ignorance being bliss and knowledge being power on their heads by showing how important balance is. Dr. K’s supposedly brilliant pontificating can be hard to swallow, but Manjunath’s antics provide a nice counterpoint. It’s good fun. (Aug.)