Galatea 2.2, by Richard PowersRead about the other entries on the list.
Richard Powers’s 1995 novel is a retelling of the Pygmalion myth, about an artist falling in love with a statue he created, and the statue coming to life due to his ardor. In Galatea 2.2, a writer suffering from writer’s block returns to his alma mater for a sabbatical year. There, he’s tasked with teaching an AI named Helen the Western Canon, in the hopes that she can pass a literary Turing test of sorts: can a computer produce literary analysis that is indistinguishable from a human’s? Interwoven with his teaching of Helen are memories of a love affair he had with a woman he calls C. While he and Helen are never quite in a love affair themselves, the depth and complexity of their emotions, and the ways they are contrasted with his volatile relationship with C, make Galatea 2.2 a fascinating study in art and love: how much do we mold and change our lovers, and ourselves, through the act of love?
--Marshal Zeringue
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