What did it mean, “went down admirably”: resisting or acquiescing? And what possible difference could it make to me now? Dr. Ressler was dead. No shock, not technically. Given his disease, he wasted and died per timetable. But, backwater organism, I’m no good at abstraction. A lifetime of practice unmade in a minute. And I learn again, in my nerve endings, that information is never the same as knowledge.
Praise for Richard Powers
Galatea 2.2
“Dazzling . . . a cerebral thriller that’s both intellectually engaging and emotionally compelling, a lively tour de force.”
—New York Times
“I love and admire this book . . . but I cannot give an adequate sense of its many marvels. . . . One of the most beautiful and baffling dialogues in recent fiction.”
—Boston Globe
“A splendid intellectual adventure, a heartbreaking love story, a brief tutorial on cognitive science, and the autobiography of one of the most gifted writers of the younger generation.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Brilliantly imaginative.”
—Time
“Fascinating. . . . Powers has a remarkable ability to find metaphors to illustrate the brain processes . . . terse and heartbreaking.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Richard Powers, like Bill Gates, is his own CPU, creating his own benchmarks for fiction. For all his cybersmart wizardry, he still writes about megahurts in a language anyone can understand.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“One of the few younger American writers who can stake a claim to the cerebral legacy of Pynchon, Gaddis and DeLillo.”
—The Nation
“Galatea 2.2 is entertainment of a very high order, and likely to be remembered as one of the best books of the year, because its erudition is nourished by genuine feeling.”
—GQ
“A kind of double simulation of intelligence that is breathtakingly elegant.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An astonishing novel of ideas that never becomes too talky, and is as complex in texture as his other books.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Operation Wandering Soul
National Book Award Finalist
“One of our most talented young novelists . . . to read a Richard Powers novel is to be dazzled by the author’s intelligence . . . to be beguiled by a decency that only intensifies the horror he describes. . . . A poignant vision of the world’s children probing the age-old granite of hopelessness for the mountain crack where the Pied Piper disappeared.”
—Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times
“An amazing cast. . . . This brilliant novel asks the reader to contemplate the power of imagination. . . . Brainy, flamboyant, luscious, assaulting—every word a performance against the coming of the night.”
—Maureen Howard, Boston Globe
“Richard Powers has vaulted from the promise to attainment . . . our most energetic and gifted novelist under 40. . . . A shuddering climax . . . finely tuned and highly original . . . as profound as you allow it to be.”
—Sven Birkerts, Chicago Tribune
“A devastating phantasmagoria of words and images . . . filled with glorious examples of both high and low culture. . . . To read his work is to be wowed by his verbal muscularity. . . . Admirable . . . wonderfully original.”
—Meg Wolitzer, New York Times
The Gold Bug Variations
“The most lavishly ambitious American novel since Gravity’s Rainbow . . . an outright marvel.”
—Curt Suplee, Washington Post
“Eloquent and fascinating . . . The Gold Bug Variations is a rambling, playful, lush, vain, bold and mighty worthwhile lap breaker.”
—John Calvin Bachelor, Chicago Tribune
“The Gold Bug Variations is the most important and intellectually challenging American novel published this year.”
—Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Deeply enriching; the decade is not likely to bring another novel half as challenging and original.”
—Publishers Weekly
Also by Richard Powers
Bewilderment
The Overstory
Orfeo
Generosity: An Enhancement
The Echo Maker
The Time of Our Singing
Plowing the Dark
Gain
Galatea 2.2
Operation Wandering Soul
The Gold Bug Variations
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
Copyright
Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint lines from the following selections:
From “Burnt Norton” and “Little Gidding” in FOUR QUARTETS by T.S. Eliot, copyright © 1943 by T. S. Eliot; renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., and Faber and Faber Limited; From “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” in THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS; reprinted with permission of Macmillan Publishing Company and A. P. Watt Ltd. Copyright 1919 by Macmillan Publishing Company, renewed 1947 by Bertha Georgie Yeats; “It’s Only a Paper Moon” by Harold Arlen and E. Y. Harburg and B. Rose, copyright 1933 by Warner Bros. Music and Chappell & Co., Inc. Copyright renewed; international copyright secured; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission; “Der Fuehrer’s Face” by Oliver Wallace; copyright 1942 by Southern Music Publishing Company, Inc.; copyright renewed; international copyright secured; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission; “Chicago, Chicago.” Words and music by Fred Fisher; published by Fisher Music Corp. Copyright renewed, international copyright secured; ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission; “The Prisoner’s Song.” Words and music by Guy Massey. Copyright 1924, Shapiro Bernstein & Co., Inc., New York. Copyright renewed. Used by permission; From THE DECAMERON by Boccaccio, translation by Richard Aldington; copyright © 1930; renewed 1968. Reprinted by permission of Rosica Colin Limited; “On the Good Ship Lollipop” by Sidney Clare and Richard A. Whiting, copyright 1934, WB Music Corp., copyright renewed. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Used by permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.
PRISONER’S DILEMMA. Copyright © 1988 by Richard Powers. Excerpt from THE GOLD BUG VARIATIONS © 1991 by Richard Powers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This book was originally published in 1988 by Beech Tree Books, William Morrow and Company, Inc.
First HarperPerennial edition published 1996. Reissued in Perennial 2002. First William Morrow paperback reissue published 2021.
Cover design by Elsie Lyons
Cover photographs © Hanka Steidle/Arcangel Images; © AleksandarDickov/iStock/Getty Images (tape)
* * *
The Library of Congress has catalogued a previous edition as follows:
Powers, Richard.
Prisoner’s dilemma / Richard Powers.
p. cm.
ISBN 0–06–097708–6
1. Title.
PS3566.092P751 1996
813'.54—dc20 95–54203
HB 09.10.2019
* * *
Digital Edition JULY 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-311944-4
Version 06052021
P
rint ISBN: 978-0-06-314026-4 (pbk.)
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