The Fear Index [Paperback]

I am a big, big fan of Robert Harris. I found his book Enigma when my interest in the code breaking of Bletchley Park in WW2 was at its peak; that mix of fact and fiction blew me away and it remains his best book in my mind. On a par with it there is Fatherland, the alternative history classic, and almost level, Pompeii. Archangel is also not to be missed.

So, when I started The Fear Index, I was positively titillated with anticipation - a new Harris is always good news.

Within 50 pages, my enthusiasm was dampened somewhat, and after 150 pages, I was downright disappointed. This tale of a brilliant physicist who leaves CERN to write the best algorithmic investment system ever seen was just not what I have always liked best in Harris.

In my mind, Harris shines when he tells the tale of the single man, cast in a role by chance and personal talent, conquering insurmountable odds. Tom Jericho in Enigma, Xavier March in Fatherland, and Fluke Kelso in Archangel have all been set in a situation where only their personal integrity and hard work will win the day.

Not so in The Fear Index. Harris writes well as always, but the picture he draws of Alex Hoffmann has none of the usual charm of a Harris hero. Hoffmann is arrogant, talented, and definitely the man for the job, but his almost autistic lack of interaction doesn't endear him to the reader. Alex's relationship with his artist wife Gabrielle is superficial and uninteresting, even if the culmination point of that relationship in the art gallery raises eyebrows in the best tradition of Harris' books.

Another thing that worried me much was that Harris ventures into Clancyist methods of adding technobabble to add excitement. I was especially disappointed with the small things that he's always done really well: risking that I will be called a muppet by some people, I'll say that CPUs do not hum - transformers do, and there are no files in a computer's registry. Such small items become more and more evident towards the end of the book.

And the crucial element of any book of this type, namely suspension of disbelief, just didn't go far enough. I will not disclose the plot, but at 2/3 of the book it fell flat for me and I read the rest merely to see what happens, not on the edge of the seat enjoying every moment of it.

I will repeat that he writes just as well as ever (with a few somewhat tired similes, a first for me in his books), and to some people, especially in the world of finance, this may be more interesting than to the average lay person, but my expectations were not met, and I will remain in wait for his next book to see if he goes back to creating a truly interesting character in a complex and dangerous situation.

There are spoilers in this review.

This is the third Harris book I've read. Fatherland and Archangel were really fun reads that had fresh and interesting story lines. I can't say the same for this one.

This book took longer than usual to read. Not because it is difficult or long, but because I'd keep putting it down and swearing not to pick it up again. But I did, and persevered until the end. I can sum up my disappointment in this book as happening in three phases.

Phase one: The first section of the book was irritating in the extreme. The author spends most of his time describing the obscenely rich house of the protagonist. For example, he doesn't just look at the clock to check the time, instead he glances at the Louis Quinze clock on the mantlepiece. And this after a near death experience. Yeah, so I get it- he's a billionaire. And over and over and over again. He's a billionaire. And he's hot. And the most brilliant man alive. And he's developing the ultimate self-developing (evolving) algorithm. And his wife is hot. And she makes hot art. But she's sad, too, because she can't have children (I guess this "factoid" was supposed to be enough to give the characters and their marriage depth).

Yawn.

Phase two: So, I left the book on the nightstand for two weeks and read other stuff. In a moment of weakness I took it and started reading again. As the perspective changed-- to the investigator-- the book was much less insufferable, and I realized the author was trying to make some point about wealth (heavy handed and uninteresting in my view). The book then began to move along quite nicely, with a bit of a mystery and quick pacing. Although the obtuseness of the main character did get on my nerves every so often I was fine with that as long as the action progressed. I started to guess who was tormenting the lead character with mystery books, hired killers/perverts, secret cameras/ et cetera not because I'm so damn smart, but because there was only development of the story in one direction. The protagonist had no enemies simply because he was so lackluster (in spite of being a hot, brilliant, billionaire). The only one interested in tormenting him HAD to be his brilliant evolving hedge fund algorithm.

Which leads to Phase Three: (more spoilers)

The super intelligent and free-ranging computer program. Yep, the algorithm evolved, alright. It took over his bank accounts, sent him rare books, built a super computer in a warehouse across town, spied on him through cameras it had installed all over his office and house. Yet... it still wasn't smart enough (evolved enough) to see him coming at his monster CPU with 5 cans of gas and a blow torch.

I just feel dumb even summarizing this plot line. It wasn't unique, and it wasn't even done amusingly. There are similar "evil awarenesses" who invade the internet and gather intelligence in (highly improbable) ways in episodes of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files. And those were done over a decade ago and much more convincingly.

Don't waste your time on this book.

I thought this was an very well-written page turner with a believable plot. It focuses on a hedge fund manager that uses an artificial intelligence application to gain an insurmountable competitive edge in the market, but then things quickly get out of control.

Robert Harris has some genuine expertise in this area because of his previous book "Enigma", which gave a very realistic account of how the British broke the Nazi code in World War II. That book included an accurate historical account on Alan Turing's work, and he was really the father of modern computer science and developer of the "turing test" for artificial intelligence.

Harris's familiarity with the subject matter comes through in this book. One of the biggest complaints that I usually have about books like this is that the dialog is corny or contrived, or the plot is unrealistic. That happens when authors don't really understand their subject matter or what people who work in a technical field are really like. Harris offers up realistic dialog and narrative that seems natural and believable, even if the characters are not necessarily deeply developed.

Overall, this is a fun and informative read. It's a good way to get some familiarity with artificial intelligence and the issues it will bring. Keep in mind that AI is NOT fiction ... this is really happening and is going to have a BIG impact in lots of areas of our lives, not just Wall Street but also jobs and employment.

If you're interested in this subject, a great (and very readable) NON-FICTION book is The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, which talks about how artificial intelligence, robotics, etc is going to affect the real world job market and economy within the next 10 years or so.

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