Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful, even if a bit too much at times
Review: Why a 2? Because I felt that Powers spent waaay too much time on his past relationship with C. While it had relevance to the story, he could have gotten the gist across in fewer, shorter flashbacks. It seemed like so much filler. I did love, however, the take on Pygmalion. The parralells and other allusions made it a wonderful story. But brush up on your cognitive and physiological psychology before you attempt to tackle this book! A lot of big concepts and words get thrown around in the process of creating Helen. I admire the author for his extensive research on the subjects. Makes this old psych major pround! :)
Rating: 
Summary: Impressive novel yet somehow disappointing
Review: With this current novel, Powers has undertaken a theme which addresses the position of humanity in the information age. It is a modern-day "Frankenstein," but with love, instead of hate, as the binding force between creator and created. Although Powers has a command of the English language that is really astounding, his depiction of characters seems lacking at times. The figures in this novel often seem to have the exact same voice - they are all hip and ironic, possessing a flair for allusions to culture's produce. If only there would be a little variety! The computer mind that is created in the novel also becomes unbelievable - not that realism always needs to be adhered to, but the way that the computer almost immediately begins to express emotional states is simply not convincing. Yet "Galatea 2.2" is overall a provocative and entertaining book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pygmalion Meets Douglas Hofstadter!
Review: Without question, Richard Powers is my favorite living author - and reading this intricately crafted, Byzantine book only served to buttress my conviction that Fiction is yet endowed with the capacity to be a vital, compelling art form. Powers has an uncanny ability "to delight and instruct," and in Galatea this is evidenced by his musings on the moebius-twisted attempts of consciousness to unravel its own hidden workings (see pages 28, 218, and 276). He very effectively interweaves his Pygmalion story with a narrative built around an artificial intelligence (I'd wager that he's been greatly influenced by Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach - one of my personal favorites), and, as in Gold Bug Variations, populates his tale with complex, well-educated characters who lead ambiguous, interesting lives. In casting himself as the book's protagonist, Powers alternately comes across as a self-indulgent and a self-effacing writer; however, this works in giving the reader a glimpse into an Aphrodite-molded imagination. I read this novel after I read Gain, his latest, and was more impressed with Galatea's plot and characters. His trademark shimmering wordplay (I find it refreshing that he allows his readers to make their own associations, connections, and conclusions through this device) is in abundance here. All in all, a bracing read!
Rating: 
Summary: Astounding language, weak plot
Review: You won't find the word "Galatea" in this novel, nor any reference to the many versions of machines built. Why? Perhaps because the story ends with Helen, and Galatea would have come next, but the reader never sees her in the slice of time presented in the book.One can't help but wonder how autobiographical this novel really is, with stories upon stories of C., the protagonist's girlfriend, and references to his other novels, such as The Gold Bug Variations. This novel is really about the protagonist/author; about getting over his old love, about obsession, creation, and not having figured out what to do at the age of 36. Why do we read novels? Because they add to our lives. Novels that, having been read, pass for mere entertainment, can perhaps be banished to wasted time territory. There were moments in Galatea when I felt extreme pleasure, places where the language was acutely drawn out, sentences carefully crafted, with heavy, heavy doses of imagery. There are hundreds of erudite cultural references buried in the text - all the more fodder for the well read. At first, Powers' excessive use of similes bothered me. With time, either I grew used to them or their intensity subsided. But in the end, I felt a bit depressed, since the novel really amounts to a melancholic love story with a sad ending, as the protagonist still mulls over what really went wrong. There is no doubt that Powers is an extremely sensitive and intelligent writer. His insights are astonishing - riveting, even - and while it took me nearly 100 pages to begin enjoying the novel, from that point on I was savoring every line. Yet, towards the end, my eyelids began sagging under the weight of the repetitive, recurring plot line. I kept expecting a punch line, and more variations on the theme. It's as if Powers, in all his gloom, couldn't muster up the energy to twist the story around and give us something unforgivable.
Rating:
Summary: Finding the Person in the Fabrication
Review: _Galatea 2.2_ is about saving a novelist's career. That novelist is one Richard Powers who is down and out after the breakup of his long romance, and the critical reception to his rather bleak _Operation Wandering Soul_. But where _Soul_ never seems to find the humanity it seeks, the Richard Powers of this book (both the character, and the author) DO find it... In a computer. Interestingly, Powers is able to show us that his "human" characters are all fabrications presented by the persons (the stuck up professor with the wife with mental problems; a secret affair between collegues, etc) including HIMSELF, who is presented as real, but the book is still considered fiction... In the midst of all this is Imp H, or Helen, as she comes to be called, a computer whose task is to pass the masters level literary exam, but who discovers an identity and the world. Powers examines himself, his illusions, and asks us to look at ours. Powerful, passionate, and strangely optimistic. One only wonders where Powers will go to next.
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