Dec 18, 2009

Galatea 2.2 | Social Concerns

As in The Gold Bug Variations (1991), Powers is vitally concerned in Galatea 2.2 with the place of science in modern society and with its connection to humans and their interrelationships. As in the classical story in which Pygmalion creates a statue so beautiful that he prays it might come to life, a wish granted by Venus, goddess of love, Richard Powers and Dr. Philip Lentz are creating something inanimate that becomes sufficiently real as to verge on developing human emotions, much as the robots did in Karel and Josef Capek's R. U. R. (1921; English translation...