Rating: 
Summary: Grating and pompous until the end
Review: Richard Powers definitely bites off more than he can chew in this book. While he attempts a protracted meditation on love, loss, literature, consciousness, and the Meaning Of It All, Powers loses sight of his characters, who are completely uncompelling; they lack depth, soul, and the ability to carry on a believable conversation. His prose is horrifically clunky--it somehow manages to be annoyingly terse and clipped but also ornate to the point of ridiculousness. His literary allusions are also self-congratulatory and smothering-- is this a novel, or a metaphor wrapped in an enigma, covered in secret sauce?All the same, I couldn't keep myself from reading all the way through, not because the storyline is so compelling--it isn't--but because all the payoff comes in one punch at the end. Everything happens exactly the way you know it will, and yet it's all so tragically beautiful and perfect. I was amazed that such an irritating and self-important book could end with such a bittersweet redemption of itself. All the same, it wasn't worth plowing through the histrionics of the first couple hundred pages. If I ever read Galatea 2.2 again, I'm going straight to the ending.
Rating: 
Summary: Carbon or Silicon based?
Review: Richard Powers is a gifted writer, a rather unusual measure of that are the reviews that people write about his work. With the usual exception, those that read his work take what he has written, and integrate it in to their own ideas. His books are not just entertainment. Another reviewer suggested the Author allows for this ambiguity in his writing, he allows the reader the freedom of opinion on outcome, the ability to make a choice. The primary subject he presents in this work is one that will continue to grow from theory, until it forces fundamental beliefs to be questioned, and bring out the most Fundamentalist of Luddites, and with them debate that will carry the potential for disruption, or worse, violence. Mr. Powers has a talent for writing about arcana and making the subjects accessible. Unlike many reviewers, my knowledge of the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence is strictly that of an amateur. I found that Mr. Powers brought credibility to a theme that has been little more than bad Science Fiction in the hands of other Authors. He included all the tech-talk, but he used language in its most basic forms to first make the project appear possible, to bringing the true enormity of what will be required before anything akin to sentience can be achieved/created. The written words, when he collected them into novel form, also became the deciding factor in his initial carbon-based personal relationship. When silicon took the place of carbon the importance of language was increased exponentially. Neither relationship was fruitful. One reviewer queried that when we finished the book did the experience stop or is it continuing even now. If you have never read this Author, what I write might suggest I have a form of dementia. I admit that before I read "Plowing The Dark" I thought other reviewers were there, way, way, out there. Mr. Powers is the perfect novelist, for when you are immersed in his work he suspends disbelief faultlessly. He does not intrude, and he does not preach. Making the decision to read his work is a bit like what Neo faced, the red pill, or the blue? Once you start with the first book, you cannot stop reading until he stops writing.
Rating: 
Summary: One of my favorite novels
Review: Richard Powers is my favorite contemporary novelist and this book is easily one of his best. For their combination of intelligence and emotional complexity, his books have no rivals. In Galatea 2.2. I was once again immersed in a world rich with ideas and human desire, a world where the emotional rawness of C. and the philosophical curiosity of the neural network Helen illustrate the vast range of our age-old need for understanding. In the end, this novel illuminates not only the power of narrative, but our absolute need for it. It reminds us how greatly we depend on stories to understand the world, and to understand ourselves. The narrator Richard's best shot at explaining the world to Helen is by sharing the story of his own life -- the one true story he really knows. Powers suggests that our most intimate stories are carried through life as beautiful burdens -- narratives with the power to haunt, but ultimately save us. This book, like all of Powers' novels, will move you and inspire you. It's a hard one to shake from your mind.
Rating:
Summary: Weighty stuff - difficult but worth persevering
Review: Richard Powers' "Galatea 2.2" isn't a novel you pick up and zip through in a couple of days. It's laden with so many weighty ideas and written in such cleverly precise and economical prose you need the patience to plough through it slowly to get its meaning. This may or may not be a put off depending on why you read fiction in the first place. For the uninitiated, the proliferation of dense techno jargo does slow down the reading somewhat but you persist because the novel's richly textured human interest is so palpably warm in its emotional resonance you don't want to give up. The love story aside, the protagonist's abandonment of a prospective career in science for literature and the devastating impact of his decision on his father is simply heartbreaking. It is also the fodder which feeds his return to U. Equally touching is witnessing how single mother Diana (Powers' colleague) courageously copes with bringing up two kids, one a near genius and the other a retard. He learnt so much from her. Finally, the experiment with building Helen, a thinking machine capable of passing the English exams, dubbed the Pygmalion experiment by critics, reveals the manifest danger of letting science assume the driver's seat. Galatea 2.2 is such a complex novel readers will almost certainly finish the last page with different ideas and conclusions of their own.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended. Compares favourably with 'Ismael'.
Review: Richard Powers' 'Galatea 2.2' is his most thorough book to date. More quasi-autobiographical and intimately written than '3 Farmers On Their Way to a Dance', Powers has fused science, fantasy, and philosophy so completely with a man's recollections of his own past that you feel as if you are reading a personal journal rather than a work of fiction. To my friends espousing the insight of 'Ismael' I send copies of 'Galatea 2.2' and say, read this. If you like the style and flavour of this book, then I highly recommend that you try 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', by Haruki Murakami.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth reading
Review: Richard Powers' Galatea 2.2 is, I trust, a semi-autobiographical novel since it features the author as first person with his name intact. Stylistically, the novel takes some risks with its wording, though its creative use of technical vocabulary to create poetic metaphor generally succeeds with brilliance. The title itself, referring back to the legend of Pygmalion, concerns the education of a computer network whose growth of intelligence takes on increasingly human features, including even some female identity named Helen. Richard Powers, as research assistant, teaches the computer network through literary input via microphone, using audiovisual addenda where appropriate.
Parallel to this, we are presented with the story of his own human relationship with his girlfriend, C., a needy woman with whom he shares his life, first as his student, and later as his almost wife, and he acts as her mentor and protector as well as her lover. As this bond disintegrates, he returns to the USA from Belgium to take up his research role in an artificial intelligence experiment. There was a time when he himself was inspired by his own professor to enter into doctorate studies in English literature rather than physics, against his father's wishes, and finally into becoming a novelist in his own right - within a culture that reads less and less.
He has a curious love-hate relationship with the scientist who acts as his technical mentor (and who has a wife institutionalized with Alzheimer's disease) and intellectual foil between two worlds: the literary/humanistic and the scientific/materialistic. His relationship with his scientific colleagues is somewhat as an outsider, then, though that role is true in both of his worlds, in which he is clearly more than just a competent intellect. In passing, he raises issues concerning the humanities in academia losing their soul in recent scholarly fads. In all of his relationships, his own humanity is put to the test, and many moments of reflective sadness touch our own sensibilities as we read on.
When Helen gives up because of deep disappointment with the destructiveness of humankind, we find ourselves thrust upon the central thesis of our author: the human soul is a chance miracle that is unlikely ever to recur in nature; as a corollary, the lack of appreciation of that happenstance is already a degradation along the path of senseless destruction. Against this cosmic disappointment, the failures of his romantic life seem a pale theme in comparison, painful as they are in their inexorability. Are both themes to be subsumed under something greater still, or are they meant to be irreducible? For, imperfect as life on this planet is, it is still (painfully) preferable to any of the alternatives.
Rating: 
Summary: caca
Review: Thats what it is. Trite, pretentious caca
Rating:
Summary: Sci-fi + Eng. Lit. + faux autobiography
Review: The book feels like it was written by the guys who programmed Deep Blue to beat Gary Kasparov, partnered with a hopelessly romantic English professor frustrated by post-modernism. That's as good a summation as I can muster. It's not about cognitive neurology and vast computer networks meshing into one literate machine. It's about one man's search for the loves and lives he's lost. Richard Powers - the character in the book and possibly the author as well - has lost friends and family and lovers. He's also lost his passion for literature and his willingness to write fiction. The ten months he spends with Helen (the title character, so to speak), training her to compete in a master's level comprehensive English exam allows him to remember those moments in his life where things went wrong. And change them. Or so he thinks. Helen reminded me of "Flowers for Algernon"; she's Charlie Gordon (by way of HAL 9000), only we never get to see her private journal, and she's housed inside an enormous computer network. Powers handles well her gradual introduction to the language. In the beginning she makes mistakes with syntax, and they always seem quite plausible, as if really coming from a machine learning English from scratch. Eventually, she makes leaps and bounds, catching both her teacher and the reader off guard. These are my favourite moments. I found myself taking a startled step back along with the characters in the book when Helen made her profound and poetic statements. And just like Charlie Gordon (and HAL), you know that her consciousness must come with a price. Richard Powers - the author and possibly the character as well - has written a fine post-sci-fi melodrama. The story had me engrossed, even as it tried desperately hard to tug on my heartstrings. Maybe the drama caught me off-guard, for I was expecting cyberpunk but got a tender tale of lost loves. Either way, I got sucked in. In the best possible way.
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag.
Review: The self-recursive meditations on consciousness are entertaining and enlightening, and Powers' use of language is simple, evocative, and strong. However, the plot drags until near the end when everything you've been waiting for happens at once. And let's not forget the cathartic-for-him, depressing-for-us relationship side issue which seemingly has nothing to do with the story but still eats away chapters. I recommend this book to aspiring writers, both to see how genius your fiction could be when you cut through the B.S. of language, and also as a warning that you can't just air out your personal laundry in print and expect it to work within the plot. A work of contrasts. However, his descriptions of Dutch family life almost makes the relationship stuff worth it. Almost.
Rating:
Summary: One of my Favorites
Review: This is one of the best books I've ever read. Mr. Powers creates a masterpiece through a combination of beautiful language, science, romance, and, most importantly, a thoroughly intriguing story. I highly recommend it. The writing is dense and multi-layered, as Mr. Powers moves between multiple frames of reference, all the while referring to his characters through single initials. A stunning work.
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