Rating: 
Summary: The face that launched a thousand cognitive sub-matrices
Review: This is one of those books with back-cover reviews that rave about the writing without really mentioning the plot or what the book may be about, preferring instead to comfort themselves with "His prose soars like angels," "I am reading stars," "Buoyant writing from an impressive source of literary warmth," or other such noncommital comments. All such ramblings are accurate, and well-deserved, but they may give the impression that the actual content of the book pales in comparison to the linguistic pyrotechnics to which the author may devote himself.I take "pen" to the proverbial paper to inform the browsing potential reader that, beyond all the writing skill (for which alone this book is probably worth reading), Powers' work also presents an intriguing take on the relationship between words and the world from which they stem. Questions about the limitations of one describing the other have been present for millennia, as Aristotle touched on in his "Politics" in the midst of ordering various systems of rule; Powers adds the twist of a thinker (in this case, a somewhat "humanized" computer) who has no real-world experience beyond those words contained in the books which have been read to it. This leads to a story which all but forces contemplation on themes ranging from the world/words relation to how we think to the sobering issue of what we, as humans blessed with life and experience, have done with our precious words. To find this in "pure philosophy" is always rewarding; encountering it in what is ostensibly a novel is rare indeed. A multifarious work with no dull facets to detract from the diamond that is the overall effect.
Rating:
Summary: I'm just finnishing this on books on tape. Makes you think..
Review: This one I believe is best listened to. There are a lot of deep thoughts and ideas that will make you think about how wonderfully complex we are made....I did loose the story line as he switched back and forth a time or to, but it was worth the effert to keep up.....
Rating:
Summary: A cerebral experience!
Review: Truly a thought provoking novel that leaves one with a feeling of exhiliration and desire for more of same. A great novel as we embark upon the millenium. I am presently reading "The Goldbug Variation" to replenish my thirst for the literary genius of Richard Powers, and I will read all his books, eventually.
Rating: 
Summary: Should've told one story, not two
Review: Very dissapointing. The premise, of creating a neural net that can pass a comprehensive English exam, is very clever, but the characters are little pieces of glib chatter, occasionally amusing, more often smarmy and annoying, and that love story, cold as ice. No one in this novel would be caught dead at the scene of an emotion. Clearly Powers is a smart guy, but the whole thing feels like a therapy-diary. File under "Coulda been a contenda."
Rating:
Summary: Another brilliant book from Richard Powers
Review: What can I say? Powers has the most amazing knack for weaving multiple threads around the core of scientific notion while simultaneously creating rich, deep characters. In Galatea 2.2, he adresses artificial intelligence, love, the Frankenstein story and individual growth and maturation. The protagonist is a writer who gave up an early career in physics and finds himself nominally a writer-in-residence at his old alma mater. Blocked in his writing, preoccupied by thoughts of a former lover he met there, he wanders around the university wondering what will become of his life. A seemingly chance encounter with a bitter and sardonic scientist draws him into a bottom-up artificial intelligence experieemnt that is not entirely what it seems. On its face, the project is the answer to a challange to create a progam that can pass a sort of comp lit Turning test; the real experiment is far more subtle, and as it turns out, has a more surprising result than any of the experimenters forsee. As the program grows and develops, various incarnations of the program are referred to as A, B, C and so forth. But Powers muddies the waters by referring to many of the important players in the story by letters, too; there is U, the city he returns to; B, the city he ran off to, C, the woman he once loved, and so forth. The reader often has stop and consider whether the author is talking about a person, a place, or an incarnation of the program. It's brilliant, deep, moving and as with all Power's books, the science is pretty accurate, too.
Rating:
Summary: "Humanist creates perfect mate in cybernetic think tank."
Review: What is intelligence? What is love? What is inspiration? What is it to be human? How do we learn? What ought to be taught? MacArthur Fondation scholar Richard Powers toys with these unanswerable questions as he tells a modern version of the Pygmalion myth. Instead of marble, Powers constructs his ideal companion from cybernetic materials, the western canon, snippets of Mozart, the nightly news, and finally his own bittersweet experiences. His own retrograde love story is as suspenseful as Powers's race to complete "Helen," the robot who can beat out a bright English grad student on her masters' comprehensives. A great thinky read
Rating: 
Summary: Memory and Technology
Review: When I first picked up Richard Powers' novel Galatea 2.2, I knew little about the author or the work itself. What I did know was that Powers was supposedly a "genius" author whose works would help judge our era. What I found while reading the novel was that all the hype was true. Although his prose is at times thick, it is always beautiful and well crafted. Readers should have little trouble with the non-linear, interwoven plots. Likewise, I really enjoyed his typically Russian use of simple pseudonyms for the names of people and places. While the book deals with technology and is a few years old, the information is only theoretical and does not feel dated. I had never felt such sadness for the end of a computer program as I did when I finished this book. Overall, I would highly recommend this work. I look forward to reading more Richard Powers in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Powers' weakest novel.
Review: While I respect Powers, and appreciate the rest of his work, I simply don't understand the appeal of this novel. The fictionalized autobiographical narration gives the book a smug sense of smarminess; the "I Richard Powers went forth," factor. First person is a powerful tool, which Powers abuses, using to no good effect in Galatea 2.2. For an exploration how first person narration can be used to powerful and disturbing effect see Gass' latest, The Tunnel -- by comparison Powers sounds trite. The smarminess is compounded by intertextual references that seem to be limited off the cuff dialogue, giving the characters a sense of overbearing pedantry that is unflattering, and doesn't remotely suit them. And, the technology represented is not nearly as riviting as it may have been when Powers first penned this piece. Limp digressions about the new world of the internet and the folks who populate it are laughably quaint just a few short years after the book's publication. All in all the book just seems light to me. Too ephemeral to stand up to the measure of his other works.
Rating:
Summary: Moving and compelling, but in the end, hollow
Review: While I was reading Galatea, I was entranced. The book tells two stories side by side. In one, the protagonist (not coincidentally also named Richard Powers) is a washed-up author enlisted by a computational neuroscientist to train a artifical neural net to parse, understand, and comment on English literature. The others is Powers' fictionalized autobiography, describing his ultimately failed 10-year relationship with the unnamed woman C. Both stories are beautiful. They warn you in advance they are going to break your heart, but they proceed to do so with such an honest approach to human inadequacy and regret that although the end is filled with sentiment, it has earned the right to that sentiment. There was not a character in the book I did not love. In the science fiction storyline, Powers uses a highly novel approach to the genre: actually writing about science and scientists. The story of discovery proceeds incrementally through several tweaks and re-implementations of the developing artificial intelligence. It is one of the few novels I have read that adequately captures the feeling of doing research in a highly speculative field, but does so without becoming tedious. Similarly, the scientists Powers works with have fully developed lives outside their research. One gets the feeling that these are real people that you would like to know yourself, people with lives that the book only scratches the surface of. The autobiography is also well-conducted, being about himself without being self-indulgent. From the beginning of his relationship with C., Powers simply expresses regret over his inability to be the person C. needed him to be at any given time until the assymetry of their relationship hollows it out and kills it. He often dwells on what he would have liked to have done at each step in its decay, and how far short his actual actions fell of those unvoiced desires. This part of the story is simply an honest look at the fear of living up to one's intentions and regret for having not done so. After I finished, though, I was unsatisfied. Each part of the book raises difficult, important issues: What does it mean to have consciousness? What is meaning, anyway? What role does literature have in the modern world? How can people let the ones they love know that? To what extent can we really know another human being? Is there hope for human civilization? Yet in each instance, Powers not only shies away from trying to answer, but refrains from even giving hope that an answer might exist. All he can say is that he would like to make some moving, profound statement, but is either powerless to act or inhibited from doing so. Though a pleasure to read, both for its wit and its heartbreaking honesty, in my final analysis, Galatea disappoints. This book is like a nervous suitor who stands on the doorstep of profundity, poises his knuckles to rap on the door, and then, after several long seconds of silence, walks away without having knocked.
Rating:
Summary: Moving and compelling, but in the end, hollow
Review: While I was reading Galatea, I was entranced. The book tells two stories side by side. In one, the protagonist (not coincidentally also named Richard Powers) is a washed-up author enlisted by a computational neuroscientist to train a artifical neural net to parse, understand, and comment on English literature. The others is Powers' fictionalized autobiography, describing his ultimately failed 10-year relationship with the unnamed woman C. Both stories are beautiful. They warn you in advance they are going to break your heart, but they proceed to do so with such an honest approach to human inadequacy and regret that although the end is filled with sentiment, it has earned the right to that sentiment. There was not a character in the book I did not love. In the science fiction storyline, Powers uses a highly novel approach to the genre: actually writing about science and scientists. The story of discovery proceeds incrementally through several tweaks and re-implementations of the developing artificial intelligence. It is one of the few novels I have read that adequately captures the feeling of doing research in a highly speculative field, but does so without becoming tedious. Similarly, the scientists Powers works with have fully developed lives outside their research. One gets the feeling that these are real people that you would like to know yourself, people with lives that the book only scratches the surface of. The autobiography is also well-conducted, being about himself without being self-indulgent. From the beginning of his relationship with C., Powers simply expresses regret over his inability to be the person C. needed him to be at any given time until the assymetry of their relationship hollows it out and kills it. He often dwells on what he would have liked to have done at each step in its decay, and how far short his actual actions fell of those unvoiced desires. This part of the story is simply an honest look at the fear of living up to one's intentions and regret for having not done so. After I finished, though, I was unsatisfied. Each part of the book raises difficult, important issues: What does it mean to have consciousness? What is meaning, anyway? What role does literature have in the modern world? How can people let the ones they love know that? To what extent can we really know another human being? Is there hope for human civilization? Yet in each instance, Powers not only shies away from trying to answer, but refrains from even giving hope that an answer might exist. All he can say is that he would like to make some moving, profound statement, but is either powerless to act or inhibited from doing so. Though a pleasure to read, both for its wit and its heartbreaking honesty, in my final analysis, Galatea disappoints. This book is like a nervous suitor who stands on the doorstep of profundity, poises his knuckles to rap on the door, and then, after several long seconds of silence, walks away without having knocked.
|
