Another absorbing and thought provoking novel, but perhaps not Powers at his absolute best. This one has two main strands which come together rather tenuously at the end. In one, a group of people come together in late 80s Seattle to work for a software giant on a ground-breaking virtual reality project. In the other an American hostage is held captive for many years in Beirut. There is plenty of recent history thrown into the mix, and as so often with Powers there are musical reference points t...

The next book in my challenge to read all the novels of Richard Powers this year was a challenge!He uses two parallel stories to investigate how we perceive and navigate reality, imagination, confinement, freedom and, as always, modern society. One of his stories is set on Puget Sound on the northwestern coast of Washington State. A collection of math geeks, coders and an artist are combining their talents in the late 1990s to create early, cutting edge virtual reality rooms. Funded by some dee

a) I've only read one Powers previously, The Gold Bug Variations. Which is better than the Hofstadter in some ways, others ways less so.b) I read The Gold Bug because it's in that photo I made of that list Moore made. The BIG one. The Encyclopedic one.c) I swore to Completionize every damn author in that photo (except Powers).d) Why? Well, because I just didn't think that Powers had that literary umph that all the others had. That rather radical orientation to questions and matters literary and

“What in all the world does a child have to be scared of? The old Persians, your people, called their walls daeza. Pairi meant anything that surrounds. See? Pairi daeza. You have a wall running all the way around you. That, my little Tai-Jan, is the source of Paradise.”Number 7 in my project to re-read, one per month, all of Powers’ novels, but this time in publication order.A couple of quick comments. Re-reading these books is proving to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding reading experi...

The third Richard Powers novel I've read this year. Not as great as Galatea 2.2 or Orfeo. I liked it despite some obvious faults. The two separate story strands don't quite gel, though each was good alone. And his metaphors are still remarkable and leftfield, but to someone a little less enamoured of the author's style, they might look overblown. They are little worlds unto themselves, part of that mindfulness his sentences have, often near-aphoristic, each like a moment one is inside: which I t...

If you are interested in virtual reality and the rigors of prolonged captivity (of an isolated kidnap victim) this is the perfect book for you. If it's just one or the other this book will likely suffice. Powers is not my kind of writers, the book has litle humor in it, is ultimately predictable (or to me it was), but it would be rude to deny his powers of insight and description. He's an excellent writer who I intend to read again.

There's something about Powers' "Plowing the Dark" that is both richly compelling and emotionally distant. Like geniuses of all eras, Powers can't help but keep his patrons at arm's length, if for no other reason than because his sumptuous prose lacks enough inlets for interpretation. This is, without a doubt, a brilliant book. But is it good?It could be argued that I'm simply not smart enough to get how good it really is, and I wouldn't debate that. I will say I'm smart enough to see what a lux...

A handful of nerds get together to create an immersive world of pure imagination that feels absolutely real. That may describe your last role-playing game experience with your friends, or the disparate group that is trying to create virtual reality technology more "real" than anyone has managed so far. The only problem? There are probably only two markets for something like this. One is the, er, adult industry (which never comes up, oddly enough) and the other is one you'll have to read the book...

Re-read. Orig. 2000-1.The kind of honest full meal of a book which reminds you that, while they've been delicious and possibly even unique, until now you've been eating bar snacks.Powers' affinity for language is my own. I respond to how he says things, whatever he's saying. The words he uses both surprise me and make utter sense at the same time. I do not expect every reader will feel a similar rapport, but I respond to it.I remembered very little of the details of this book from my first read

Full of beautifully written aphorisms about the digital era's connection with humanity via the story of a virtual reality design team working in the late 1980s. It's cleverly juxtaposed with a Beirut hostage's own inner flights of imagination to while away the horror of his captivity. However, this is a novel I admired but couldn't wholly enjoy. The two stories come together right at the end in a rather deus ex machina, magical realism way, which felt rather unearned for me. Plus I was bemused b...

I am presently in a read along of Richard Powers novels in publication order and what has most struck me is how complementary the works are. The more Powers I read the more fulfilled I feel, and the more I appreciate the author's work. This one has the usual dual plotlines with the first about a cast of characters engaged in developing a virtual reality experience based on the C.A.V.E. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...The second is fictional kidnapping in Beirut that has very loose simila...

Richard Powers has written some exceptional books but I just never could get into this one. It's about two very different stories that, sort of, converge at the end. The main story is about a group of programmers and an artist who are developing a room into a virtual reality and the other story is about a teacher in Lebanon who is being held captive by terrorists. Of the two narratives, the one about the teacher being held hostage was much more interesting, while the main story about the program...

For me, Richard Powers is an "opus author." By that I mean a contemporary author, who has published four or more books, all of which I've read, and many of which are among my favorites. Once hooked on such an author, I anxiously await his/her next book, buy it in hard cover, and read it very soon after it's published. I also tend to think of this author's work as a total -- each new book shedding light on the ones that have come before.His books often contain at least two intertwining stories --...

Here's a solid attempt at putting religion and technological capacity on even footing (not unlike Snow Crash). By religion I mean a general spirituality, though not general in the generic sense or in a way to mean a lesser sort of activity, but in the profound concurrence of humanity and those spiritual questions. The key to Plowing the Dark I suppose comes from equating the search for profound art or the mimicry thereof with the strength of human thought (an idea I approve). We're each of us in...

Plowing the Dark is a pair of novels set in the late 80s/early 90s- one about the creation of a virtual reality room, the other about a terrorist hostage held for years in a room. The two stories are intertwined but barely related, except for in a very heavy handed thematic way, and then in a pointless and unreal way at the end. For me this was one of the biggest flaws of the book. I kept hoping for some actual intertwining, but none came. My desire for the two plot lines to mix came from the di...

Powers is one of my favorite authors. His skill at blending science and fiction is unmatched. I can tell there are ideas here which he perfects in The Echo Maker, Orfeo, and The Overstory. I have professional experience with some of the technology he writes about and I found myself enjoying the accuracy of a team working for a company and all its quirks. These characters are relatable and their flaws are real and quirky. The pursuit of art and technology is something I continue to mull over. Rea...

At the turn of the tide – the late 80's and early 90's – as History may end, the world is on the verge of being changed, new fights begin and ancient wars remain. In the western Puget Sound, the Cavern–-a room that can become anything, is built by Virtual Reality researchers and disillisioned artists converted to the wonders of computer science; meanwhile in Beirut, an English teacher is held hostage. Two narrative threads that mirror one another until the distance vanishes and they merge in pur...

This has a seriously cool idea. That's part of why I'm being so harsh on the rating- I had such high expectations and it reached nearly none of them. So first- I didn't particularly like the writing. I found it for the most part dry and uninteresting. And I'm usually pretty open minded when it comes to writing techniques, but how hard would it have been to put in some quotation marks? And the characters: I just didn't care about Adie. Or Stevie. Or Tai whatever his name was. This book had the en...

A troubling novel, quite up to Powers' usual capacity for combining science and art, exciting wonder, and alluding to a multitude of precursors. I find the 'captive in Beirut' sequences ever harder to read, but I'm also ever more aware that the AI team in Seattle is equally captivated by the virtual world they are creating. Not all prisons are violent dungeons. The "magic realism" of the moment in which the otherwise separate (though thematically-linked) narratives overlap each other continues t...

Oh my GAWD I have been reading this book forever. It is fine. Better than fine -- I *think* it is good. The sections about the hostage were more compelling than those about the virtual reality chamber, mainly, I think, because the technologies of hostage-taking have changed so little in the 20 years since this book came out, and those of virtual reality have changed enormously. But the experience of reading this novel was like slowly wasting away in a shallow pit of quicksand. Plowing the Dark,