“How Treating Robots Like Children Is Changing A.I.,” by Jacob Brogan, Slate, September 4, 2015. This article highlights the work of University of California–Berkeley’s artificial intelligence researcher Pieter Abbeel. In his lab, robots are educated like children. Galatea 2.2 is cited as an early example of this concept. “Powers’ novel may clarify the scope of projects like Abbeel’s. … Powers’ novel remains a meaningful reminder that artificial intelligence will probably never correspond to human intelligence.”
“11 Musical Novels that Hit All the Right Notes,” a list including Orfeo by Emma Volk, Off the Shelf, September 1, 2015. “This creative and cerebral novel reaches a soaring crescendo when the musical fugitive dreams up a plan to turn his collision with the security state into a transformative work of art.”
“10 Books to Keep When You Sell Everything and Build a Tiny House,” by Heidi Fiedler, B&N Reads, July 14, 2015. “A book about the place where science and music intersect. I dare you not to talk about language, genetics, and honest-to-goodness themes after you read it! A must-have for the tiny house that has everything you need, and nothing more.”
“Summer reading: popular science and ‘lab lit’: An idiosyncratic selection of science-themed books for the summer,” Nature, June 30, 2105. The Nature Methods editorial office recommends Orfeo and Generosity: An Enhancement among their books to enjoy this summer.
“Dangerous Sounds,” review of Orfeo by Lara Buxbaum, Aerodrome, March 2015.
The careful structuring of the novel shows Powers’s compositional genius…. My copy of the book is filled with post-it notes where I’ve marked lines which seemed to sing, awed by Powers’s mastery at the level of the sentence….