Reviewed by Kimbol D. Soques
August, 1998
Richard Powers* , the protagonist of this roman-a-clef, is a successful writer of award-winning books who is finishing up his fourth book and the remains of his marriage. He has come back to his alma mater to take visitor’s post with their newly-funded "Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences." As the English Department’s liaison with the hard sciences, he is teased by Philip Lentz, a researcher in cognitive science, as being the Center’s "token humanist." Indeed, some of the AI research staff enlist him in a bet over whether or not artificial intelligence is currently possible. The proof is to be a sort of Turing test: a
neural network’s exegesis upon any passage from the university’s English literature book list compared against a bona fide University graduate student. Richard’s job is to teach the network what it needs to know to pass. He signs on with Lentz, the rationalist, and the ten-month race is on. The education of the neural net – eventually named Helen -- provides the seed (or the excuse) for Power’s exploration of the nature of consciousness, of intelligence, of an individual’s ability to know and understand another soul.It did not follow, from the questions Helen asked, that she was conscious. An algorithm for turning statements into reasonable questions need know nothing about that those statements said or the sense they manipulated to say it. …It occurred to me: awareness no more permitted its own description than life allowed you a seat at your own funeral. … Any rendition we might make of consciousness would arise from it, and was thus about as reliable as the accursed serving as sole witness for the prosecution. [217-218]
In and around Richard’s efforts to teach the different net implementations (called Imps, as in "Imp B") Powers weaves Richard’s personal history as he ruminates on his life, his marriage, and his writing. As the Imps grow and gain ability, so Richard re-integrates his past and grows to meet his future. Each Imp contains the previous incarnation, which makes an interesting parallel to Richard’s descriptions of the writing of each of his books, each of which is another roman-a-clef. At Imp G.2, the network begins to ask "human-like" questions, such as "Am I a boy or a girl?", and Helen arrives. While Powers never has his characters fully leap into anthropomorphizing Helen, he gives her a sufficiently affecting character that the reader begins to empathize with her much as she does with the other characters in the book.
Galatea 2.2 definitely falls in the "strong AI" camp, since Helen takes on human-like characteristics by the end of the novel. While the book uses AI more as a vehicle for philosophizing, Powers presents a very readable explanation of the current state of AI. Computer cognition research, neural-net engineering, visualization and signal processing all are concisely clear via Richard’s efforts to come up to speed on the project. This is helpful for readers unfamiliar with the arena, though Powers assumes the reader has the same level of comfort with computers as does Richard. According one of the
informal reviews, the technical details are imprecise, but since the narrator is a writer, not an AI researcher, I do not see this as a limitation.Indeed, this seems to me a strength, as the science is digested in a way that makes it appealing to a non-scientific reader. This brings a relatively arcane area of research into focus, and demonstrates what all the fuss is about. In a time when the NSF is funding research into imprinting kindergartners with a desire to fund "big science," any effort to crack the AI mystique is welcome. However, the quasi-autobiographical nature of the roman-a-clef may frustrate more literal-minded readers, as the parallels seem entirely too close to Powers’ own life to be certain what is really fiction. I myself still wonder if Helen ever really existed.
I found this novel interesting and intensely engaging. While it has a slightly academic feel due to the depth of the allusions to an impressively wide array of fields over and above AI research, the pace of the book and Powers’ erudite writing kept me intrigued in those parts where I wasn’t emotionally involved. The climax and denouement were so gripping that for the last hundred pages I stayed up to finish the book. Michiko Kakutani’s† characterization as "a cerebral thriller" is perfect -- this is a thinking person’s brain candy.
Other Resources:
Powers has been a finalist for several book awards for four of his five published novels. (
This link provides a list of nominees for major American fiction awards between 1970 and 1996.) A MacArthur grant recipient, he has a quite extensive bibliography in addition to his novels. I’ve also included a link to a lovely painting of Galatea, though it has little bearing on the novel or its contents.The book has been extensively reviewed, with most reviews being favorable. (
Reviews Page) If the reviews aren’t convincing enough, there’s an interesting site that takes a passage about the World-Wide Web and "webs" it (Galatea 2.2 (Webbed)). It will give you a good feel for Powers’ writing style.† Kakutani's quote is excerpted on the cover of the paperback edition of the novel.