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 1923).

The point is inevitably reached in the novel when Lentz wants to take the near-human computer apart to analyze what he and Powers have achieved. At this point, Powers resists, likening such an action to lobotomizing a human. In the impassioned exchanges relating to this conflict, the humanist is pitted against the...