Playground, Richard Powers - spoilers please, perplexed by the ending
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Anonymous
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Just finished Playground, by Richard Powers. I'm a unique reader for this novel - I'm a trained oceanographer, I know Sylvia Earle, I love the ocean as much as any character in the book. I recognized so many themes, thoughts, creatures, oceanographic history, etc etc as they were spooling out in the book. I know a little (but not a ton) about large language models and AI.
The science and the ocean pieces were EXCELLENT. He got that so, so right. But the ending! I need someone to walk me through it. Maybe I read it too fast and need a reread. SPOILER SECTION BELOW What the heck is real and what is not? Did Rafi die alone? Is Rafi on the island with Ina, or no? (I don't emotionally care as much if Evelyne died in a scuba accident 20 years beore or if she's hiding out on the island in her 90s, but - what? What is real and what is not?) I'm reading along - the referendum wins by one white stone. Change is coming. Todd goes in a self piloted yacht to the island. But then there's this diversion where Ina and Rafi never married or settled together and Rafi died alone. Todd arrives, ravaged by his disease, and presents something - his will? - to Ina, and he's left her everything. Rafi is there. Todd touches him and holds him. Todd dies, and is buried in Ina's massive canoe/plastic sculpture. The rays perform a show at the surface after the casket is buried at sea. Ina uses the money to create wild sanctuaries in the Pacific. But. Rafi wasn't there? Evelyne wasn't there? I googled one site that said the referendum failed. I genuinely am perplexed. THere's a Todd section where he's talking about your grandfather - that's the AI he's created? So Rafi is in the AI? Rafi is there is Todd's mind? Help me out here. I need it spelled out more for me! |
Anonymous
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OK, I re-read and think I figured it out.
Todd has asked the new AI to tell him a story of his death/his friend. He's fed into the AI all the info he has on Rafi, and Ina, their friendship, their relationships, their lives, their entire story. So all the chapters with the italics, told by Todd, are the real story, and everything else is the fiction created by the AI. Rafi died, Evelyne died, the entire island was fictionalized by the AI. Ina and her children exist, and Todd did leave everything to her to take care of the island. Convoluted? I think so. |
Anonymous
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You know how Rafi believed in/followed the philosopher that wanted something about bringing people back from the dead? How the death of his sister made him really want the resurrection thing that I didn't really understand and therefore don't know how to explain?
I thought Rafi and the scuba diver had died, but Todd's gift to Rafi was that he figured out the resurrection thing and that's the version of them existing on the island. But I didn't understand it either. Not sure we were meant to exactly. Re: the referendum, it passed, but then Todd died and left all the money to Ina so the development didn't need to go forward. She used the money for the necessary things like a hospital but was able to keep it limited because of the money (did they buy off the developers or since Todd himself was the main developer did his death mean the main person interested in pursuing the development was now dead?) |
Anonymous
| I am glad I am not the only one who was confused by who was and was not dead. I thought the development couldn't move forward because of the lack of deeds and land ownership questions. The happy ending was that the people's lives on the island were improved anyway with limited environmental impact because of the money that Ina spent. |
Anonymous
I think this is it. But I wasn’t entirely sure at first and read a few spoiler reviews online that support this. Once things started getting off kilter toward the end, I started to wonder if his Lewey body dementia made him hallucinate some of the story. But eventually I clued in that it was AI. It was even harder discern what was happening since I listened to the audio version and didn’t know there were italics throughout the book. I was hoping this would come together like Powers’ The Overstory, which I loved, but while I admire the ambition it just wasn’t as good. |
Anonymous
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I felt it was all part of an elaborate game that continued between Todd and Rafi. The death of Rafi only occurred after Todd had Rafi job clandestinely offered to Rafi. This clued Rafi in that Todd had found him, so his counter was to fake his death and have a letter from Ina to support this.
The final move was Todd securing his life intertwined with Rafi on the island. |
Anonymous
I’m late to the party here, but I just finished reading this book and I’m glad to have found this thread. I didn’t think that the ending was real either. I thought it was just part of the story based on what the AI knew. I think we can assume that Ina invested wisely in the islands, but I just think that was the end of the made up story |
Anonymous
| Maybe I’m just dumb but this is ending left me profoundly wishing I hadn’t wasted my time reading this book. |
Anonymous
| Who's on First? It's the perfect story for the current state of our cell-phone-addicted, gaming, social-media-lying society. AI has the whole story in-hand. Todd has succeeded in creating, or at the least, faking the immortality pondered at the front of the book. Thanks to Powers' power everyone gets what they deserve (and I mean that while listening to the stream coming from the Oval Office and the Courts). Terribly brilliant and complex, its the New Novel. It does take some intense attention to follow, but the work is worth it. AI will educate itself, we can't prevent that. 'Tis a tale told to idiots, full of sound and fury and lies signifying where play can get you. |
Anonymous
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So glad I’m finding this thread bc the ending has me scratching my head. I like the theory that Rafi’s death was faked (supported by Ina’s letter to Todd) and he secretly escaped to Makatea. Yes, they played a game till the end. But I don’t think that the island itself is a creation of AI??? But, I’m happy to be wrong about this. I do believe that Rafi is there at the end when they “bury”
Todd at sea, but then why did Todd leave everything to Ina, and not Rafi? Very obtuse! |
Anonymous
I thought Rafi's death was faked, too, except when Evelyne is ALSO randomly alive on the island, when she'd died 20 years earlier, it cemented for me that the story is AI. Basically, only what's in italics is "real." The rest of it is an AI generated story. |
Anonymous
| … so was the whole island an AI invention? or just the part with evie and rafi? and where todd comes to die? if the island is fiction, did ina get the money from todd? what all was real and what all was the AI story and does it matter? |
Anonymous
If I recall, the parts of the book that was italics was real. The plain text was AI. |
Anonymous
| At first I was confused and frustrated with the ending. But I have come to think it was a brilliant choice by Richard Powers. Rafi and Todd had talked about how AI could keep those we loved alive forever. That’s what the AI in the novel did. And our confusion about what is “real” and what is AI? First of all, this is fiction so none of it is “real!” Second, that is a real issue as we face as AI becomes better and better: what is real, who is human and who/what is AI? See Sam Altman’s Orb - https://time.com/7288387/sam-altman-orb-tools-for-humanity/ |
Anonymous
| I'm pretty sure all his endings are perplexing! |