Ranging from astrology to neuroscience and cosmology, from homelessness to love and the fragility of human fellowship, the scope of Horace Hardcover's browser is unusually wide for a philosopher these days. His iconoclastic message is that uncertainty reveals more than the elimination of doubt. The light irony of Alastair Hannay's novella hands on this truth to the reader: Does it matter that we cannot decide whether its portrait of a philosopher is pure fiction, drawn from life or not even fictionally real? One thing is made clear: the dynamic of doubt and certainty when ripped from the deadpan pages of philosophy can play havoc with a life.