A playful and profound survey of the concept of computation across the entire spectrum of human thought-written by a mathematician novelist who spent twenty years as a Silicon Valley computer scientist. The logic is correct, and the conclusions are startling. Simple rules can generate gnarly patterns. Physics obeys laws, but the outcomes aren't predictable. Free will is real. The mind is like a quantum computer. Social strata are skewed by universal scaling laws. And there can never be a simple trick for answering all possible questions about our world's natural processes. We live amid splendor beyond our control.