Preview of Galatea 2.2 Summary:

Galatea 2.2 focuses on the ability of human beings to create. In this metafictional, postmodern novel, Powers discusses in some depth his own literary creations, offering valuable insights into all of his previous novels and how they came about. Juxtaposed to these intense and insightful discussions is the creation by the fictional Powers and his collaborator, Dr. Philip Lentz, of an almost sentient machine, whose human characteristics entice Powers but somewhat bewilder Lentz, who actually wants to destroy their creation by taking it apart.

In conventional earlier fiction, basic themes grew out of the traditional man-against-man or man-against-nature conflicts. The basic tensions in the Lentz-Powers portion of this book is a man-against-machine conflict whose resolution leads to a reconsideration of what Robert E. Sherwood, in his first play, The Road to Rome (1927), called "the human equation." Powers also is concerned with the science-humanities dichotomy.

In the love story that...