By Kavita Mistry 
by Patricia Rodilosso (United States): This is the story of Planet Ocean. Powers has renamed it from Planet Earth. He describes the teeming life, the fantastical colors, the bizarrely unique life forms. Power’s setting is a teeny tiny atoll within a central Pacific archipelago. It is surrounded by vast ocean. We don’t need no continents. Take a deep dive and enjoy the view!
Playground’s cast of characters is deeply realized. The story starts with childhood friends Todd and Rafi. We become intimate with their childhood dysfunction and psychological drivers. The guys are gamers, and although brotherly, they lock into an epic battle of one-upmanship. Todd invents a competitive social media platform called Playground, and becomes a billionaire. But that’s not why Rafi loses.
A small side criticism: I was not convinced that Todd’s so-called betrayal should have been so devastating. I guess it was the straw that broke the friendship. Clearly, Rafi had grievances piling up due to Todd’s privileged upbringing and racial naivete.
The ocean playground is anchored by the “liberated” Evelyne who is a master diver and oceanographer. She takes us under the sea for scientific and phantasmagorical touring, making friends with gigantic rays. She flames our grief for the polluted, overheated and destroyed ocean. Ina Aroita is the artist and romantic partner who produces massive sculptures from plastic junk picked off the beach. She creates beauty from waste. Ina brings us to her home in French Polynesia on the atoll Makatea.
In Powers prize-winning “Overstory”, I got bored during the dozen introductory character constructions. But this time I knew I was in the hands of master. I let it flow. I allowed the masterful Richard Powers to take me on a character ride. I was rewarded in the finale where, as they say, he pulled it all together.
The character backstory leads to the central problem, given to us from an old text called “The Philosophy of the Common Task” by Nikolai Fyodorov. Starting from random elements, billions of years later evolution created life, then consciousness, then intelligence. Fyodorov posits that evolution will eventually tackle death. Hah! Lets go.
Powers suggests that there is hope for the human species. Forget Mars. We can “seastead”. Forget death, we can recreate ourselves with AI. He gives us a few tidbits of hope for the ocean itself, which has adapted to the mess created by humans. Shipwrecks become reef habitats. Species adapt to the heat. Don’t get complacent however, as Evie urges at the close of her book “without your love, the ocean will die”.
My head was spinning from the admittedly confusing ending and I had a lot to sort out. I read some analysis to help with that. I thought that AI had solved the problem of death and that we were resurrecting physical human beings. It wasn’t clear that they were resurrected in the alternate reality offered by Profunda.
I highly recommend this masterpiece.