Things are rarely as simple as they seem, and what appears to be complex may be no more than ripples on the surface of a fathomless ocean. The mechanics of malignancy--a single cell acquiring mutation upon mutation until it spirals down the rabbit hole of cancer--was neatly described by two scientists, Douglas Hanahan and Robert A. Weinberg, in a sweeping synthesis published in 2000 called “The Hallmarks of Cancer.”