Janna Levin

Janna Levin spends her days chasing down the mysteries of the universe, like chaos theory and black holes. And to take a break from the awesome responsibility of mapping the universe, she makes stuff up — not as a scientist, but as a novelist. Her first novel is called A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines — and it combines the tricky worlds of mathematical theory and historical fiction. Kurt Andersen asks Levin about what novels can do that science can’t.