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The Gold Bug Variations

4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 · rating details · 805 ratings · 85 reviews

A national bestseller, voted by "Time" as the #1 novel of 1991, selected as one of the "Best Books of 1991" by "Publishers Weekly," and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award--a magnificent story that probes the meaning of love, science, music, and art, by the brilliant author of "Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance."

Paperback, 640 pages

Published July 31st 1992 by Harper Perennial (first published January 1st 1991)

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Community Reviews

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Nov 01, 2007 Ben rated it 1 of 5 stars

Dear Richard Powers,

I'm sorry I gave up on your book about a third of the way into it. I don't normally do that. Even if I'm trapped in an airport newsstand without a book, and end up buying "The Hunt for Red October", or some Neil Gaiman jerk-off dorkfest, I'll usually see it through to the end out of what I can only guess to be some misplaced romantic loyalty to the printed word, or possibly a mild to medium case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. "The Gold Bug Variations" however, proved pain...more

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Jul 26, 2009 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, books-that-make-me-feel-dumb

It's been about five years since I read this book. It was so good, so smart and so well constructed that I haven't read another Richard Powers book since. I feel like his books need to be saved for just the right time, I don't know when that time is, but I'd always like to have another of his books to read for the first time waiting for me, sort of like Raymond Chandler or the last DFW stories I haven't read yet.

9 likes · like · see review

Dec 09, 2012 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: lifetime-favorites

A mid-50's scientist was on the verge of real discovery in the realms of DNA research, and nothing happened. Decades later a librarian wants to know why. Where'd he go? What happened?

If you liked Gravity's Rainbow you might want to give The Gold Bug Variations a look. It has perhaps not quite a Pynchonian level of technical discussion and detail, but a lot nonetheless; Power's voice is hard work, but after awhile I found it growing on me. Rich characterization, imagery, and arcane references abo...more

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Jun 16, 2007 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars

More people who love fiction need to discover Richard Powers. His work isn't the most poetic or character-driven, but they offer so much else. Gold Bug and Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance are among my favorite books (but avoid Operation Wandering Soul).

A story of two temporally separated yet linked couples (why do I love that gimmick so?), this novel is essentially about variations on themes, codes: in music, painting, computers, and the discovery of DNA. Cerebral and curious and charming....more

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Jun 05, 2008 Brayden rated it 2 of 5 stars

I didn't like this book. I'm surprised I didn't like it more because I loved the only other book I've read by Powers, The Echo Maker. Both deal with similar kinds of people. Powers is adept at getting inside the mind of the academic, which is probably because they, professors and other intellectual types, are the people Powers hangs out with. But this book lacked something that the Echo Maker didn't: mystery.

Yes, there is a literal mystery in the novel. Why did Stuart Ressler, one of the greates...more

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Feb 14, 2008 Manderson rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporaryfiction

I actually didn't finish this book. I got 1/3 of the way through it, when I suddenly realized that I didn't like any of the characters. This is a book about socially awkward and introverted people for whom mundane occurrences are wrought with brooding revelation and significance. It is well written, with prose that at times can be as disjointed and cryptic--yet feelingly flowing--as its subject matter. But this is a problem I have had with some other of the author's books (which I finished)--it'...more

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May 25, 2007 Nate marked it as to-read · review of another edition

If you don't get the title's allusive pun (to Robbins's Goldberg Variations), you won't get far into this long, densely textured, multi-referential, and brilliant novel. It demands that a reader make connections between such diversities as the genetic code and musical notation, Flemish art and biological nomenclature, the logic of computer systems and the Dewey decimal classification, cartography and chemistry. Making such connections--deciphering the encrypted messages of our world--is the grea...more

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Aug 05, 2007 Jen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, desert_island

Oh, how I loved this book when I first read it. I remember savoring every page and wanting to start over again as soon as I finished. It's on my "desert island" (most favorite/influential) list because it meant so much to me at a time in my life when everything was changing. I was a young adult who for the first time had figured out (some) of what I wanted to do with myself, and I was stretching myself in every way I could. It was a time of great growth, an exciting time, and this book will alwa...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Matthew added it · review of another edition

RLS CMW DJP RFP J?O CEP JJN PRG ZTS MCJ JEH BLM CRR PLC JCM MEP JNH JDM RBS J?H BJP PJP SCB TLC KES REP RCP DTH I?H CRB JSB SDG

As a preface to Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations, this codon-like string of letters not only mirrors the genetic sequencing found throughout the narrative; it also troubles the unsuspecting reader who engages Powers's novel for the first time. Is there a hidden, encoded message? If so, can it be deciphered using the coding techniques found throughout Gold Bug? Or...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Robert Wechsler rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: american-lit

Fascinating but flawed. Fortunately, the fascination overcame the flaws.

The major flaw is Powers' overwriting. He simply goes on and on, and repeats himself. This 637-page novel could have easily been no longer than 400 pages. You feel that after doing so much research for his novel, he wasn't going to hold back any of it. There is so much genetics that it overwhelms the metaphors.

What I enjoyed most about the novel is the intelligence. It make syou think, and about interesting things. The motiv...more

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Oct 26, 2011 Tim Dudek rated it 1 of 5 stars

I had not heard of Richard Power before I picked up a copy of The Goldbug Variations, so I didn't have much of a preconceived idea of what to expect. First thing I did was open up the book randomly to a few pages and read some sentences to get the authors general style. First I noticed the density of the style. I'm ok with that. I tend to like dense and even write that way some times. But then I noticed that as far as I could tell the sentences didn't really mean anything. Well they would probab...more I had not heard of Richard Power before I picked up a copy of The Goldbug Variations, so I didn't have much of a preconceived idea of what to expect. First thing I did was open up the book randomly to a few pages and read some sentences to get the authors general style. First I noticed the density of the style. I'm ok with that. I tend to like dense and even write that way some times. But then I noticed that as far as I could tell the sentences didn't really mean anything. Well they would probably mean something in context.
Right off the bat I must praise Richard Powers. He is brilliant. His mind grasps language structure, word choice, and metaphor in unique and deep ways. Several sentences evoked awe at his ability to craft them. I cannot but hope that someday I can posses some small measure of his skill.

Though he possesses an astounding ability at word craft, Richard Powers has written a bad book. Except for the crafting of individual sentences and word usage, he has failed in every facet of novel writing. To be honest even the writing mechanics themselves are flawed in several points.

Richard Powers seems to be confused that the point of writing is to communicate [I am aware of and embrace several other purposes for writing. But at its core writing is about communicating]. Reading this book one gets the impression that he thinks writing is to obfuscate and show off his brain. The style is dense with pretension and his attempts to foster wonder and beauty are stilted and mechanistic. From the very beginning he loves to tell us how someone's cells yearn for something or describe blushing as a long complex string of physiological details. It's as if he is a man who has lost all concept of how beauty actually feels. With his effuse mechanistic descriptions he has sapped all the beauty from the universe and then tries to put it back. He fails. This is a book utterly devoid of beauty or wonder, for Powers has reduced all transcendences to attempted mechanistic explanations.

Powers' density is weight without substance. The inane verbosity doesn't add beauty just more obscurity. Its like he is a stroke victim who thinks he has a very important message to get across. He tries multiple ways to express it. Pilling word upon word, unintelligible sound on sound, but after all the gasping and huffing, all the loud clamoring and he still has not said anything.

This leads to another alarming, if minor point. About five percent of the sentences in this book mean nothing. There is no way around this fact. You read the sentence, look for clues in the context, try alternate definitions and after all that work the sentence is gibberish. This annoyed me. Powers seems to think that because he is 'literary' he can write gibberish and we should conclude its brilliance. Well sorry, but to me gibberish is gibberish no matter how well it reads.

Most, but by no means all, of the obscurity occurs during the long pompous narrative sermons that fill the book. The book would be about three hundred pages shorter if he had cut out all the sections that prattle on and on in inane verbosity about evolution and music. Even during these tirades, he slips track into entire meaningless paragraphs. How aggravating I found these sections cannot be underestimated.

What plot exists is driven by a cast of incomprehensible characters. No actual people live, think, act, or talk like these people. And most nauseating, they all talk the exact same way. Every character speaks with Richard Powers' dense pompous verbiage. Conversations are filled with bizarre metaphors and over intelligent quips. On top of this, they act in completely unexpected ways incongruent with previous actions or statements about their character. People fall in and out of love without any rhyme or reason. An intrinsic character quality is suddenly mentioned after two hundred pages of interaction with that character. Interestingly that trait was absent or even contradicted for the previous actions and descriptions of the character.

Except for bits awe felt here or there for a particularly well-crafted sentence, this book is a thoroughly un-enjoyable read. You will be pulled through page after page not knowing what is being said and expecting that nothing has really been said. This book will not draw you into a higher appreciation of anything. If this book accomplishes anything, it will more likely confuse or depress. It will not change you. In many ways this book is similar to the piece of music off of which the title is based. They are both masterful in creation but devoid of any real heart or emotion. No one will be driven to new heights of passion through this or the Goldburg variations.(less)

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Sep 16, 2011 Glen Engel-Cox rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: keepers

It took me a long time to finish this book, mostly due to never being able to give it all of my attention, instead having to catch a chapter here and there when I could amongst all the moving plans, preparations, and actual occurrence. While reading it, I could not help myself from remarking to several people how it was the best science fiction book I had read in 10 years.

The book is two stories: the first is that of Jan O'Deigh, a reference librarian at a branch in New York City who finds herse...more It took me a long time to finish this book, mostly due to never being able to give it all of my attention, instead having to catch a chapter here and there when I could amongst all the moving plans, preparations, and actual occurrence. While reading it, I could not help myself from remarking to several people how it was the best science fiction book I had read in 10 years.

The book is two stories: the first is that of Jan O'Deigh, a reference librarian at a branch in New York City who finds herself caught up by Franklin Todd in discovering just who is this mysterious Dr. Stuart Ressler, whom Todd works with on the graveyard shift for a computer processing firm. The other story is that of Stuart Ressler, a young PhD who sets out in 1957 to crack the genetic code and falls in love with a member of his research team. The two stories are quickly revealed as love stories--but not just sexual love between the two couples, but an extended love of discovery, of knowledge, and of friendship.

"Science Fiction?" you ask. This sounds like one of those mainstream literature books that's all about adultery and real life. It all depends on how you define science fiction. I've been accused by Jill that I'm the worst hypocrite when it comes to defining science fiction by limited it to what I like. For example, I despise David Brin's The Postman so much that I refuse to call it science fiction. To me, The Postman is a warmed over western, and not even a very good western at that. I was not surprised that Kevin Costner wanted to film that book--its politically jingoistic nature and focus on the strong individual overcoming all was just the kind of role that he would have written for himself, and often does. The background to The Postman may imply science fiction for those who let anything about a possible future be defined as such, but I maintain that science fiction is fiction that contains a strong element of science to it. The Postman is a fantasy, albeit a depressing, end-of-the-world sort.

Which brings me back to the book at hand, which is so consumed with science that it nearly overloads the reader. The Gold Bug Variations is not set in the future, though, and that's why most people would question its SF credentials. Instead, it is set in the most recent past--the present of when it was published. A reader that comes to The Gold Bug Variations without a scientific background, or at least some basic knowledge of genetics, will soon find themselves drowning within the terms that infuse the book, but it works because the viewpoint character is a reference librarian who has fallen deeply for a geneticist. There are constant references to cracking the code of the central mystery, items occurring in genus and phyla.

Even beyond my personal definition of science fiction, it even matches that broader definition of SF as fiction about worlds that are not. In the end of this book, an action occurs using ATM and other financial devices that did not occur (and I question whether it could ever have occurred) in our world. For the book at hand, it is believable, a strong evidence for a writer creating a self-consistent world-view.

This is all beside the point that I really want to make, and that this is simply the best book I've read since I finished A.S. Byatt's Possession. I still remember the thrill of ending Byatt's novel, of the hair of my arms sticking up in a static reaction because of how everything in the book just came out "right." How I kept reading slower and slower, trying to make Byatt's world last just a moment longer, trying to delay arriving at that last word. Powers' novel affected me differently, but just as powerfully. I picked it up one night around 8pm. I was around page 400, I recall, and started reading, and kept reading, and continued reading. I knew it was getting late, but I could not stop; I needed to finish this book. I was propped up in bed, Jill fast asleep beside me as I sped through the pages. I had to know what happened to these people. As the end got nearer and nearer, tears rolled down my cheeks. I had gotten to know these people so well in 600+ pages that I was entirely sympathetic to their agony and joy. That's powerful stuff, folk.

I can not recommend this book too highly. It shares a lot of my feelings about literature--that it can be intellectually rewarding and emotive at the same time, that it need not be an adventure to be engaging, that it be about individuals and about the world. I need to find out if Powers' other novels achieve this same intensity, but I guess it will have to wait until I have the time to read the rest of Byatt's oeuvre as well.(less)

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Jun 14, 2012 Marne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mindwarps, love-stories, power-of-words, librarians, academia

I picked up this book after having just finished Cryptonomicon, not knowing anything about it except that it was another very long book that was supposed to be very good. Powers is a different kind of writer than Stephenson; while they both use scientific topics as the basis of their work, Powers also has a background in the humanities, which means he looks a little deeper under the surface of things and writes in a slightly more intellectual style.

The main character of this book is a librarian...more

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Oct 31, 2009 Virginia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Can't say I learned anything about dna or genetics and there is a lot of scientific lingo here. However. It is a real tour de force and I had to give it five stars. The structure of the Goldberg Variations is so wonderful as background. The last few chapters of the book really dissect the Bach piece and the writer demonstrates that he really does knoww his music. I have read a lot about the Goldberg Variations, spent a lot of time listening to Glenn Gould's two recordings of the work, read bios...more

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Sep 05, 2007 Julie Larson rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: nobody

Shelves: bookshelf

Overworked and overdone. Each sentence reads as though you were reading across two pages that were stuck together. There's no flow, no sense of context or storytelling at all, only a sense that the writer is trying to show off his ability to use a thesaurus. I can't get into this book. I don't think I'll be finishing it.

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Jun 01, 2010 Eric Kibler rated it 3 of 5 stars

The idea behind this book, that a love story could be woven around dissertations on genetic mapping and music, turns out to be less appealing than you'd think. (That is, you might think it appealing if you had a more-than-average intellectual bent). But the result is neither fish nor fowl.

I can see why those who praise it like it. It's ambitious as hell, and sometimes the metaphors and wordplay are very apt and clever. But the book assumes that you either are a novice when it comes to the more...more

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Aug 06, 2011 Alan added it · review of another edition

The Gold Bug Variations title is a mix of The Goldberg Variations and Poe's The Gold Bug. One is a lovely set of keyboard variations, the other is a mystery with the answer solved by cryptography. Combine the two concepts and then think about the beautiful variations of the double helix of DNA and the cryptographic solution to the problem of how do we get from a series of paired nucleotides to the beauty of life. Use that as a skeleton for two beautifully crafted love stories, one in the past an...more

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Sep 13, 2009 Matt Fox rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found that the book doesn't hold my attention as do other of Powers' novels because when I read his works I usually devour them in a few days. Comparatively, this is a much slower read and due to the esoteric side story of genetics I labor through some sections. His novels start off esoterically with an introduction of the subject matter and the characters involved; however, at one point in these novels a major shift occurs in which he introduces a highly humanistic quality to the novel and th...more

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Sep 23, 2010 Meg rated it 2 of 5 stars

I've been conflicted about whether or not to read any Richard Powers for a long time. I was attracted to The Gold Bug Variations because I like novels about scientists and academic settings. It also has going for it that it's the only book I know of with a postdoc protagonist. (Happy Postdoc Appreciation Week, by the way.) But the reviews I've read of Powers' work have always turned me off. This skepticism was overpowered by my discovery of The Gold Bug Variations for $1 at a charity book sale....more I've been conflicted about whether or not to read any Richard Powers for a long time. I was attracted to The Gold Bug Variations because I like novels about scientists and academic settings. It also has going for it that it's the only book I know of with a postdoc protagonist. (Happy Postdoc Appreciation Week, by the way.) But the reviews I've read of Powers' work have always turned me off. This skepticism was overpowered by my discovery of The Gold Bug Variations for $1 at a charity book sale. Would that it hadn't.

Two of the plot lines (the two "historical" ones: Dr. Ressler as a hotshot molecular geneticist in the 1950s and the narrator's telling of her life at the time she came to know him) are all right. But the third, in which we follow the narrator in the present, desperately trying to teach herself genetics so that she can come to an understanding of and regain a connection to the late Dr. Ressler, is just wretched. For one thing, the premise just doesn't make sense. For another, her metaphoric understanding of genetics is really no understanding at all, and the butchery of science made me cringe repeatedly. I'm no expert of molecular genetics, which, in this situation, I consider a good thing. I'm sure that Powers put in a lot of research and probably, on the whole, got things right enough for the purposes of fiction. But he still makes stupid mistakes. For example, any student of high school biology knows that ANIMALS DON'T HAVE CELL WALLS! But most of the characters, multiple times, made allusions to their own. Ok. So apparently we're reading about hotshot geneticist and librarian plants or fungi?? Super. That would probably have been less painful to read.

On top of this, the prose is just ridiculously annoying. It hops around, playing with itself, proceeding through as many similes, metaphors, and puns as could possibly be imagined. It is also very repetitive. Most unfortunately, it especially belabors the shakiest logic, the parts that most make you want to shout at the book. (Usually I try to resist shouting at inanimate objects - I have shared walls with other people, you see - so I don't appreciate the extra temptation to shout at this book.)

More than anything, The Gold Bug Variations comes off as show-offy. Look at my grasp of genetics, of music, of computer programming, of the english language, it says. No thanks. Not me. Never again.(less)

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Jul 21, 2009 Liza rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nyc

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is the second Richard Powers book I've read and once again I'm left feeling that he looked up from his manuscript in the last 100 pages, realized he had to add a climax to the tale, and that this realization nearly spoiled everything.

I would not recommend reading this book during summer, while on the subway, or during a particular frenetic period in one's life, because this tome commands strict attention to detail and extracurricular reading/listening. I think I failed on all accounts. Fir...more This is the second Richard Powers book I've read and once again I'm left feeling that he looked up from his manuscript in the last 100 pages, realized he had to add a climax to the tale, and that this realization nearly spoiled everything.

I would not recommend reading this book during summer, while on the subway, or during a particular frenetic period in one's life, because this tome commands strict attention to detail and extracurricular reading/listening. I think I failed on all accounts. First off, I should have listed to Bach's "Goldberg Variations." I'm not even sure if I've heard the piece before, but I'm too cheap to buy it because I imagine (hope) I've inherited it in the form of one of my father's LPs, currently residing in a storage unit on the border of Nassau County. Secondly, I should have brushed up on my genetics, because several sections of this book explore the science and implications of genetics. Thirdly, I should probably travel with a small dictionary, because Powers challenged my vocabulary every few pages.

That said, I did enjoy the main characters in this tale. A shy, neurotic reference librarian and her eccentric patron/lover trying to figure out why an older colleague of his abandoned his promising work in genetics before becoming the next Watson or Crick. The secondary plots were less intriguing to me. Most intriguing was the subject of inheritance: the choices these men and women made (or were unable to make) regarding parenthood and the implications therein. What I like most about Powers is the issues he forces readers to explore that correspond to the greater Human Condition.

Written in 1991, The Goldbug Variations also serves as a capsule of a previous era: inchoate Internet, in-vitro fertilization not yet responsible every set of twins you see in their deluxe double stroller on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. Reading this reinforced how much information-seeking has transformed. Want to know about someone's past? "Google them." We have new excuses for abstaining from human contact, from that simple act of just--I know this is a radical idea--asking what happened. And that a major part of the plot is the inability to procreate, well . . . just fork over $90,000, and that's solved.

I doubt there's a demand for it, but I would love for Powers to release a new edition of his work with a preface examining the work against today's world. I struggled and fought against this book for a long time while reading it, but I know it will linger in my mind for ages, or at least until I read another Powers tome. (less)

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Mar 14, 2008 The_markus rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone interested in genetics, library science, art history, bach's goldberg variations

Recommended to The_markus by: tangentially, jody roberts

this book really struck some cords with me, mostly due to the overlap between several technical/scientific subject areas that are used throughout the book as metaphors and also as mind-opening lessons in how the lived world has been changing as we have access to more information than ever.

these subject areas are (a) the growth of genetics after the discovery of DNA in the 1950s, (b) the early history of on-line information sharing in large financial institutions using mainframe computers and fo...more

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Aug 13, 2011 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: a-must-read, creativity, relationships

The title is a warning to the casual reader: If you don't get the title, or if you don't want to get the title,
beware."

In The Gold Bug Variations, author Richard Powers perspicaciously composes a novel with themes of puzzles (Edgar Allen Poe's The Gold Bug), music structure (Bach's Goldberg Variations), romance (two love stories that intertwine across twenty-five years), computer technology, art history, and DNA genetic codes. I remember reading this book when it was first published, maybe twent...more

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Oct 01, 2008 Marck Bailey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let this be a lesson to a father of two: Never take on novels that are described on the back cover as "one of the most ambitious novels of our time!" unless one can be fully committed to the experience. Powers' achievement here is mind-boggling, but I was not in the best circumstances to fully engross myself in the experience. One of the key climaxes came and went, and I'm STILL not sure what happened ... only because I was not cognizant enough to follow. Still, I slogged on, promising myself at...more

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Sep 08, 2009 Jae rated it 4 of 5 stars

Despite that it took me nearly a month to read, I did enjoy this book a lot. It was a great combination of the studies science (genetics specifically), music, and human nature (obsession specifically). The way Powers relates the construction of Bach's Goldberg Variations to the construction of the genetic material making up each one of us is inspired. The relationships of the characters and the introspect of why each is the way they are is incredibly engaging. Power's brings together another gro...more

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May 01, 2009 Corey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Just too long. It could have been significantly shorter and still got its point across. It is a richly researched and well-written novel but it was just a bit too heady for my tastes. Some of you that thrive in this arena might love it - and I might have liked it better if I had a month instead of one week to read it.

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Jul 06, 2010 Ruth rated it 2 of 5 stars

I liked a short story of his in the short story book I just reviewed, so I tried this novel, which also has music as a major theme (along with genetics and information science). But it was too long and I could never figure out quite what was motivating the characters & why I should care about what was going on.

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Apr 12, 2011 Eugene rated it 2 of 5 stars

Like flawed Pynchon, it is a less than the sum of its parts, a double helix of love stories set thirty years apart, with two protagonists searching for the answers to the genetic code. Wonderful asides and tidbits of knowledge with in an encyclopedic panoply, yet like the genome it so focuses on the bits in the beginning are much more important to the final cell than those at the end.

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Jul 05, 2009 J. Dunn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, novels, american, contemporary, 20th-century, scifi, history-of-ideas, biology, genetics, music, art, relationships, friendship, owned, favorite, have-etext

It’s about the underlying similarities between, and conflicts inherent in, music and the genetic code and programming and language and beauty and meaning and relationships and patterns; the twin quests of discovery that are science and love… and it just blows me away. I don’t know how he can write so beautifully about such dense subject matter, and relate it so well back to the basic things that make us all human, but he can.

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Feb 11, 2013 Joe Nicolello rated it 1 of 5 stars

Spent the day reading this in the library on the recommendation of a stranger. I kept tasting extremely flat soda. My mouth went dry around dusk and I rode my bike home through the fog. Might pick up again years down the line.

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Mar 11, 2012 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Definitely in my running of all time favorites. Although, it was the first Richard Powers novel I read, and some of his archetypes have started to wear a little thin, so take that with a grain of salt.

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About Richard Powers

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.

Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and his family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood, where his father was the principal at a local school. When Powers was 11, his family moved again, this time to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School B...more Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.

Powers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and his family later moved a few miles south to Lincolnwood, where his father was the principal at a local school. When Powers was 11, his family moved again, this time to Bangkok, Thailand, where his father had accepted a position at International School Bangkok and where he attended until the end of his Freshman year, 1972. In his time outside the United States, Powers developed a love of music, with notable skill in vocal music as well as proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying classics such as The Iliad and The Odyssey, but primarily works of non-fiction.

At age 16, Powers moved back to the U.S., and following graduation in 1975 from DeKalb High School in DeKalb, Illinois enrolled as a physics major at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his first semester, however, he switched his major to English literature, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1978. He continued his education at Illinois, and in 1980 received his MA in literature. He decided not to pursue a PhD in the field because of (a) his aversion to strict specialization, which was also one of the reasons for his earlier transfer from physics to English, and (b) the apparent absence of pleasure in the reading and writing that graduate students and their professors do (see his novel Galatea 2.2).

After receiving his master's degree, he worked in Boston, Massachusetts, as a computer programmer until an encounter with the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" by August Sander, at the Museum of Fine Arts, inspired him to quit his job and spend the next two years writing his first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published in 1985. The novel contains three alternating threads. The first is a fictional story about the three young men in the picture during World War I. The second is about Peter Mays, an editor for a technology magazine, who is obsessed with the photograph. The third is the author's own critical and historical musings, mostly concerned with the mechanics of photography and the life of Henry Ford.

Powers then moved to the Netherlands, where he wrote Prisoner's Dilemma, a work that juxtaposes Disney and nuclear warfare, and then his best-known work to date, The Gold Bug Variations, a story that ties together genetics, music, and computer science. Powers has said that he moved to the Netherlands to avoid the publicity and attention generated by his first novel. When asked about his reclusive tendencies, he responded, "All that sort of thing [author publicity] just creates confusion about the nature of the book, deflects attention from what you've done. That's what always seems to happen in this culture; you grab hold of a personality and ignore the work."[cite this quote]

Operation Wandering Soul, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction in 1993,[1] is about a young doctor dealing with the ugly realities of a pediatrics ward. It was mostly written during a year's stay at the University of Cambridge, and completed when Powers returned to the University of Illinois in 1992 to take up a post as writer-in-residence.

Galatea 2.2 (1995) is a Pygmalion story, about an artificial intelligence experiment gone awry.

Gain (1998) is a look at the history of a 150-year-old chemical company, interwoven with the story of a woman living near one of its plants and succumbing to ovarian cancer. It won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction in 1999.

Plowing the Dark (2000) is another novel with parallel narratives, this time of a Seattle research team building a groundbreaking virtual reality, while at the same time an American teacher is held hostage in Beirut.

The Time of Our Singing (2003) is a story about the musician children of an interracial couple who met at Marian Anderson's legen(less)

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