Old vs. New

Amidst all the current excitement around AlphaGo, I am, coincidentally, reading a bunch of old stories and modern retellings of them:

• Homer's The Illiad and Alice Oswald's Memorial
• Homer's The Odyssey and Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad
• Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Jeanette Winterson's The Gap of Time

It's serendipitous because what is AlphaGo anyway, but a modern retelling of an old story?  The retellings never replace the ancient, they just add another layer.