The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, Claire North, 2014

Rating: 5/5

What a book! Right from the opening line of “The second cataclysm began in my eleventh life, in 1996” until the very satisfying final chapter (or as satisfying as a time-loop story can get), “The First Fifteen Lives” is a page-turning ride filled with imagination, great story-telling and wonderful writing.

The book’s essence is a “Groundhog Day” type of story — only that an entire life is lived repeatedly in a loop  rather than just a day. Harry August belongs to a class of men and women known as kalachakra (it’s literal meaning is a wheel of time and is a term in Buddhism that refers to time cycles) or ouroborans (from the serpent swallowing its own tail, an Egyptian-Greek symbol of life-death-rebirth) who, after living their lives, are born again in the exact same way at the exact same time and place but with  complete memories of each of their past lives. Additionally, Harry is a mnemonic, a type of kalachakra, who retains all his memories perfectly. During his eleventh life, he discovers that something is changing the course of human history and possibly leading to its destruction and it’s up to him to prevent it.

A usual problem with such a genre of books is the inevitable repeatability, and that leads to such books dragging somewhat especially in the middle parts. North (a pseudonym for Catherine Webb), however, structures “The First Fifteen Lives” cleverly in a non-sequential fashion that makes each chapter feel fresh. And towards the latter part of the book, which is more traditionally structured, the story transforms into a cat-and-mouse type of thriller that prevents the reader from keeping the book down. This book could easily have been caught up in the science behind the events and while there is some perfunctory discussion on it, it does not distract and the book is as much about history, philosophy and ethics as it is about science.

Books involving time travel or time loops invariably need to adopt the concept of a “multiverse” to explain away the anomalies of the story and even that adoption does not offer a full explanation. “The First Fifteen Lives” is no different and the reader is bound to have lingering doubts about the plot once the book is read. But that’s only to be expected — my approach while reading such books is to take a few things for granted and just simply enjoy the ride.

Pros: Imaginative plot, page-turner, superbly written, satisfying end

Cons: Unanswered questions in the end, as to be expected from this genre

The Billion Dollar Loser, Reeves Wiedeman, 2020

Rating: 4/5

The “Billion Dollar Loser” chronicles the history of WeWork and its founder, Adam Neumann, mainly from the beginnings of WeWork to the failed IPO. While Wiedeman acknowledges Adam’s ambitious persona and the possibility that he may be back sometime in the future, the book largely focuses on his hubris that eventually led to the collapse of the IPO process and to his sacking from the company he founded, poking fun at Neumann and his wife, Rebekah, along the way.

While following the WeWork story as it unfolded, I was amazed at the strategy of venture capital investors such as SoftBank and the book reinforces that feeling tremendously. While I can understand how early investors were willing to take a bet that a simple real-estate leasing model can become a “physical social network” (in Adam’s words), it’s mind boggling that an investor could pump in $10 billion at a later stage, especially when the founder spouted inanities such as “we used the work mission to enter into the larger category of life”, had a mission statement “to elevate the world’s consciousness” and pointed to financial parameters such as “return on community” and valuations based on the company’s energy and spirituality rather than on revenue (my favourite was the concept of “community-adjusted EBITDA)! Also, a part of SoftBank’s investment gave Adam a sizeable exit for himself. 

The WeWork story highlights the many issues with modern-day venture capital investing, which appears to be based on the “greater fool theory of finance”, as Wiedeman points out. There is too much money to be deployed rationally (SoftBank had raised $100 bn in its Vision Fund). The entrepreneurs with the most chutzpah and ambitions, however impossible the ambitions may be, are preferred to their more solid but conservative peers, and in the process, the latter’s genuine business models are often wiped out. Unlike a traditional model where valuations follow the success of a business model, companies such as WeWork have had to pivot their model often to justify the lofty valuations that they commanded early on. And venture capitalists are willing to turn a blind eye to serious governance issues such as conflicts of interest or blatant nepotism. This issue was best summarised by Jake Schwartz, one of of Adam’s early competitors: “the reason I care is that if the most successful companies are the ones that just drive really hard, and play fast and loose with the truth, then maybe the whole idea that capitalism is great, or even useful, is really challenging to uphold.”

My benchmark for a great biography is Walter Isaacson’s one on Steve Jobs (on a separate note, I can’t wait for him to finish the one on Elon Musk). Jobs was a multi-faceted character and the biography brings out the various nuances of his life — the good ones and the bad ones. On the other hand, Adam comes out as a unidimensional person in this book, all bombast and hubris, and that was a slight disappointment.

Pros: Details the rise and fall of WeWork well, gripping especially towards the latter part of the book

Cons: A uni-dimensional portrait

Foundation, Isaac Asimov, 1951

Rating: 5/5

“Foundation” is the first part of a trilogy and comprises five short stories (four of which were published several years before the book) which are interrelated and fit nicely as a single novel. The novel is based approximately 50,000 years in the future when the Galactic Empire presides over twenty-five million planets inhabited by a quintillion human beings. Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian (an imaginary branch of science that predicts future events), foresees the demise of the Empire within five centuries and a period of thirty thousand years to rebuild a second empire, which he hopes to shrink to just a thousand years. The administrators of the empire send him away to a planet called Terminus at the fringes of the galaxy to work on his plans along with a hundred thousand people. He creates the first Foundation there while a second one (which is not discussed much in this book) is set at the other end of the galaxy. The rest of the book covers the next 150 years and is about the efforts of Salvor Hardin - mayor of Terminus, Hober Mallow - a trader, and others to ensure Seldon’s plans are executed, making the Foundation more and more powerful. Quotations from the “Encyclopaedia Galactica” fill the reader in, as the story leaps through time.

“Foundation” has many of the typical elements of science fiction. It is set in a futuristic world and has tropes such as hyperspace travel, ultra-wave beams, televisors and others. But other than that, it is also a commentary on human psychology and behaviour — the secondary role that nature plays to technological advancement (the key city of Trantor has 40 billion people but no greenery), the fall of an empire due to rising bureaucracy and reducing curiosity, the use of religion to control humans and the eventual might of economic power over religion. And this commentary provides the book with a soul and makes it interesting reading. It is light on the action elements that we have got used to in science-fiction movies and it will be interesting to see how AppleTV+ interprets the book when they televise it later this year.

I had read this book when I was much younger (and remembered very little) and was pleased to see that the book still feels modern despite the seventy years of significant technology advancement and the umpteen dazzling sci-fi movies that I have seen in the past few years. One glaring feature, however, is the absence of women in any pivotal role in this book, possibly a reflection of the times in which it was written (the trailer of the TV show seems to be correcting that though). I look forward to reading the next two books of the original trilogy (more books have been written since then) and watching the AppleTV+ show!

Pros: A grand landscape, interesting plot, human psychology at the centre, contemporary feel

Cons: A complete absence of women in the plot