Powers, Richard. Galatea 2.2 Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995.
If you know the story of Pygmalion than you will recognize Galatea 2.2 as its clever reinterpretation.
Interestingly enough, Galatea 2.2‘s fictional protagonist is named Richard Powers and is a writer, using the names of books he has written like Gold Bug and Prisoner’s Dilemma. Richard is also a Humanist-in-Residence at an unnamed research facility. His failed relationship with a former student is woven in with his present day life and colors his thinking on the daily. During a year-long residency, he and a colleague embark on building a thinking machine. With his long term relationship in shambles and writer’s block stalking him daily, training a neural network seems like the perfect diversion. As an aside, why anyone would want to create a computer that can pass a comprehensive exam in English literature is beyond me. The whole story reminded me of the movie Short Circuit when #5 learned to think for himself. There is always a vector involved somewhere.
Quote I liked, “And chaos chose that moment to hit home” (p 3). I love the imagery. Can you just see chaos as a cat, perched on high, waiting for the perfect moment to attack?
As an aside, could Powers be talking about someone else when he wrote the line, “He looked as though he took tanning cream orally” (p 16)? <Insert thinking emoji here.>
Here’s another quote I loved, “No one knows how full my hands were, or care” (p 171).
Author fact: I am reading a total of nine books by Powers. Two of them he mentions in Galatea 2.2: Prisoner’s Dilemma and Gold Bug Variations.
Playlist: “You’re the Top”, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, “Three Blind Mice”, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Sings John Philip Sousa, Traverner’s Western Wynde Mass, “Amazing Grace”, Diana Ross, Purcel’s “Evening Hymn”, Alfonso Ferrabosco, and “Old Black Joe”.
Writing in book on pages 4, 11, 30, 31, 63, 79, 171, 188, 270, 279.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Mechanical Men, Robots, Automatons, and Deep Blue” (p 150) and again in the chapter called “Richard Powers: Too Good To Miss” (p 191).
~*LunaSea*~ 