Richard Powers’s 2018 Pulitzer-winning book The Overstory was one of the landmark novels of the past decade. Grounded in science and animist thought, it was a glorious ode to the wondrousness of trees. Bewilderment (2021) interleaved private loss and climate collapse to recount the grief-soaked journey of an astrobiologist and his neurodivergent son. Both these novels were set in the US. In Playground, his cerebral, Booker-longlisted new novel, Powers swivels part of his attention to French Polynesia, taking on neo-colonialism, artificial intelligence and oceanography.
One strand of the novel unfolds in Illinois in the late 20th century. It follows ocean-loving coding whiz Todd Keane and Rafi Young, a Black book-lover he connects with in high school over chess and, later, the Chinese game of Go. They both come from dysfunctional, if very different, families. Todd’s father is an accomplished pit trader with a secret life; Rafi’s is a boorishly pragmatic firefighter who is always impressing upon him the importance of hard work and excellence in the face of systemic racial inequality. Todd and Rafi deepen their bond during college but begin to drift apart once Ina Aroita, a young sculptor born to a Hawaiian father and a Tahitian mother, enters the picture. Told retrospectively in an italicised first person, these sections are in the voice of 57-year-old Todd, who has dementia with Lewy bodies, and are addressed to a mysterious “you”. Todd is now a digital tycoon, having made his name with a virtual economy platform called Playground. A measure of the book’s suspense comes from Todd’s groundbreaking, if unsettling, experiments with AI.
The second thread takes place in the present/near future, on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, where Rafi and Ina are husband and wife, and parents to two adopted children. Once a lucrative phosphate mining colony, Makatea is back in the crosshairs of capitalist forces. Environmental concerns collide with the hopes for a transformed island, as the locals get ready to vote on a “seasteading” venture funded by an American consortium. The project proposes to bring Temao, the island’s disused port, back into operation, as it erects autonomous modular floating cities in international waters. The work of 92-year-old Canadian scuba diver Evelyne Beaulieu is the novel’s third focus. She is on Makatea to compile a book on the ocean that she hopes will “stop human progress in its tracks with awe”. She, too, is invited to vote.
Playground is at once a portrait of a three-way friendship, a cyberpunk thriller of sorts, an Anthropocene novel, an oceanic tale and an allegory of postcolonialism. It is as brilliant on land as it is undersea, and as dizzyingly wise about technology as it is about island culture, capitalism and ecology. Some of the underwater scenes are so limpid and sensorially rich, it’s like watching an oceanic feature in Imax; throughout, there’s a quasi-spiritual appreciation for the wonders and mysteries of marine life.
Powers writes with erudition and electrifying beauty on everything from the toil of cleaner shrimps to the brain structure of manta rays, the playfulness of fish and the jazzy sex life of corals. The writing in these parts is self-consciously anthropomorphic, and, through Evelyne, the reader is enlightened about the long-held taboo against this approach and its critical significance: “What began, centuries ago, as a healthy safeguard against projection had become an insidious contributor to human exceptionalism, the belief that nothing else on Earth was like us in any way.” This is a novel that seeks to humble the Anthropos, even as it fidgets, wonders and worries – about the health, temperature and rising levels of our seas; about poaching, plastic, and global toxicity.
The novel’s most disquieting inquiries are concerned with AI and its fast-evolving capabilities. Will it lead to human extinction? What leverage will it give to good and evil? Could it resurrect the dead? Is it the future of storytelling? In one episode set on Makatea, an artificial assistant named Profunda fields questions from the islanders. “‘How big will the ships be, and how will they load at Temao?’ Only after tricking Profunda into answering in detail did they spring their trap: ‘Won’t ships with such deep draws beat the hell out of the reef?’” The chatbot does a good job of putting the islanders in the picture, but the obvious irony is that it has been created expressly to make the project a reality.
That Powers is an outstanding writer is hardly news. But with Playground, he proves himself a wizard. This novel is one long, clever magic trick. You approach the end thinking you have everything figured out. But then the author does something quite extraordinary – a move it would be criminal of me to give away. Let’s just say the reader is left reeling as the book’s conceit is revealed and the novel ascends to the plane of true, indisputable greatness.
Playground by Richard Powers is published by Hutchinson Heinemann (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
