ガラテイア2.2 [単行本]

   本書の主人公「作家リチャード・パワーズ」は架空の人物。数年間の外国生活を終え帰国した彼は、超有名な巨大組織「高等科学研究センター」のアメリカ駐在人間性研究者としての職に就く。そこで彼が出会ったのは、ずけずけとものを言う神経学者フィリップ・レンツ。彼の研究はコンピュータベースの神経組織をもつ人工頭脳の開発だ。いつしか2人は協力しあい、奇妙だが実に野心的なプロジェクトに乗り出す。それは「人工頭脳に英文学を教え込み、難解な修士試験に合格させる」というものだった。

   プロジェクトが進むにつれ、彼らのつくり出した「子ども」はすさまじい勢いで情報を吸収、その興味はしだいに世俗的なことに向いてくる。じきに「子ども」は自分の名前や性別、人種、存在意義を教えてくれと言いはじめた。ところがその相手をするうちに、パワーズも自問自答をくり返すようになる。自分の職業選択は間違っていなかっただろうか、以前の教え子と長年にわたってうまくいかなかった理由は何か、なぜ「子ども」の競走相手に選ばれた修士候補生に強い執着を感じるのか…。それはパワーズにとってのたしかな「目覚め」だった。（Amazon.com） --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

Atlantic Books is proud to be publishing Richard Powers' backlist titles, re-jacketed in paperback. "Galatea 2.2" is a dazzling novel of ideas, that interrogates why we make the choices we do, and what constitutes the human soul. After many years of living abroad, a young writer returns to the United States to take up the position of Humanist-in-Residence at the Centre for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he encounters Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent on using computers to model the human brain. Lentz involves the writer in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net by reading a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the machine grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own age, sex, race, and reason for existing... --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

リチャード、と彼女はささやいた。彼女の名前はヘレン、最新型の人口知能―『舞踏会へ向かう三人の農夫』の天才作家が描く新世紀の恋愛小説。

かつての母校である大学に戻ってきたリチャードは、レンツ博士とチームを組み、人工知能マシンのヘレンのトレーニングに没頭する。やがて、言葉と人間世界のさまざまな事物を理解していったヘレンは…。新世紀の恋愛小説。

Cognitive neurologist and well-known writer team up to produce a machine that can pass a comprehensive exam in English literature, with predictably unpredictable results. Like The Gold Bug Variations, this is another of Powers' wild, unforgettable novels encompassing science, philosophy, and the frailty of mankind.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

Powers, in his mid-30s and with four well-received books under his belt (Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance; The Gold Bug Variations; etc.), is among our most prodigious young novelists, and without a doubt our most cerebral. He seems bent on proving the novel to be a form capable of housing all manner of human thought and expression: art, music, genetic theory, linguistics and philosophy. In Galatea 2.2, Powers, known as an extremely private person, is writing about himself?Richard Powers, the cerebral author of four novels?in a most intimate fashion, detailing his loves, passions and failings. His objective, however, is nothing so mundane as self-portraiture. Typically, he has a bigger idea: in exploring the nature of consciousness, he is trying to build a conscious novel in much the same way that the novel's fictional Powers is trying to spark consciousness in a university computer. The result is a kind of double simulation of intelligence that is breathtakingly elegant. Powers the character, returns to a Midwestern university with a huge computer science department, after several years in Holland, where he has left behind the love of his life, who saw him through the first four books. As a visiting writer, his job is to bombard a computer network, which he comes to call Helen, with literature, music and conversation so that it will recognize beauty in some neuronal simulation, and therefore become conscious of it. Meanwhile, Powers reveals his life, including his career as a novelist (down to the mentioning of a rare picture of him in a PW interview four years ago). It's as if both Helen and the novel itself can be programmed into self-consciousness. In the course of tutoring Helen to be able to successfully interpret a piece of text in a manner indistinguishable from a human, Powers and Helen form an enchanting though eerie bond: she has "read" all his books; he knows her circuitry. Still, there remain mysteries that can't be accounted for by electron paths, in Helen's case, or by a theory of the self, in Powers's case. In the end, Powers is left with the conviction he started with: that intelligence is irreducible; it cannot be known. Although parts of the book seem hastily done or weakly felt (the university folk are rather two-dimensional, and Powers's crush on a rail-thin, obnoxious grad student is simply unaccountable), these are minor flaws in an otherwise ingenious performance.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

After several years abroad, novelist Richard Powers -- the fictional protagonist of the story -- returns to America and accepts the position of Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous and prestigious Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There, he meets Philip Lentz, an outspoken neurologist intent on creating a model of the human brain with computer-based neural networks, and together they embark on an outlandishly ambitious project -- to teach the neural net English literature so that it can pass a difficult master's exam.

As their experiment progresses, their brain-child absorbs more and more information, gradually becoming increasingly worldly. Soon, it demands to know its name, sex, race and reason for existing. Meanwhile, this literary crash course sparks in Powers a parallel awakening, and he begins a reconsideration of his chosen profession, his decade-long, failed relationship with a former pupil and his obsession with the master's candidate against whom his cybernetic pupil is slated to compete.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

"'An extraordinary and brilliant novel of ideas.' Time Out 'Nothing less than brilliant' John Updike 'If Powers were an American writer of the nineteenth century...he'd probably be the Herman Melville of Moby Dick. His picture is that big.' Margaret Atwood, New York Review of Books 'Sharply written and extremely clever.' D. J. Taylor, Mail on Sunday" --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。

Richard Powers is a MacArthur Fellow. He lives in Urbana, Illinois.
--このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。

パワーズ,リチャード
1975年アメリカ合衆国イリノイ州エヴァンストンに生まれる。11歳から16歳までバンコクに住み、のちアメリカに戻ってイリノイ大学で物理学を学ぶが、やがて文転し、同大で修士号を取得。80年代末から90年代初頭オランダに住み、現在はイリノイ州在住

若島 正
1952年、京都市生まれ。英米文学専攻。1975年、京都大学理学部卒業。1980年、同文学部卒業。1982年、同大学院文学研究科修士課程修了。現在、京都大学大学院文学研究科教授(本データはこの書籍が刊行された当時に掲載されていたものです)