10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10, Reviewed.

Code fundamentally shapes how we how we interact with the world. Some of these ways are so subtle as to be barely palpable. The law professor Lawrence Lessig famously propounded the maxim that “code is law,” but code is more than that. Code shapes the way I make a song with a piece of software, and what that song might sound like. Code is embedded in our phones, ATMs, voting machines, buildings, social interactions, culture. Code leads us down mazes, of a sort, in our everyday lives.

10 PRINT CHR$ (205.5 + RND (1)); : GOTO 10, a new book collaboratively written by 10 authors, takes a single line of code—inscribed in the book’s mouthful of a title—and explodes it.