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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt.

Today my guest is Richard Powers, a writer I've wanted to have on Bookworm for a very long time.

His newest book is Plowing the Dark.

He's the author of seven novels in Wooder, Three Farmers on the Way to a Dance, Prisoner's

Dilemma, The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Song, Galatia 2.2, Gain, and now, as I said,

most recently Plowing the Dark, published by Farras, Jarous, and Giroux.

This newest book, like several of the others,

brings the reader into a consideration of the developments in virtual reality.

And since, in a way, the novel, A-novel itself, is a development in virtual reality,

as soon as you start reading Plowing the Dark, you're reading in the Mirror, in a sense.

You're beginning with a sense of the question of how do you remake, replicate, simulate the world,

and what happens when instead of making a work of art, you're making a copy of life?

And the question of what is a work of art?

And once you reproduce a work of art, is it art anymore?

All of these things come to bear in the book.

And I wondered what began it for you.

...