Review: Playground by Richard Powers

In a world dominated by the creeping anxiety of technological disruption, Powers confronts the narrative we tell ourselves about our relationship with the earth and our creations. “Terror,” he tells author Hua Hsu in The New Yorker, “results from not being able to escape the time frame where you can only see the earth as a story of loss.” This terror is not just environmental, but also existential — a fear of the instability AI represents, the relentless reshaping of every aspect of human life. Yet, Powers counters that in the grand arc of existence, no technology, no extraction, no act of human ingenuity has fundamentally altered the life force’s capacity to adapt. It’s an unsettling truth: the earth, like the story we live in, will continue — whether or not we are ready to accept that fact.

When Richard Powers does something, he doesn’t stop halfway — and his Playground, longlisted for the Booker Prize, is no exception. Tackling everything from the future of artificial intelligence to the memory of Polynesian navigation, this novel isn’t your average intellectual meander; it’s a multi-plot saga that winds itself into the knotty depths of what it means to be human.

Todd, a half-hero, half-code-wrangling tragic figure is behind a piece of software, ominously called “Playground” — and from the jump, Powers lays out some big ideas. Playground is not your run-of-the-mill social media site; it’s an all-encompassing AI that promises a future where technology knows us better than we know ourselves. The reader is dropped into Todd’s world while he’s navigating the lush landscapes of a small Polynesian island, reminiscing about his youthful wonder for nature. Enter stage right, Evelyne, the author of a book that hooked Todd into environmentalism and set his life on an eco-conscious path — a path that degrades alongside Todd’s health as he battles a rare form of dementia.

On the other hand, Makatea, once the world’s go-to for phosphate fertilizer, finds itself in yet another capitalist experiment, this time under the glamorous title of “seasteading.” Silicon Valley elites propose building floating cities, sanctuaries for the ultra-wealthy to evade the annoyances of laws. If this sounds absurd, well, that’s the Powers charm — he makes the absurd terrifyingly plausible. The island’s fate becomes a tense referendum, mirroring the battle between preservation and profit that’s becoming all too familiar in our daily news feeds.

True to Powers’ form, the narratives braid together unexpectedly. You’ll be hard-pressed to anticipate the intersections between these frames, but when they converge, it’s like watching a well-timed domino fall. The final act leaves readers grappling with just how intricately connected these seemingly separate worlds are — an echo of our own ecological entanglements.

Now, anyone who knows Powers knows this isn’t his first eco-philosophical rodeo. From The Overstory to Bewilderment, he’s been hurling trees and natural wonders at readers for years, sometimes almost aggressively. His talking about trees inadvertently brings Pradip Kishen to this reviewer’s mind, especially his penchant for engaging with the natural world with reverence. And, while Playground indulges in these themes, it feels fresh — perhaps because it’s marinated in the relationship dynamics between Todd, Rafi, and Ina. Three pivotal characters: Todd, the coder grappling with his mortality; Rafi, his chess-and-Go-obsessed best friend determined to solve the ultimate puzzle — immortality itself; and Ina, the brilliant, enigmatic woman threading through both their lives.

Playground scratches the existential question of how humans relate to the world around them, particularly the ocean, in a way that transcends both literal and metaphorical depths. Powers isn’t just asking about environmental stewardship; he pushes beyond to explore why, in a planet predominantly covered by water, we know so little about the life within it and, by extension, about ourselves.

The capitalist instinct to see the ocean as a resource to be harnessed — something we must study to keep fish stocks high or for other utilitarian purposes — misses the point, Powers admits in another interview. He calls this view a reductionist and narrow take on what the ocean can offer: “To say we need to study the ocean in order to keep our fish stocks high... is to tell a very, very small part of the story.”

Instead, he presents the ocean as a place of metaphysical inquiry — a vast, unknowable expanse that challenges human arrogance and opens up possibilities for self-understanding. Powers’ prose doesn’t merely describe the ocean; it reveres it, insisting that we must give it our “poetic attention.” The ocean, as Powers sees it, offers a sense of fulfilment that modern life, with all its distractions and material pursuits, fails to provide. This isn’t about escaping into nature for romanticism’s sake. It’s about a deeper contemplation of what it means to exist on a planet where so much remains unseen, unknown, and uncontrollable. These lines from the book seem to be fitting- “As Arthur C. Clarke has observed: ‘How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is ocean.’

Right off the bat, Playground paints the stark contrast between experience and knowledge. On one hand, you have Todd, the tech whiz caught in the web of his own creation, and on the other, Polynesian navigators relying on the stars and sea to guide their journeys — experiences deeply felt, not simulated or programmed. It’s no accident that these two modes of understanding the world collide in the novel. Powers loves a good intellectual brawl, and here, it’s a showdown between nature and the digital world. Spoiler alert, he has a favorite.

What sets Playground apart, though, is not just the rich landscape of ideas —those come as standard with Powers — but the way he spins a sensitive, sometimes painfully relatable portrait of male friendship. Rafi, the wildly competitive, sharp-as-a-blade counterpart to Todd, isn’t just another sidekick. His complexity comes from the immense pressure he faces — being the smartest kid in the room, especially as a Black man, means outperforming the world just to get a seat at the table. Yet he’s driven by personal demons, too —having watched his sister die young, he is obsessed with bringing people back from the brink. No wonder his ultimate project revolves around immortality.

Then there’s Ina, who’s somehow both muse and intellectual rival. She’s there to both inspire and challenge the male egos that surround her. Powers uses her to introduce another layer of tension — both personal and intellectual — that keeps the novel from turning into a brooding male fest. The delicate interplay between these characters is where Powers’ skill really shines. You can almost hear the synapses firing as their friendships and ambitions collide with the natural world and the rapidly evolving digital one.

Powers has also mastered pacing. Even when you know where he’s headed —environmental catastrophe, technology overtaking human experience — he still manages to surprise. The novel’s climax, for example, is a moment where the novel pulls a fast one. It comes with a twist that’s as heart-wrenching as it is terrifying — a reminder that no matter how much we want to preserve the past, what we recreate is never quite real.

What Powers does in Playground isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, but it is brilliant in its execution. It asks the kind of questions that gnaw at your brain long after you’ve put the book down: What does it mean to be human in a world where we can simulate everything? Is experience real if it’s recreated by code? And at what point does our drive to know everything strip us of what makes life meaningful?

In a Barnes & Noble podcast, Richard Powers traced the origins of this book back to his childhood: “In some ways this book started when I was 10 years old, and my older sister gave me a book about the coral reefs while I was living on the north side of Chicago”. At the time, he struggled to reconcile two vastly different worlds. He recalls how, from his suburban window, he could see rows of houses stretching out “as far as the eye could see”, while simultaneously being captivated by “bizarre alien creatures, psychedelic colours, and shapes” from the book about coral reefs.

Reflecting on this early fascination, he continues, “That’s little Ricky at the age of 10 trying to make sense of the world,” adding that the book he completed at age 67 is “a continuation of that little kid’s preoccupations.” He also describes how the characters in Playground, Todd and Rafi, represent a kind of personal psychoanalysis. The competitive friendship between these two characters — a humanist and a technocrat — symbolizes an internal struggle that Powers has faced for much of his life: “Which way do I go? How do I understand the world?” Playground ultimately became a therapeutic reworking of these enduring questions.

In the end, Powers leaves us dangling between two worlds — one where nature is the ultimate teacher, and the other where technology promises a future free from the limits of the physical body. He doesn’t pretend to have the answers, but he sure knows how to pose the questions in the most riveting, emotionally charged way possible. The reader will leave Playground feeling like they have just played a high-stakes game of Go, with Powers always five moves ahead.

Pranavi is a Delhi based book reviewer and culture writer.