Playground is an underwater, high tech story that will break your heart, challenge your thinking, and make you want to read it all over again as soon as you’re done.

After reading Richard Powers’ book The Overstory, which is about how trees communicate with each other, I decided I would read anything that he wrote next. I did try, with his sky bound novel Bewilderment, but the grief in that book was just so heartbreaking that I had to stop reading it. Of course, that’s a testament to his writing, so it didn’t stop me from reading Playground, which takes us deep into the ocean to explore the intersecting lives of an oceanographer, a tech entrepreneur, a poet, and a Pacific Islander. Through their interactions and life stories, Richard Powers explores themes of privilege, colonialism, race relations, education, AI, and friendship. 

The oceanographer, Evelyne, finds a confidence and serenity underwater that she never knew possible. She battles misogyny and stereotypes to pursue her dreams of exploring our underwater world. It’s her book, Clearly It Is Ocean, that sets privileged Chicago Northsider Todd Keane on his path as a “ten-year old oceanographer who had taken a wrong turn” into becoming a technologist. In trying to understand the light show of the cuttlefish in Evie’s book, he discovers a new world of coding, leading him to develop a hugely popular online social media platform called Playground that makes him a multimillionaire.

Cuttlefish light show

Play is a consistent theme throughout the book, which Powers dedicated to his late sister and her playful spirit. There’s the competitive play between Todd and his high school friend Rafi, an underprivileged poet from the southside of Chicago, who battle fiercely to beat each other at chess, the ancient game of Go, and in love. There’s the obvious play of Todd’s online platform. For Evie, the playground in question is the ocean, and it’s one that she feels compelled to return to again and again. And as Richard Powers described in this brief podcast with NPR’s Book of the Day, there’s the infinite game of awe and wonder, enabling us to understand and appreciate our place in the larger world. Given that 71% of the world is ocean that most of us will never explore, it serves as the ultimate vehicle for awe and humility.

Playground abounds with vivid, mesmerizing descriptions of life underneath the sea. The language Powers uses in the underwater scenes is so rich that you can almost feel the current gently buoying you and see the vibrant colors and otherworldly creatures circling around. After finishing the book I spent quite some time hypnotized by underwater videos on YouTube. This one in particular seems straight from the book, with the cleaning stations and playful manta rays.

Playing with manta rays

Playground is truly something. You think it’s a book about oceans, and it is, but it’s also a book about technology and humanity. You will get to the big reveal and want to go back and reread the whole thing (in a good way). Five stars and definitely worth a read.