{"id":3272,"date":"2014-01-25T22:52:52","date_gmt":"2014-01-26T02:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/?p=3272"},"modified":"2014-01-25T22:52:52","modified_gmt":"2014-01-26T02:52:52","slug":"read-this-orfeo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2014\/01\/25\/read-this-orfeo\/","title":{"rendered":"Read This: <i>Orfeo<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/powers-orfeo.jpg\" alt=\"Richard Powers, Orfeo\" title=\"Richard Powers, Orfeo\" vspace=\"4\" width=\"150\" height=\"243\" align=\"right\" \/>I&#8217;m writing the occasional book review and literary feature for <i>The Daily Beast<\/i> now, and this weekend they published &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2014\/01\/25\/the-bioterrorist-who-loved-mahler.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Bioterrorist Who Loved Mahler<\/a>,&#8221; where I look at the new Richard Powers novel, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/partner\/29017\/biblio\/9780393240825\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Orfeo<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been a fan of Powers for nearly two decades, since my discovery of <i>Galatea 2.2<\/i> coincided with my initial fascination with the new-fangled Internet back in the mid-&#8217;90s, and I&#8217;ve written other articles about why <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/blogs\/2011\/04\/richard-powers-generosity\" target=\"_blank\">his previous novel <i>Generosity<\/i><\/a>, as well as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/blogs\/2011\/05\/genre-in-the-mainstream-richard-powers\" target=\"_blank\">several of the novels before that<\/a>, ought to be classified as science fiction. I feel the same way about <i>Orfeo<\/i> to some extent, although it&#8217;s also (I think) utterly within the realm of scientific plausibility based on contemporary technology. So maybe an apt comparison might be the most recent novels of William Gibson, although&#8212;even with a man-on-the-run premise&#8212;Powers is distinctly less action-oriented, more overtly geared towards immersive contemplative sequences.<\/p>\n<p>This was a fun review to write: I got to namecheck Milton Babbitt <i>and<\/i> Philip K. Dick, and how often does that opportunity present itself naturally, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m writing the occasional book review and literary feature for The Daily Beast now, and this weekend they published &#8220;The Bioterrorist Who Loved Mahler,&#8221; where I look at the new Richard Powers novel, Orfeo. I&#8217;ve been a fan of Powers for nearly two decades, since my discovery of Galatea 2.2 coincided with my initial fascination [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[726,725,73],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3275,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions\/3275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}