Fiction

A 1936 allegory about intelligent salamanders that maps directly onto our AI-obsessed present. The best picture of our AI future may be 90 years old.

Catch-22 follows Captain Yossarian, a World War II bombardier desperate to avoid flying more combat missions, only to discover that military bureaucracy has created an impossible logical trap: you can only be excused from flying if you’re declared insane, but requesting to be excused proves your sanity. That’s a Catch-22. What makes this book brilliant