Playground

"Hope and truth could not be reconciled. The things that had filled her with awe were passing away. There was no other honest ending."
Evelyne Beaulieu, fictional oceanographer

I finished Playground three weeks ago, but this provocative and complex novel has stayed with me. It's an environmental novel that focuses on the glory of the ocean and its imminent demise due to the forces of human folly. Powers also tackles issues of friendship, race, class, literature vs. technology, and the role of AI as a source of information and storytelling.
It's a bold novel filled with memorable characters who must come to grips with some of the most challenging issues of our era. Highly recommend.

In his latest novel, Richard Powers looks at the state of the world through the lives of four characters. Todd and Rafi meet as students at an elite Chicago prep school. Todd comes from a wealthy family that has endowed the school; Rafi comes from the South Side and is a scholarship student. They bond over games, initially chess, then Go. Their friendship continues as they go to the same college. Todd is studying computer programming and Rafi studies literature and is a poet. At college, they meet Ina, a student who is from the South Pacific who becomes the love of Rafi's life. Before they graduate, Rafi and Todd have a falling out, and are estranged for most of the rest of their lives. In the "now" of the novel, Rafi and Ina are living show more on the remote South Pacific island of Makatea, an island ravaged by phosphate mining, its inhabitants diminished and impoverished, its environment destroyed. Todd is a billionaire tech mogul deep into Ai. He has been diagnosed with Lewey Bodies dementia, and is steep decline, facing his own death. He looks back on where technology has brought us:

"Neither Rafi nor I saw what was happening. No one did. That computers would take over our lives: Sure. But the way they would turn us into different beings?"
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"Sure they predicted personal, portable Encyclopedia Britannia's and group real-time teleconferencing and personal assistants that could teach you how to write better. But Facebook and WhatsApp and TikTok and Bitcoin and QAnon and Alexa and Google Maps and smart tracking ads based on keywords stolen from your emails and checking your likes while at a urinal and shopping while naked and insanely stupid but addictive farming games that wrecked people's careers and other neural parasites that now make it impossible to remember what thinking and feeling and being were really like back then? Not even close."

Neural parasites indeed!

The fourth important character is oceanographer and marine biologist Evelyne Beaulieu, who is much older than the other three. Interspersed with the stories of Todd, Rafi and Ina, we learn the history of diving, as we follow Evelyne's career over the 20th century and into the present. Along the way we are treated to psychedelic descriptions of underwater life: "The wildest assortment of Dr. Seuss creations." When diving, Evelyne, "felt like a Babe in Toyland, set loose in the greatest playground any child had ever seen."

As in most novels by Powers (one of my favorite authors), the book is a combination of great characters, good plot, science, and big ideas. His books are usually complex and thought-provoking, and this one is as well. With this book, there is a late twist which I found mind-boggling, and I'm still puzzling over what I just read.
Highly recommended.
And I liked this quote by Arthur Clarke:
"How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean." show less

“I vowed to spend the rest of my life the way my love did. I would give myself to the ocean, that wilderness that made the land seem an afterthought. I would dive in all latitudes and descend to all depths, and in each place I would find whole, new, impossible kinds of life.”

Like his Pulitzer-winning opus, The Overstory, Powers presents another broad, sweeping novel, with multi-narratives and shifting timelines with the world’s biggest ocean, the Pacific, being the centerpiece. The main characters here are two friends, one poor, one rich, who meet in a Chicago high school and begin to develop games together and a young Canadian woman who becomes a world, renowned diver and explorer. How these
people come together on a remote island show more in French Polynesia, is the heart of this complex story. Powers is such a brilliant writer. He seems to write so effortlessly on so many different topics and issues. This one also comes with a mind-bending twist, that will keep your head spinning for a few days after. Highly recommended. show less

I felt very lucky to be approved for an egalley of Playground. I had read The Overstory and expected a stellar reading experience.

Skipping across time, Playground tells the story of four people. There is Rafi and Todd who meet in high school and become competitive friends over chess, then over GO, and then over a woman, Ina, born in Micronesia.

And there is Evelyne who fell in love with deep sea diving and the beauty of the ocean and its teeming life forms. At ninety-two, she still dives. The sections reflecting Evelyne’s view of the ocean from her diving are beautiful, magical.

Through the character of Todd, who becomes an early computer tech magnate, we remember how computers took over our lives, until “games now ruled humanity,” show more Todd affirms.

Rafi and Ina settle in Makatea; it took months for Rafi to detox and learn to live without technology. He is the teacher on the island, and he and Ina adopt two orphans.

The island of Makatea was a paradise before phosphorus mining came, and before it left. The population plummeted and although they have food and solar energy, they feel the lack of on-island education and health care–and jobs. When they are approached by a business wanting to set up the manufacturing of floating cities the islanders must weight the jobs, money, and growth against further destruction of their ecosystem, particularly the coral reef and ocean life.

The Makatea’s decision is one humanity makes every day. Do we enjoy the benefits of civilization at the cost of environmental degradation and destruction? Or do we protect planet Earth, our miraculous home?

The ending has a twist that spurs doubt about reality, and a funeral, and the beauty of flying devil rays, roiling the sea in a playful dance, a symbol of all creatures, “playing before their tinkering Lord.”

Powers again offers a story that combines stellar storytelling with a deep message that challenges us.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley. show less

Four characters—Evie Beaulieu, a trailblazing oceanographer; Ina Aroita, a French Polynesian artist; Rafi Young, a scholar of literature; and Todd Keane, a tech entrepreneur who creates the wildly popular, gamified social media platform also known as "Playground"—are interwoven in Playground. The story comes together on the isolated island of Makatea, where locals are voting on a contentious "seasteading" project put forth by Todd's group. Makatea is still healing from the effects of colonial phosphate mining.

The book examines the benefits and drawbacks of social media and artificial intelligence, raising concerns about who gains from technological development and its unforeseen effects on interpersonal relationships and society.
show more The vulnerability of ocean ecosystems and the effects of human exploitation and climate change are major topics of discussion. Powers presents the ocean as a "playground" that humans are in danger of destroying, both literally and figuratively.
The book explores betrayal, ambition, complicated relationships, and forgiveness. The "infinite game" of life and planetary stewardship is contrasted with human "finite games" that are centered around winning.
Through literature, art, science, and technology, the characters represent various perspectives on the world, encouraging contemplation of whether wisdom and knowledge can coexist to secure a better future. show less

73. Playground by Richard Powers
OPD: 2023
format: 381-page hardcover
acquired: September 24 read: Oct 3-11, 26-31 time reading: 14:33, 2.3 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: Contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2024
locations: Chicago, Urbana, Illinois and Makatea in French Polynesia
about the author: An American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. He was born in Evanston, Illinois in 1957.

My 11th from the Booker longlist, of 13.

We are initially swept up in the oceans. Todd Keene talks about his childhood book on the ocean, the one he got for beating his father in backgammon. Separately we see the isolated Pacific island of Makatea, destroyed by phosphate mining, but still surrounded by oceans, and a reef. And show more fifty pages in we meet Evelyne Beaulieu, a fictional pioneer female diver, and we are allowed to experience the initial scuba discovery of the undersea magical world. If you’re like me, you will be swept up on oceanic romance, the cacophony of life, especially in our 4-billion-year-old Pacific Ocean. And, knowing Richard Powers, you will be waiting for the environmental hammer to fall.

Actually several different interacting stories build this up. The best is Evelyne's, the pioneer diver barging into the male scientific world. (And I appreciated her nods toward Rachel Carson's oddly brilliant book, [The Sea Around Us].) But we also have our main narrator, Todd Keane, and his social media empire, Playground, partially inspired by his childhood friend from the other side of Chicago, black Southsider Rafi Young, and partially inspired by Rafi's college girlfriend, Pacific Island-born Ina Aroita. Todd tells us their history. Meanwhile some drama is occurring on the Pacific Island of Makatea, a real Pacific Island destroyed by Phosphate mining, and the new home of Rafi and Ina and their children.

The book wanders in more and less interesting propulsions. I put it down for two weeks halfway through, without missing it, and without needing a refresher when I picked it back up. It grabs, and lags, or did for me until the last hundred pages when it seems to fire along.

So, what is this book doing? What is this book doing to me? (The Booker committee's mantra)

------ Major Spoiler Warning ----


This book, it turns out, is not actually about the ocean. It’s not even about the destruction of the ocean. The book concedes to the destruction of the ocean. We’re in 2027 and its destroyed. This book is actually about AI. This ocean isn’t real. This Makatea isn’t real. This Evelyne might not be real. Todd, I assume, is real, well, fictionally. The rest is self-generated programming. Todd Keane codes the foundation of his monster while at the University of Illinois. He improves this over time in several generations of code. But everything comes from there. Now he’s alone with a brain disease, losing his mind. So he talks about, Rafi and Ari. But we don’t actually know if either of them are real. (And it’s worth a moment to wonder that Powers writes minorities only through the protective shield of blaming it on AI.)

So large parts of this book are not real, nor are they written by Todd, but by Todd's AI machine, now in its 3rd generation. Once we figure this out, and we only do at the end, the reader has to rethink everything. We have to work through a number of confusing questions. What's real and what's AI? I mean - what is real in a fictional novel where nothing is real, but still it's real? And if AI did this thing, what did AI actually do? Write a novel? Create world? Did Richard Powers write AI for AI? Is that self-defeating of all purposes?

What are these gimmicks worth? Do I reread the book and rethink all the subtle indications of these possible fictional realities? Does it change the book's strengths and weaknesses? But the real earth is really getting destroyed. Maybe I should put the book down and move on. Or ask AI?

----- end of spoiler stuff ----

This is my second book by Powers. His fiction is both awkward and artistic. He understands elements of fiction and wonder and how to get the reader to care. He understands the power of magic. In one section, a character's dementia has him imagining an undersea paradise in his room. It's as riveting as any ocean narrative I have read. That is beautiful. It’s also Powers playing games with his method and fiction in a most playful way. Readers should be bothered and amused by this. Powers is not, however, that agile with prose and rhythms and overall structure. He can do all these things, but only in certain ways and exploring too far would be beyond the purpose of his fiction. This book has all these aspects of him. Not fictional genius, not subtle, but thought provoking and moving.

I'm hesitant to give this a blind recommendation on this because I'm not personally sure how I feel about everything Powers has done here - to me. I feel a little emotionally mixed. But for readers willing to take a risk on that kind of uncertain feeling, this is an easy recommendation.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/365030#8660334 show less

An imaginative, deeply-researched but human look at the big issues of today. Through the narrative of Todd Keane, a dying tech mogul, we experience the birth of AI and the relationship between two men shaped by race and class. Powers has taken an Oceanographer, a techie and a poet and woven them together to ask the big questions we now face. What will save us from an environmental catastrophe? Technology or nature? Wealth or simple living? Individuality or community?

The book opens with a creation myth from Polynesia where, "Creation became a game." The God Ta'aroa wanted to finish this game and so people were created and watched as they discovered and invented until they felt trapped and moved up into the next level and spread out show more again. And so the game in the book begins.

Todd Keane is a very rich man, having made his money creating a social media site used by billions. Told in a different font, we are drawn to the fact that his is an important strand of the book. Starting in 2027, we learn that he has dementia with Lewey bodies that destroys his cognitive and physical abilities. We discover his inspiration as a young child, Evelyne Beaulieu a diver and writer of a children's book about the ocean, and his friends Rafi Young and his wife Ina Aroita and their two children living on Makatea, an island in the Pacific ocean. They create the other strands of the book. We get our second sense of play through the gaming that Todd is involved in developing.

Makatea and its people provide the final strand, an Atoll where American investors want to develop their seasteading project - a community living in a floating city outside the laws of any government. There is the opportunity for work and money but the last time this sort of offer was made, it ended in envirnomental degradation from the mining of phosphates. The world's food production improved but Makatea suffered. The mayor of the island has managed to get the agreement that the people of the island can vote on whether the island hosts the project and that is a great device for unpacking all the points of view around these type of projects. The children of the island are free to play and discover the whole of the place and know it's dangers and beauty.

Rafi's father was a fireman and black and believed that his son had to be 100% better than any white boy in order to take his place at the table of life and opportunity. Rafi won a place at St Ignatius College where he meets Todd and they develop a love for games, starting with chess and moving on to Go and its seemingly infinite moves and strategies. From here, they move to university but diverge with Rafi following his love of literature and writing of poetry. We now have a computer wizard and a poet as characters. An interesting way of looking at the world and environmental decline. Their worlds are one of play, both of board games but also a far bigger game.

Evelyne Beaulieu was the first woman to be accepted by Duke University into their ocean studies department. But of course, being a woman, she also needed to manage being a wife and mother to her two children and this often kept her out of the sea on dry land. Her character as a diver is to paint the wonders of the world found deep in the sea "creatures that often seemed designed by a committee of excitable children." and to describe what she sees. Is this Ta'aro playing? In one place Evelynne dives to explore a graveyard of sunk ships and aeroplanes,

Life covered every inch of the twisted surfaces and turned them into high-rise dwellings. A brass ship's throttle, its handle stuck to a speed that failed to save it, lay like some wild Miro sculpture caked in starfish and worms. Morays nested in the gun barrels. One ship's crumpled mast was so coated with swirls of whip coral and anemones that it, too, branched as if alive. Troops of porcelain crabs skittered in formation. Nudibranchs slithered across bits of blasted deck as if some wedding had scattered hallucegenic bouquets.
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In Evie's strand the play comes from the ocean creatures that surround her and a few that put on displays that she found difficult to understand and who they were for. One example is the cuttlefish who lit up, changed colours and danced for no discernible reason and Evie decided that it was a play, as in scripted, for itself and no one else. There were shades of Lessons in Chemistry in this narrative.

As these individual stories swim forwards, slowly in places and faster in others, we start to see the links that bind them. Todd was inspired by Evie, Evie ends up living on the same island as Rafi and Ina, Rafi playing Todd's game but using an avatar, Todd as the prime investor in the seasteading. The ocean ties all the stories together.

Towards the end of the book, the biggest game of all is revealed, if I have understood the ending correctly. We see the power of art, some of the downsides of technology and Makatea as a winner although not everything is clear cut. In some ways, Powers doesn't answer the big questions, leaving them a little murky and submerged. But then, isn't that how we are with them at present?

This would be a great book club novel if you have a group who would be prepared to complete reading it. I don't always find Powers easy to read and often find myself skimming sections - more so in The Overstory than Playground but there were a couple of sections where I did. This book gets a 5* rating for its cleverness and beauty in weaving seemingly disparate strands together. Fantastic! show less