Powers is never afraid to tackle material that others might deem inauspicious. The Gold Bug Variations compared the discovery of DNA's double helix and the music of Bach. Gain used the details of soap manufacturing to forge a story of capitalism and cancer. Galatea 2.2 grappled with artificial intelligence. And now Plowing the Dark takes place in a virtual-reality lab.
Scientific subjects are popular among postmodern literary types, who often get the details wrong.
Powers, by contrast, appears to possess genuine scientific expertise. The question posed by his work is how, and whether, that delicate and vigorous genre, the novel, can survive such an inundation. Powers has written a kind of historical novel of the late 1980s. It alternates between two stories, unrelated but characteristic of the decade. In Seattle, computer geeks and disillusioned artists construct a virtual-reality laboratory.