Gentzen oder: Betrunken aufräumen

A fast-paced novel that spans a century and catapults the reader into the future.

The German logician Gerhard Gentzen was among the most brilliant in his field. But who remembers him? Dietmar Dath embarks on a quest with Laura and Jan to find someone they can no longer recall. The reader enters a realm of thought where not only Gerhard Gentzen appears, but also a host of other figures: Dietmar, who has been writing a novel about a famous logician for ten years, as well as Frank Schirrmacher, who grapples with the internet, Jeff Bezos, Ruth Garrett Millikan, a crooked aunt, and a mysterious being that will significantly endanger life on Earth. The entire cast of this grand novel serves the search for the foundation of our existence in the present: the seemingly infinite computational power of computers. This power enables flight bookings, the distribution of vaccines or aid supplies, the management of nuclear arsenals, or the detailed representation of a life through likes and comments on social media, which would not exist if programs could not verify the functioning of programs. The ability to do this is, in turn, connected to Gerhard Gentzen. Skillfully and at a brisk pace, humorously and repeatedly surprising, these many narrative threads themselves write a program - If Then GoTo - that allows us to experience the opportunities and possibilities of contemporary computing technology and spits out unexpected results: Science fiction, indeed, what else?.