Galatea 2.2

Powers writes a very smart story, full of neuroscience and computer science, but also poetic and touching. It's the story of the evolution of an artificial intelligence, that grows up by having an author - who lost the joy in writing - read the old masters to it. The conclusion might have been a too neatly wrapped up parable, but it makes a beautiful ending nevertheless.

And obviously - the author in the story being a version of Power himself - it makes you wonder which parts of the tale are autobiographical and which made-up. Also, what a clever way for an author to advertise his other books. Sneaky! (and i do want to read more now)

Previous rating: 4 stars lol

might review this more later but on reread i am very underwhelmed by angsty professor/writer guy trying to work out his philosophical/existential questions about the nature of consciousness by dating one of his students, paternalistically emotionally abusing her, and then inventing an (of course female) AI in order to try to work out said big existential issues like “what is consciousness” and “what is love” and “why do i treat everyone in my life like an object” even though this was all kind of tongue-in-cheek and/or self-referential

i don't know it's just very LITERARY