Richard Powers is a favorite of the smart set. On the basis of a half dozen dazzlingly intricate novels tackling such brainy topics as artificial intelligence, genetics, corporate capitalism, and Bach, Powers has earned a reputation as one of the most intelligent — and important — writers at work today. Plowing the Dark is similar in structure to Powers's justly-praised Gain, a sort of literary double helix. In one storyline, jaded ex-artist Adie Klarpol moves to Seattle to join a band of virtual reality researchers. Through a series of projects — a 3-D version of Rousseau's Dream, a virtual Hagia Sophia, etc. — she becomes engrossed in the possibilities technology affords for altering and creating reality. Meanwhile, halfway around the world, a lovelorn English teacher named Taimur Martin is kidnapped off the streets of Beirut and held in solitary confinement. Under these stark, often brutal, conditions Taimur uses imagination and memory to create a virtual world of another sort. Though Adie's and Taimur's lives never intersect (until the end), their stories continually spiral around one another, revealing hidden connections and raising provocative questions about the relationship between human beings, technology, and imagination. Farley, Powells.com

On the shores of Puget Sound, a band of virtual reality researchers is building an empty white room that can become a jungle, a painting, or a cathedral. In a war-torn Mediterranean city, an American is held hostage in another empty white room. These two remote places will be linked by the power of the imagination.