Speculative Fiction Book Club: Galatea 2.2

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Program Type:

Book Club, Authors & Books

Age Group:

Adult
Please note you are looking at an event that has already happened.

Program Description

Details

The library's Speculative Fiction Book Club meets the final Tuesday each month at 7 PM. All are welcome.

Whenever possible, copies of each month's title will be available for checkout with a library card.

No registration required.

This book club is currently offered online. Click this link to connect via Zoom. Password: 3GWdHC

For more book groups, visit cityofportsmouth.com/library/book-discussion-groups.

Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

After four novels and several years living abroad, the fictional protagonist of Galatea 2.2—Richard Powers—returns to the United States as Humanist-in-Residence at the enormous Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences. There he runs afoul of Philip Lentz, an outspoken cognitive neurologist intent upon modeling the human brain by means of computer-based neural networks. Lentz involves Powers in an outlandish and irresistible project: to train a neural net on a canonical list of Great Books. Through repeated tutorials, the device grows gradually more worldly, until it demands to know its own name, sex, race, and reason for existing.

More Info

This event will be held online on the Zoom platform. Questions or trouble connecting? Visit cityofportsmouth.com/library/news/onlineprograms.