Playground is a 2024 novel by Richard Powers, published on September 24, 2024, by W. W. Norton & Company. It received mostly positive reviews from critics. It was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
In a first-person narration, Todd Keane, a tech billionaire suffering from dementia with Lewy bodies, recalls his childhood growing up in Evanston, Illinois; high school at the elite private school St. Ignatius College Prep in Chicago; his college years at the University of Illinois; and the building of the fictional tech giant Playground, a gamified social media site with similarities to Reddit and Facebook.
Alternating chapters contain a third-person narration describing the lives of three people who had major influences on Todd.
After PlaygroundâÂÂs success, Rafi writes to Todd demanding a payout for his contribution. Todd settles out of court.
Rafi and Ina now live on Makatea with two adopted children. Beaulieu, now in her nineties, is visiting to document the local reef. The island is in the middle of a referendum on whether to open up for development to a consortium of Californian tech companies that is interested in using it as a base from which to manufacture and launch artificial islands.
When Rafi learns that Todd is an investor, he fears the move is part of a scheme to take revenge for the money Rafi got from him. He urges the islanders to vote against it. Makatea agrees to the consortiumâÂÂs request by a single vote.
Todd reveals that the sections of the novel he narrates are spoken to PlaygroundâÂÂs latest model of generative AI, Profunda. The third-person sections are a story it has invented for him based on his own memories and the public lives of himself, his friends and the real Evie Beaulieu. Evie in fact died in her seventies. Rafi died recently of a heart attack, leaving all his money to Ina. Todd admires ProfundaâÂÂs story and asks the AI to finish it.
In the end of Profunda's story, Todd arrives on the island in an AI-piloted yacht. Ina and Rafi understand how ill their former friend has gotten, and they realize that he is not out for revenge. When he dies, he leaves his entire fortune to Ina. She pays for the benefits of development that the islanders hoped for, resulting in an immediate overturning of the referendum results. She and Evie discuss how to spend the rest of the fortune to protect the oceans. Todd is buried at sea with one of InaâÂÂs sculptures.
In March 2026, Warner Bros. Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the book into a film. Plan B Entertainment is producing alongside Brian Swardstrom and Timothée Chalamet, the latter of whom is being courted for the lead.