InThe Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers is fundamentally concerned with the place of science in contemporary society and with interconnections between science and other disciplines. The novel explores in flashbacks the life of Stuart Ressler, whose death is the pretext for much of the novel. Ressler, a promising researcher on the University of Illinois team that worked on discovering the genetic code of the DNA molecule, is seen twenty-five years after he left Illinois.

Having worked with something as mysterious and eerie as DNA, Ressler questions whether humans, who are products of DNA, can ever truly understand it. Having achieved sufficient celebrity to have once had his picture in Life magazine, Ressler now works nights as a computer hacker. He lives the most minimal of existences, on the surface a drop-out from society, but Powers makes no value judgments about this.

Rather, he shows that Ressler...