Richard Powers' novels are often about the intersection of the analytical style of knowledge characteristic of science and the unpredictable uniqueness of individuals as they actually live. His books commonly engage with difficult, knotty scientific ideas through the lens of vivid, sympathetic characters. The Echo Maker seems to be a book with a heavily scientific premise—an exploration of a patient's experience of Capgras syndrome—but it quickly becomes apparent that the book is as much about the people around him: his sister, his caregiver, and the neurologist observing him. The idea of imposters becomes the jumping-off point for a broader exploration of how people perform roles and functions, and sometimes fail rather glaring at it. Powers' other novels return to ideas like this one, using science to make sense of life's messiness, as well as using the complexity of life to enrich the analytical insights of science.
Powers' 1991 novel The Goldbug Variations tracks two narrative threads: that of a young geneticist, Stuart Ressler, and his coworker (and eventual paramour) Jeanette Koss, and that of librarians Jan O'Deigh and Frank Todd. The book is narrated by Jan, in 1985, as she quits her New York library job to focus on learning as much as she can about genetics. She recounts how, in 1983, she met Todd and, shortly after, Ressler, both of whom were working nights for a data input company. Jan recounts this time, depicting her falling in love with Todd as they worked to solve the mystery of who Ressler really is. They both suspect he is too smart not to have been part of something extraordinary in the past.
Then, from a third-person perspective, she describes Stuart's work as part of the Blue Sky team in Urbana, Illinois. Stuart and his teammates, Jeanette among them, race to find an understanding of the human genome. At the same time, Stuart falls in love with Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, a gift from one of his colleagues. He appreciates its use of theme and variation, as it parallels the working of the genetic code which recycles a sequence of notes in order to produce new versions of a song. Stuart works closely with Jeanette on the genome project and they fall into a love affair. Jeanette promises to leave her husband for him when they finish solving the code, but their plans quickly go awry. Stuart struggles to hold onto the support of other members of the cohort, but the project begins to falter as people leave the team.
Todd and Jan's relationship similarly falls apart, after Jan discovers that he has been sleeping with a mutual friend of theirs. Jeanette ends up staying with her husband and leaving the team. Ressler is wrecked and heartbroken. Jan comes to realize, in the present, that despite his failure to be credited, Ressler was extremely close and essentially had all the right theories about how DNA functioned. The novel ends with Todd seeking out Jan after Ressler's death and asking her if she will give him a second chance. She seems to accept, as he happily asks if they can merge their research together, as if they are having a child. The book explores how these repeated sequences can ultimately produce so many individual humans, recombined in such a way that each one is unique and irreplaceable. It reaffirms the idea that, for all of the rapid advances of science, human connection and love are irreducible.
Both books are ultimately about what it means to be human. The Echo Maker shows the durability of care in the face of identity loss. The Goldbug Variations explores how humans are made from variations of the same genetic code, but never fail to be unique. Powers uses science as a structuring framework for his plots, but often returns to the idea that the bonds between individuals are as mysterious and beautiful as lines of genetic code, the workings of the human mind, or a musical phrase.
