Reviews for Galatea 2.2

The average rating for Galatea 2.2 based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-05 00:00:00 Majd Abboud Galatea 2.2 is a brilliant novel by brainy Richard Powers that's an update on the classical Pygmalion tale of bringing a man-made work alive - in Ovid, a sculptor animates his beautiful female statue; in this novel, main character Richard Powers (modeled very much after the author himself) and his fellow researcher and cognitive neuroscience genius, a fifty-something gent by the name of Philip Lentz, design and instruct Helen, a neural net, to emulate human thought and speech. Author Richard Powers is a seasoned veteran at writing long, erudite, intellectual novels - prior to Galatea 2.2 published in 1995, he counted four doorstop novels to his credit, most notably The Gold Bug Variations which interlaces the discovery of the chemistry behind DNA with Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations played on harpsichord. And just for good measure, as an added conceptual layer, our author from America's Midwest throws in references to Edgar Allan Poe's tale, The Gold Bug. I bet Mary Higgins Clark or James Patterson never thought of writing such a novel. Just in case you think Galatea 2.2 sounds like nothing but the heady stuff, let me quickly point out narrator Richard Powers (again, so much like the author) includes additional storylines: his recent breakup and past years with his flame, a gal he calls C.; his past relationship with his now dead father; friendship with his past mentor, Professor Taylor, who persuaded him back when he was an undergrad to switch from physics to literature; his current time at U (University of Illinois) where he deals not only with Lentz but also comes in contact with other academic types, two delightful youngish ladies in particular; and last but hardly least, the ongoing saga of his life as a novelist and lover of literature. The opening pages set the stage: On the strength of having past affiliation with the university (undergrad, grad student, English instructor) and having published well received literary novels, Richard Powers, age thirty-five, is granted a year's appointment, official title "Visitor," at the massive Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences at U. (RP has this thing about calling people, cities and schools by their first initial). Richard takes up residence solo since he has had his breakup with C. and pedals on a second-hand bike to his office at the center where he spends hours and hours not writing his next novel (he's in a bit of a writing funk at the moment) but exploring that newest of technological marvels (it's early 1990s), the internet. It isn't long before Richard rubs elbows with a group of researchers at the local watering hole and is asked to join computer wiz Philip Lenz who is challenged by his PhD buddies to develop a computer program in ten months capable of displaying reading comprehension enough to surpass your average human grad student on the English Department's Master's Comprehensive Exam. Not exactly brimming over with literary inspiration at the moment, Richard agrees to team up with Lentz. Now the fun (or, at least, the high-grade thinking) begins both for Richard and for the reader since not only does exploring the domain where concepts, literacy and literature interface with computer technology provide Richard with a wide platform to delve into his background and understanding of such specialties as cognitive neuroscience, computer programing and language (both human and computer simulated), but he has ongoing interactions with wizmaster Lentz. Ah, Philip Lentz. The ultimate bald, overweight, oddball, multiple PhD egghead nerd wearing his coke bottle glasses and spouting out platitudes and judgments on every conceivable field, from neurology, networks and computer engineering to linguistics, literature and music. Occasionally bordering on mellow but usually acerbic, sarcastic, cutting, stinging, sardonic, ironic or some combination of the above, by this reviewer's reckoning, in addition to Richard, Philip Lentz is the human star of this Galatea 2.2 show. Here's Richard mulling over Lentz's radical brainchild: Connectionism: "The new field's heat generated its inevitable controversy. I sensed a defensive tone to many of Lentz's publications. Both the neural physiologists and the algorithmic formalists scoffed at connectionism. Granted, neural networks performed slick behaviors. But these were tricks, the opposition said. Novelties. Fancy pattern recognition. Simulacra without any legitimate, neurological analog. Whatever nets produced, it wasn't thought. No even close, talk not of the cigar." The above quote also serves as an example of Richard Powers' brain power (both author and main character). And when Richard interacts with Helen, the synapses in the gray matter really start to fire off. Oh, yes, Richard and Helen make quite the pair. We watch as Richard brings Helen to life at first as a computer program and then something either approaching or replicating a fully human mind, not to mention conscious awareness (I wouldn't want to say anything more specific so as to spoil). Recall back there I listed several other storylines such as Richard's relationship with C., his father, his mentor and his being a novelist. The powerful, heartfelt emotions Richard experiences in these other non-technical dimensions of his past and present exert their influence on his dealing with Helen. And his speaking and listening to Helen (Lentz rigs the technology where Richard and only Richard can carry on 2001 Space Odyssey HAL-like conversations with Helen), in turn, play their part in Richard's sorting out his life, a feedback loop running from head to heart, from heart to head. In the end, Galatea 2.2 is a deeply moving story, one where emotions and feelings meet thinking and reflection, mostly for Richard but also, curiously enough, for that oddest of oddballs, Philip Lentz. And a piece of good news: even for non-science, non-computer types such as myself, this Richard Powers novel is accessible, making for an enjoyable, compelling read. What an accomplishment from one super-smart author. And Richard's numerous metaphors and turn of phrase sparkle, as per: "I had nothing left in me but the autobiography I'd refused from the start even to think about. My life threatened to grow as useless as a three-month-old computer magazine." "The maze performed as one immense, incalculable net. It only felt like countless smaller nets strung together because of differences in connection density. Like a condensing universe, it clustered into dense cores held together by sparser filaments - stars calling planets calling moons." "We could eliminate death. That was the long-term idea. We might freeze the temperament of our choice. Suspend it painlessly above experience. Hold it forever at twenty-two." "But I had never once put fingers to keys for anything but love. I had written a book about lost children because I had lost my own child and wanted it back. More than I wanted anything in life, except to write." American author Richard Powers, born 1957 "I meant to reverse-engineer experience. Mind can send signals back across its net, from output to in. An image that arrived through light's portal and lit up the retinoptic map on its way to long-term storage could counterflow. Sight also bucked the tide, returned from nothing to project itself on back-of-lid backness. This special showing required just a bed on the floor of an otherwise empty room, the place all novelists end up. Only, I had ended up there too soon." - Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2

Review # 2 was written on 2010-11-02 00:00:00 Matt Rifley [Original review, Nov 16 2010] People see different things in this unusual book. Let me start with the undisputed facts. The novel is written by Richard Powers, and its narrator is a character also called Richard Powers. The narrator and the author share a good deal of personal history. Among other things, they have both written three novels with the same titles and, as far as I can judge, similar content. They are both Americans who lived in Thailand when they were children, moved to Holland when they were adults, and learned to speak reasonably good Dutch. They both got their first degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, initially studying physics and then switching to literature. They both returned to Urbana-Champaign when they were around 35 to take up a post as Writer in Residence. There are other areas where I am pretty certain that the author and the narrator have had different experiences. In particular, the narrator, while he is Writer-in-Residence, becomes involved in a daring research project, whose goal is to create an artificially intelligent entity capable of passing a literature exam. The AI is well done. Powers has worked with software, knows a fair amount about it, and has familiarized himself with neural nets and other relevant background. He's very interested in the philosophical question of "grounding". How can a piece of software know what language means without experiencing the world directly though its senses? More generally, does the meaning of language derive from its connection to the world, or can one understand language in its own terms? In between the real and the imagined, there are things which may or may not reflect the author's personal history. In the story, "Powers" is in a state of near-suicidal depression after breaking up with the love of his life, a woman referred to only as C. The book alternates between the present, where Powers works on the AI project, and the past, where he remembers his life together with C. It's hard to be sure whether the relationship with C. really happened, but I'm inclined to believe it did, at least in some form. The analogy that occurs to me is with Lolita, one of my favourite books. When he wrote it, Nabokov had recently moved to the US. He was an immigrant whose command of English, though good, was by no means perfect. He was also unhealthily attracted to young girls. I know this is to some extent controversial, but the theme turns up in so many of Nabokov's books that I can't believe it didn't reflect something real; I'm pretty sure he never acted on his impulses. At any rate, Nabokov made the brilliant pragmatic decision to use the material he had available. He made Humbert Humbert another immigrant with a similar sexual fixation, I believe greatly exaggerating the side of his character which he was most frightened and ashamed of, and created a masterpiece. Similarly, I think Powers worked with the material he had - though it feels to me that he was closer to it, and the novel lacks the distance needed to be completely successful. By all accounts, Powers is a person who has spent his whole life living in a world of words. He's read obsessively since he was a small child, and he published three good novels before he was 35. The narrator of the book hardly experiences life directly at all, except though his relationship with C. When that relationship breaks down, he wonders if he has ever really understood her, or understood anything. Can you live just though language? The book is a dense web of allusions and quotations: every page is full of ones I recognise, and I'm sure I missed plenty. To me, Helen, the AI program, is standing in for Powers himself. Helen can only experience the world through language. Powers is good at showing us how language, and especially great literature, can open up new ways to see the world, but even more importantly he shows us just how much it misses. Words are a poor substitute for love. To me, and I see to many other readers, Helen is the most appealing character, and the one who redeems the book. She is just a piece of software, but she desperately wants to experience the world directly, through the senses she doesn't have, and escape the web of language; in the end, she helps the narrator reconnect to his life. Against all the odds, this friendship between a depressed workaholic and a machine ends up being a touching and uplifting story. _________________ [Update, Oct 15 2018] I was talking to someone today at a conference and noticed that he came from Urbana-Champaign. I mentioned that I had read a novel set there, and he immediately guessed it was this one. It turned out that he'd met Powers several times. I couldn't help asking if he knew which parts of the book were autobiographical. He laughed and said the author had gone to some lengths to leave that unclear. But on further questioning about the characters C and A, he relented and said that Powers had indeed got divorced shortly before he wrote Galatea. He didn't think A was based on any particular person, but was rather a composite of several different female grad students. The woman who had joined the conversation looked rather unhappy about this particular revelation, and I didn't find out any more.