Playground

by Richard Powers

How did he get here? How did any of them? Every organism, terrestrial or aquatic, every path a mystery. The journey in all its immense unfolding through this ocean world: What can it mean? The author of all this richness does nothing but find the next most likely word.

Keane sees how he terrifies them, simply by being strange and dying. But there’s nothing he can do to change either of those performances now.

They work as if there is no work here on Earth except homegoing.

Nicholas Hoare’s doctoral thesis, Re-Mining Makatea: People, Politics, and Phosphate Rock, provided invaluable background and insights into that singular island. Guy Stevens and Thomas P. Peschak’s Manta: Secret Life of Devil Rays astonished me. Evelyne Beaulieu’s biography draws on the life of Dr. Sylvia Earle, especially as recounted in Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans.