Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

I just discovered Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality a few days ago, and I’m completely addicted. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read — and it’s fanfiction. I love just about everything about it and am almost half way through after 50 chapters (there are 122 all together). It’s just so well written, I’m very jealous.

The premise of the story is that it’s set in an alternate universe to the normal Harry Potter novels. In this universe, Harry’s Aunt Petunia didn’t marry Vernon Dursely - instead she married an Oxford professor, Michael Verres-Evans. His house is filled with bookcases, he’s read a lot of science-fiction, fantasy, and a LOT of non-fiction about science, psychology, philosophy, and everything in between. He’s an 11 year old prodigy.

The book seems to have started a movement of “rationalist fiction”. The idea is that everything in the universe obeys a set of rules; the main characters are smart and do rational, well reasoned things; you can work out what is going to happen next if you really try because everything that happens makes sense and you have enough information to deduce it; and you learn a lot just be reading. There seem to be a number of books written in the genre already, including a Lord of the Rings which I might tackle next.

I’ve been meaning to read Godel Escher Bach for a while, and it’s now definitely on my reading list after hearing Harry mention it several times already.

I have to go now. I should go to bed but I know that I’ll just have to read one more chapter. Argh!