Richard Powers is an author who can masterfully weave together disparate strands into fascinating stories. In Bewilderment (2021), he brings together stories about possible exoplanets, climate collapse and grief in a gripping novel about an astro-biologist and his son. Sounds crazy, but it works.
In Playground, Powers again tries to create an all-encompassing novel bringing together colonialism (and neo-colonialism) in the Pacific, the beauty of underwater ecosystems and the history of oceanography, the past and the future of artificial intelligence, and the friendship of two men from childhood to middle-age into one book. This sounds like a lot, and it is: Powers could have used his material to easily create two books by dropping the connecting side-story set in French Polynesia and both books would likely have made for worthy reads. Powers, true to form, doesn’t do this. He goes all in. And it mostly works: He brings together seemingly disparate stories in a final plot twist that cannot be spoilered here but will make you go back to sections of the book to search for clues.
The first strand of the novel unfolds in Chicago in the late 20th century where Rafi, a poor Black book lover connects with (white) rich kid Todd at a posh private high school over chess and later Go. While Todd grows up as the privileged son of an option trader, Rafi’s parents are divorced and trying to make ends meet, yet his father instills in him the value of books, education, and always trying harder to overcome the obstacles presented by systemic racial inequality. Their friendship deepens as each of them experiences loss and as they jointly go through college at the University of Illinois at a time of rapid technological progress (the University of Illinois being the home of the first modern web browser at the time). Told mainly through the voice of much older Todd (and addressed to an initially unknown “you”), who has become a modern-age digital tycoon running a large social media platform, this part of the book is an amazing exploration of a long friendship (which becomes frail as Ina, a Pacific Islander enters the scene).
The second main strand follow Canadian ocean research pioneer Evelyne through a life of exploring and communicating the beauty of underwater life. Growing up shortly after the second world war, as a child, Evelyne is initiated into the underwater world by her father, an engineer working on the first modern scuba diving equipment. Having first experienced the sensation of breathing underwater in a small test pool, she is drawn to the exploration of the oceans and embarks on a decades long journey trying to understand all the life that had previously been hidden from human observation. As Powers follows Evelyne’s life, he narrates a story of a woman overcoming sexism and rejection in a male dominated academic world while at the same time managing to convey the fascination Evelyne feels about the beauty of the seas. His vivid descriptions of shrimps, reefs and manta rays can compete with any glossy picture book.
These stories are not told in sequential order: Powers jumps between story lines and back and forth in time and it only gradually becomes clear that both stories will converge on a Polynesian Island that has been plundered for its phosphate reserves and witnessed nearby nuclear tests: In this third strand of the story, Rafi now lives there with Ina and two adopted children and Evelyne has come to the island for researching her final book. Here, Powers portrays (and somewhat idolizes) a small island community coming together to vote about the proposal of a group of American tech entrepreneurs that want to use their island as a staging ground for building a futuristic floating city.
Playground is a real masterpiece weaving together the stories of three lives, the beauty of an endangered ecosystem, the promise (and danger) of AI, youth and race in modern America and Pacific Islander culture. Parts of the book could be trimmed: Some of Powers’ musings on AI read like he is regurgitating from any of the many books about AI (the story of how Deepmind’s AI managed to beat the world’s best Go players has been told too often already, for example), the colonial history of Powers’ pacific island feels superficially told and wasn’t really necessary to advance the story and at times Powers tries almost too hard to convince his readers of the fragility of ocean life.
And yet, this is a story very much worth reading (and, having been long-listed for the 2024 Booker price, would have been a much better choice than Orbital).