Despite having loved Hank Green's 2018 novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, I started the book's sequel, 2020's A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, with a small degree of trepidation. As mysterious as the ending to An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was, I honestly never felt that the story required any further addition in order to be complete. It's true that the core mystery driving Green's absurdist take on the alien first-contact genre had not been resolved by An Absolutely Remarkable Thing's conclusion, but Green had in his own way successfully navigated that story to something that I think could be considered a viable ending.
That is, the framing narrative of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing regarding the arrival of alien life on Earth had come to a close when the "Carls" (ten-foot tall immobile robot statues that appeared one morning in every major city on Earth) vanished just as quickly as they had come. Moreover, the personal arc of the protagonist of the prior novel (April May), had reached its own ambiguous resolution when April confronted her assumptions regarding the nature of the fame and influence she'd garnered as the Carls' original discoverer, and in the process finally managed to come face to face (if only briefly) with the entity behind the Carls' existence. Beyond explaining some very specific plot-centric mysteries that to be entirely honest I never felt that Green had any obligation to answer, it didn't seem to me that there was anything else that could be added to this story. While ambiguous and enigmatic, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing's final line seemed the most fitting ending to that novel. Was there really any new direction Green could take this story in a sequel?
It turned out that the answer was yes. Whereas An Absolutely Remarkable Thing took as its subject an off-key examination of the contemporary social media landscape, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor in contrast repositions its critique of the modern "attention economy" in the context of a much larger scope -- a shift in perspective that turns the story's focus to the very industries that give rise to the toxic social forces explored in the previous novel. As a result, Green manages in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor to deepen his prior narrative in vitally necessary (if not always successful) ways.
By its end, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is not merely a sequel tying up loose ends left over from the first book, but a furthering of that story that not only concludes the prior narrative's themes, but also broadens them.
Summary of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Before I continue, I have to point out that since A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is the sequel to another novel, it's impossible to discuss even basic elements of this novel's plot without revealing critical details concerning the ending to the previous story. I'll refrain from discussing major plot spoilers for A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor itself until the latter half of this review, but from this moment on I'm going to assume that any reader has either already read An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, or has actively chosen not to avoid major spoilers regarding this earlier novel's ending. If this is not the case, stop reading now.
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor picks up almost exactly where An Absolutely Remarkable Thing finished. In the months following the vanishing of April May in a massive warehouse fire set by followers of the right-wing pundit Peter Petrawicki, both April's close-knit circle of friends and the world at large struggle to come to terms with the historic events and tragedies they have just witnessed. After April used her final moments in the burning warehouse to remotely organize a global effort to solve one last riddle posed by the Carl statues -- a riddle that ultimately required everyone on Earth present each Carl statue with the same chemical elements simultaneously in an unprecedented act of global unity -- the Carls vanished, disappearing in claps of displaced air while the warehouse in which April was trapped collapsed.
Months later, the Carls and April are still absent, with the constant social media debates regarding the nature of these alien visitors having come to an uneasy halt. Not only is it unclear why the Carls came to Earth to begin with, but it's also unclear whether or not they've even truly left. Similarly, whether or not April was rescued from the burning warehouse by the Carl statues remains uncertain, with many very much aware of the bizarre (and in one case deadly) lengths the Carls' previously went toward ensuring April's safety. For this reason, conspiracy theories about April's continued survival are common among both her followers and detractors.
More concretely, April's three closest friends from the previous novel find themselves actively grieving for the loss of their friend, while also struggling to return to their former lives. Having originally been a PHD student of chemistry before she contacted April after the Carls' arrival, Miranda begins A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor struggling to continue her education, even in spite of the fact that the research she had previously pursued now seems shallow. Similarly, as the co-founder and now sole proprietor of April's hugely successful YouTube channel, Andy finds himself in a permanent existential crisis in the wake of his best friend's (apparent) death. Stricken with both the fear that he will fail to uphold April's legacy now that she is gone, and also the guilty concern that he will live the rest of his life in her shadow, Andy finds his time occupied primarily with speeches he is asked to give at various high profile media conferences, reliving memories of his dead friend for the benefit of millionaire financial analysts and social media executives looking to understand the "phenomenon" that was April May.
Meanwhile, Maya reacts to the apparent death of her girlfriend with outright denial, and quits her job to pursue the security of increasingly niche conspiracy theories concerning the Carls and their origins. Clinging to hope that April may still be alive somewhere (rescued by the Carl statues in the final instant before the warehouse collapsed), Maya ultimately finds herself embarking on a cross-country road trip as she chases down possible clues as to April's whereabouts -- clues that more often than not turn out to be mirages produced by her own false hope and denial of grief.
It's in this unexpectedly bleak context that all three characters begin encountering their own unique mysteries. Maya uncovers evidence of a mysterious break-in at an animal testing lab, in the process becoming drawn into a complicated network of conspiracies regarding a local New Jersey flee market, a pod of dolphins that washed up on shore dead of an unknown illness, and a new alternate reality game called "Fish" whose players complete seemingly innocuous real-world tasks given to them via secret text messages. Similarly, Miranda finds herself so obsessed with the exploits of the now reclusive Peter Petrawicki (the antagonist of the prior novel) that she eventually drops out of her PHD program to apply for a job at his secluded tech startup -- a company called "Altus" which she believes is doing illegal research into brain computer interfaces.
Finally, Andy's crisis of purpose is interrupted when one afternoon (in a scene partially depicted in the ending line of the first book), he receives a text message purporting to be from no one other than April herself. This message consists only of two words, "knock knock," and arrives at the exact moment that someone knocks on his door. Outside, Andy finds a book on his doorstep bearing the title "The Book of Good Times" whose text describes not only the very thoughts he is having in the exact moment he is having them, but also promises him that April is indeed alive and well, and that he will see her again soon so long as he 1) takes a shower, and 2) goes to the nearest Subway restaurant to order a "chicken teriyaki and french onion sandwich."
From here, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's story unfolds into a densely plotted mystery that alternates between all three character's perspectives. Desperate for hope that April might still be alive, Andy finds himself following the increasingly bizarre instructions of The Book of Good Times -- instructions which in and of themselves slowly begin fitting together into a plan that is clearly far too subtle and intricate for any human mind to have constructed. Likewise, Miranda soon finds herself traveling to the secluded (fictional) island nation of Val Verde where Peter Petrawicki has built his "Altus" corporation. Finally, Maya's quest for clues as to April's whereabouts takes a sinister turn when she finds herself pursued by strangers whom she has never met, but who seem convinced that stalking her across half the country is nothing more than an online game they've signed up to play.
Thoughts On The Story
Early on, one of the most unexpected aspects of Green's writing in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is his willingness to seriously examine the emotional realities of his protagonists, even despite the absurd premise on which his story is built. As the first chapters of the book establish a network of increasingly bizarre plot threads, Green is careful to tie everything together with a surprisingly respectful attention to the emotional struggles that his three main characters face in the wake of the events of the prior novel. This dedication to what is ultimately a very frank portrayal of the grieving process ties the narrative together, and holds the story steady even as the plot takes a very sharp turn into the outlandishly bizarre.
In one particularly memorable scene, Andy receives a new volume of the Book of Good Times, and discovers that the book's previously strange but harmless instructions have taken on a heavier tone. Now that he has demonstrated his willingness to follow the orders of this book's unknown author, the Book of Good Times has commanded that he purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in a failing Canadian mining company, effectively gambling away the fortune that he had April had previously built on YouTube.
It's in this scene that Andy first begins seriously considering the reasonable possibility that in obeying The Book of Good Times's instructions, he may simply be allowing himself to fall prey to an exceedingly elaborate (and cruel) hoax. Yet despite questioning whether or not he should defy the book's initial command that he keep its existence a secret from everyone he knows, Andy instead decides to continue following the book's instructions, and buys the stock as ordered. While these actions here are far from reasonable, Green is careful to depict how Andy's choices are rooted in a very human motive that is still entirely sympathetic. In the end, it's not the shallow promise of wealth and fame which motivates Andy, but instead the belief that if taking some very questionable financial advice from a "magic book that predicts the future" is irresponsible, so too is burdening April's other grieving friends and family with the knowledge that she might in fact still be alive. While wondering if he should reveal the book's existence to someone else, Andy says to the reader:
I had to live all by myself in a world in which April was alive and books could predict the future. It took gargantuan strength for me not to tell Robin [a close friend of April's] about it. It wasn't just that I wanted to tell anyone, though I did; it's more that it seemed so cruel to let him just suffer while I had this new hope. But then again, maybe it was cruel to tell him when it could still all be a lie.It was one thing to let a supernatural garbage book give you hope that your dead friend was alive; it was another thing entirely to force that ambiguity on someone else. (p.95)
This gentle depiction of Andy's own personal response to grief is present in all three of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's protagonists. While Maya travels across the country in a search for evidence of April's whereabouts, and Miranda travels to a secluded island to infiltrate a secretive corporation which (she thinks) is conducting illegal human experiments, Green is careful to root the actions of his characters firmly in their personal emotional realities. As a result, choices that otherwise might have come across as overly convenient plot devices frequently take on a new level of depth and meaning.
This proves vitally important to the story that eventually unfolds, since without this attention to emotional realism on Green's part, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's outlandish plot twists could very easily have come across as contrived. Much as with the absurdist mystery at the core of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Green takes as A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's true focus the realistic ways in which each of his three new protagonists respond to the increasingly bizarre scenarios they face. In the process, he is able to give even these bizarre twists on his previous story an unexpected level of realism. The result is that A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor has a firm narrative ballast that holds the story steady, even as Green introduces numerous additions to the themes of his prior work.
Among these new elements is a pivot in the novel's focus. Whereas An Absolutely Remarkable Thing examined the cults of personality that often arise surrounding social media celebrities, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's story repositions itself so as to examine the corporate forces that give rise to the toxic online communities that April herself had to contend with. In one particularly memorable scene, Miranda speaks with her academic advisor at Berkley (Constance Lundgren) shortly before deciding to infiltrate Petrawicki's Altus corporation. Upon learning of Miranda's intent to leave her PHD for a job at Petrawicki's tech startup, Lundgren proceeds to give Miranda a critique, essentially, of the consequences of allowing celebrities like Petrawicki to dictate the nature and goal of the scientific process. While speaking of the supposedly groundbreaking research that Petrawicki claims is being done at his Altus laboratory, Lundgren says:
"Miranda, I have been at this a while. I've seen revolutions in science, and I know that sometimes moving fast and breaking things is how progress gets made. But it's also how things get broken, and sometimes those things are people. This is not the strategy of careful scientists. I agree, they are likely messing with the human mind. I don't know what they're doing, but if they weren't close to human tests, they wouldn't be scaling up so fast. [...] These men -- sorry, but it usually is men -- don't care who gets hurt because they're telling themselves a story in which they're the hero. I've listened to that story too many times to see anything in it but vanity." (p.44)
Via moments like these, Green establishes A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor to not only be an engaging novel whose surrealist plot is advanced by a cast of strikingly believable characters, but also a narrative that takes the themes and questions resting at the core of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing regarding the nature and consequence of social influence, and then carries these in a new direction that questions, ultimately, the effect of turning even scientific research into a "brand" that is bought and sold.
While Green's explorations of these new themes are not always entirely successful, they are still an avenue of the narrative which manages to build on the subjects of his earlier book.
Critique (Major Spoilers Follow)
It's ironic that while Green's skills with character development and emotional realism represent one of the greatest strengths of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's early chapters, this is also the same point at which the book begins to struggle in its latter half.
As the story enters its final act, all of Green's protagonists find themselves racing toward a high-stakes confrontation in which the very future of humanity hangs in the balance. Yet the plot moves so quickly in these latter portions of the novel that the exact motives of Green's characters often remain a mystery not only to the reader, but (in one very notable scene) even the characters themselves. Whereas earlier Green's narrative had excelled in its realistic depiction of the complicated ways in which his protagonists respond to their unique experiences of grief, in the final act of A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, this emotional realism falls away in favor of an increasingly abstract discussion of the dangers of consolidating too much social and political power in one individual. While many interesting concepts revolve around this discussion, these are also all themes which Green is never quite able to fully manifest in his core narrative.
Eventually, Miranda uncovers the truth of what Peter Petrawicki's Altus corporation is studying, and learns that Petrawicki's staff has reverse-engineered a technology brought to Earth by the Carl statues -- a planet-spanning network of nano-machines that in the last novel had allowed the Carls' to create a shared dream experienced by every human on Earth. Due to the nature of this very literal "cellular network," Petrawicki has learned that anyone may telepathically exchange experiences with one another. All that is required is that the individual "user" of this network view a very specific series of subliminal images in a standard VR gaming headset, and suddenly their brain is "logged in" to a global information network created by the Carls wherein thoughts, experiences, and (possibly) even skills can be exchanged between users. Rather than going public with this discovery, Petrawicki has instead opted to monetize his findings, and created a privately run social media site called "the Altus Space" where people may buy and sell experiences and skills in exchange for money.
While a fascinating story concept in its own right, the ethics surrounding the Altus Space soon become a plot point that Green struggles to properly explore even as he makes this the book's central focus. After Miranda is flown to the secluded research facility on the island of Val Verde by Petrawicki, she finds that Petrawicki's reverse-engineered version of the Carls' "Dream" is far less safe than he lets on. While most individuals can experience the Altus Space without any negative side-effects, a small percentage of the staff at Altus have been subjected to a technically harmless yet horrifyingly painful experience called "body dislocation." During this process, individuals materialize in the Altus Space's digitally simulated world with their bodies impossibly contorted, and promptly suffer a dangerous panic attack that prevents their brain from ever interfacing with this technology again. This in turn has given rise to a bizarre form of discrimination within the Altus company, where those employees incapable of using this product are called slurs, and excluded from social gatherings.
Worse still, later on Miranda learns Petrawicki's true reasons for choosing an isolated island nation for the site of his company's primary research facility. As she and her advisor at Berkley suspected, Altus has indeed been secretly conducting illegal human tests of their "Altus Space" on the citizens of Val Verde. The cryptocurrency mining operation that accounts for the majority of Altus's income is in fact the result of a vast network of literal human "servers" -- each individual having been hired to plug their brain into the Altus network so their thoughts can be used to buy and sell currency for weeks on end.
Yet as compelling as all these story elements are, the problem is that between questions as to the safety of the Altus Space, the long-term consequences that its use might have on individuals, and the civil rights issues faced by the Altus workers whom Miranda discovers locked away in a hidden room in a high security facility, Green is never quite able to fully explore the issues that he seems to want Altus to embody in this novel. As Miranda and (later on) Andy and Maya discover the various abuses of power occurring as a result of Petrawicki's Altus Space, the issues raised by Altus's technology and business practices are simply presented by Green, and then left to drift in the story unexplored.
This failure becomes a particularly big deal in the book's climax. Eventually, Green attempts to set Altus up not merely as a troubling new social media network, but instead (due to an otherwise well-constructed plot twist mid-way through the book) an existential threat to all of human civilization itself.
While Miranda uncovers the answers to her own mystery regarding Altus, Maya also soon finds her quest for April's whereabouts coming to an end. In a scene that is itself wonderfully well executed, halfway through the novel April May awakes after months in an artificial coma to find herself lying in a bed positioned on the stage of a boarded up restaurant while a familiar ten-foot tall robot statue stands guard by her side. After having indeed been rescued from the burning warehouse by the Carl statues at the end of the last book, April has since had more than half her body and brain rebuilt by this alien being. Awakening just as Maya arrives on the scene, April finally finds herself face to face with the extraterrestrial entity whom she'd spent the previous novel seeking to understand -- a being who in turn does the last thing April likely expected, and asks her for help.
It's here that Carl -- that perpetually silent and foreboding presence in the prior novel -- is formally introduced as an active character in this story. Revealing themselves not to be a conventional alien exactly, but instead a planet-spanning AI whose existence derives from the network of extraterrestrial nano-machines that Petrawicki has commandeered, Carl explains to April that they (for Carl is gender neutral) were sent to Earth by an unknown force wishing to prevent humanity from destroying itself. However, the violent events at the end of the prior novel produced a schism in Carl's programming. Initially tasked with selecting an ambassador for humanity (April), and then using this ambassador as a focal point through which the collective will of all of human civilization could be interpreted, April's apparent death in the warehouse triggered the awakening of a hidden contingency plan in Carl's hardware. With humanity seemingly having chosen to kill its ambassador, a kind of "Anti-Carl" was awakened -- a being far more powerful than Carl themselves ever could hope to be, and who has concluded that humanity is a danger to itself, and as a result must be subjugated by any means possible.
As such, the only way Carl's so-called "brother" can be defeated is if the novel's characters demonstrate to this rival entity that humans are indeed worthy of free will. This is a goal which (for fascinating reasons that are nevertheless inadequately explained), can only be accomplished by destroying Altus.
It's easy to misrepresent this particular plot twist as contrived, so I want to make it clear that the sudden introduction of Carl into this novel's cast is expertly handled by Green. In their own way, Carl quickly becomes a wonderfully memorable addition to A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor's eclectic family of protagonists -- an alien entity whose inhuman intellect exists alongside an undeniable compassion (if not also a slightly off-putting fondness for pop music from the early 90s). Moreover, Green's introduction of an antagonizing force for Carl to work against allows what would otherwise be an omnipotent and omnipresent entity to interact meaningfully with the novel's human protagonists. The result is that Green provides even Carl with a compelling moral arc by the book's end.
However, where An Absolutely Remarkable Thing struggles is that by its conclusion, the three-way conflict Green sets up in the novel's final act between Carl, the Altus Corporation, and Carl's brother proves too abstract to be truely compelling. April is told by Carl that their brother intends to "control humanity," but beyond realizing that it's Carl's brother who is behind the existence of the "Fish" game that Maya had to briefly contend with earlier in the book, it's not entirely clear the extent to which this "control" is a threat. Does Carl's Brother intend to turn humanity into an army of remote-control zombies? Produce a kind of religious cult in which they are the central deity? Subliminally influence all society so as to hamper technological and cultural progress? Until the very final scene of the book's climax we are never given a direct depiction of exactly what it is that will happen if Carl's brother succeeds in their endeavors, and as a result the potential for thematic suspense is lost.
There's a similar issue regarding why it is that April, Maya, Miranda, and Andy must work to destroy the Altus corporation. Carl tells April and Maya that Altus is dangerous to the future of human civilization because it consolidates too much financial and social power, but exactly what it is about Altus specifically that makes it so unique in this regard is unclear within the context of the narrative. Green's prose makes a very good case for Altus being the next iteration of Twitter or Facebook, and deliberately correlates the failures of these companies with those of Altus in a way that initially feels quite subversive. The problem is that while Altus is an intriguing idea, this avenue of social criticism also means that Carl's continued insistence that Altus specifically is a threat to the future of humanity rings hollow. Green has already established that Altus is merely the natural extension of a variety of social trends manifested in dozens of other cultural phenomena, and if this is the case, then what is it about this one single corporation that is so important and dangerous?
All of the story elements needed to explore these themes are there, it's just that A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor fails to structure its plot in a way that is conducive to a proper examination of these issues. Miranda's investigation of Altus's research facility provides many points of legitimate concern regarding how the technology behind the Altus Space was developed, allowing Green the opportunity to examine how supposedly revolutionary technological advancements can be conducted in a way that victimizes already marginalized communities. Similarly, after the Altus Space is released to the public, Maya and April raise various concerns regarding who is allowed to engage in the high profile online communities that arise surrounding this technology (the Altus Space requiring an expensive VR headset in order to operate). Most interesting of all is Maya's personal objection to the very concept of sharing actual human experiences online. After hearing multiple commentators describe how Altus's ability to permit people to see the world literally through one another's eyes will surely end all bigotry, Maya (who is African American) reflects that in a world where experiences are bought and sold as commodities, the claim that mutual understanding can end bigotry is a statement deriving from a place of tremendous social privilege. Specifically, she says to the reader after listening to one such commentator:
My skin was crawling. I was thinking about Kurt "You Can't Joke About Anything Anymore" Butler, and whether people like him would work to understand me or if I would be asked, once again, to understand people like him. Call me a pessimist, but I think if bigotry could be solved by access to more information, it would have been solved by now. Hate isn't about a lack of understanding; it's about hate. (p.329)
All of these points against Altus represent fascinating story elements for A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor to explore, it's just that in the end Green's characters rarely examine these ideas further after they are introduced. Between compelling plot threads concerning the safety of the Altus Space, the human rights abuses of the company that created it, and even the social reasons Maya gives for why Altus could perpetuate racism and bigotry even when it claims to do the opposite, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor finds itself pulled between so many interesting ideas at once that it can never fully reach a conclusion regarding any of them. The closest moment to this appears when April finally reveals to the world that she survived the warehouse fire, and condemns Petrawicki's actions in creating Altus. Yet April's rhetoric feels more a reductive platitude than a distillation of the novel's politics that Green seems to intend. While filming a youTube video about Altus and why it is dangerous, April says:
"The people at Altus are right: Communication is humanity's superpower. And every time we have increased our ability to communicate, society has shifted. In the short term, those shifts are really disruptive, but in the long term they've always been good. I'm worried that things are moving too fast this time.
"I'm not saying shut it down. I'm just saying, let's take it a little more slowly. Move fast and break things is great for a business, but not for society. Or the human mind." (p.320)
April's words here directly echo those of Miranda's PHD advisor back at the start of the novel, and yet Constance Lundgren's critique of businessmen who cast themselves as the heros of their own stories (and in the process "break things"), was specific to the context of medicine, not the restructuring of social hierarchies. In contrast, April's objections to the "change" that Altus represents are primarily social in nature. While she references the possibility that there might be negative health effects to using the Altus Space, her main concerns are the unknown social consequences of the change in humanity's communication ability that Altus will bring about. April is worried, essentially, that Altus is giving people too much power, and so her desire that everyone "take it a little more slowly" with the Altus Space feels less like a succinct distillation of the numerous criticisms of Altus that Green's story has already raised. Instead, April's concerns come across as a conservative desire to preserve existing power structures.
The irony here is that despite the way in which Green phrases April's objections to Altus as the ultimate summary of the novel's themes, the points against Altus that the book's plot raises actually contradict with April's own criticisms of it. The Altus space cannot be accessed by people with atypical neurologies (as evidenced by the horrifying experience of body dislocation), while even the ability to use this technology is predicated on access to an expensive VR headset (a device that Green very deliberately points out comes from an industry infamous for catering exclusively toward a white male customer base). Then there's the fact that the technology behind Altus was developed via exceedingly questionable means, with the people of the fictional Val Verde encouraged to "volunteer" to allow themselves to be used as test subjects by a global corporation that kept them locked away in a room hidden from even its own employees.
While April insists that "things are moving too fast" with Altus, Green's own narrative demonstrates the exact opposite. Over and over again he shows how Altus fails as an institution for the same reasons that its real-world analogues do. All of the points that A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor raises against Altus and the Altus Space highlight how this technology is dangerous not because it is changing society too quickly, but instead because it is reenforcing the prevailing institutions of society on a scale never before seen. As Maya herself points out in the above quote, Altus's technology is not nearly as revolutionary as it claims, and therein lies its true danger -- the possibility that the Altus Space will lock humanity onto a dead-end path where any form of social change becomes impossible.
And yet, as frightening an idea as this is, it's ultimately a concept that is largely left unexamined by the story. The closest thing Green comes to is when Carl says that Altus is dangerous because it "consolidates power," but this statement's true implication is lost when April continually reinterprets Carl's words as meaning that Altus represents change, and that social change of any sort is dangerous.
Concluding Thoughts
A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is a genuinely engaging novel earnestly invested in its themes. While it does struggle to sustain those themes during its final act, it's also the case that it still undertakes them, making a point of bringing the issues elicited by the story's narrative to the forefront of the reader's attention. Moreover, Green's skills with characterization give his story a weight it could easily have lacked, and establish a solid foundation on which the rest of his novel can be constructed.
There are so many different plot threads at work in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor that Green might as well have written three or four novels based on the content which this text attempts to examine. Between the "post first-contact" narrative undertaken in the book's opening chapters, the story of Carl and April's efforts to save the world from hostile takeover by an alien AI, and the dystopian narrative embodied in Altus and the emergence of a technology that commodifies experience itself, it's difficult to imagine how any author could have successfully merged all these elements into one single story.
While A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor fails to fully examine all of the issues its story touches upon, it also does still attempt to bring light to those issues, and does so honestly. As a result, saying the book lives up to its name, and is "a beautifully foolish endeavor" would be too harsh. The words "beautiful" and "foolish" have very different meanings, and by its final line, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor is far more often the former than it is the latter.