A Theory of Nothing — Thomas Barlow

Duronimus Karlof is a rising star at Harvard. He holds a prestigious professorship, his students idolize him, and he is widely considered one of the most influential scientific minds of his generation. The death of a colleague, however, forces him to reconsider his life's purpose. Inspired by cutting-edge thinking in the humanities, he begins to question the oppressive nature of reality. Cynically exploiting his position at the university, he assembles a critical mass of experts with the mission to prove that there is some loophole in the scientific conception of the cosmos. What ensues is bigger than the Manhattan Project, the Space Race, the Human Genome Project, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change combined. Philosophical and funny, this highly original novel finds the ridiculous in almost every aspect of contemporary intellectual life, and highlights the challenge of independent thinking when politics takes control of science.