Book Review: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

 

Book Review: Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published January 2022 by Tordotcom

 

Why do you read Science Fiction? What is it that really draws you in?  I could list many things that attract me. When I was a super young reader I was here for the spaceships, as an adult, my favorite thing in speculative fiction is the political stuff that challenges society. That is one reason why my favorite era of SF in the 20th century is from the New Wave on. As that is when the genre really began to challenge everything.  That is the key to this book CHALLENGE EVERYTHING.

This is my first-time reading Tochi Onyebuchi and I was more than just impressed, this is a masterwork of speculative (rightfully) angry activism that is equally literature. If you are going to read this book there are a few facts you are going to have to accept. This is opinionated fiction, that is meant to challenge the reader not only with a message but in narrative form. The narrative has a throw you in the deep end feel to it. The story is not told in a direct timeline, the structure of the narrative completely changes in the third part which is a major stylistic change for almost a hundred pages. Despite the radical change in form, this part of the book is the beating heart of the story.  The narrative also doesn't hold your hand, it is abstract at times and always requires a mind willing to think deeply about the text. There are times that the story might be confusing for some readers. Not me, but some readers.

 The challenges go even deeper. I laughed when I saw a list of trigger warnings for this book in a review. It is not that these things are funny but in a speculative fiction novel that highlights where systematic racism/ Classism collides with global climate and environmental disaster things will get ugly. As Fishbone would say U-G-L-Y Goliath ain't got no alibi. So trigger warnings will include references to rape; graphic instances of drug use; lots of murder, and death; racism, and racial slurs; references to lynching and suicide; descriptions of police brutality, incarceration, gun violence, and a whole bunch of violence in general. How about this, Tochi is keeping it very very real.

 There is nothing soft, gentle, or politically sensitive about this novel. Which is kind of a pleasant (from my perspective) divergence from much of modern fiction that at times is afraid to push boundaries.  I think the reaction will be interesting as it is a very progressive story politically, but the delivery is zero fucks given warts and all depiction of the post-climate world. Of course, the future TO envisions is one where most of the wealthy have escaped earth to orbital colonies while the marginalized struggle to survive in our mutual home.

I consider this book a masterpiece that has shades of one of my favorite novels of all time John Brunner's 1969 Hugo award-winning Stand on Zanzibar. I thought this book was so damn good that I was curious and looked up a few bad reviews just to see what the negative peeps were saying. TO did lose a fair amount of readers in the first act because people were lost with the slice of life all over the place nature of that first act. This to me was an effective tactic for giving a wide picture of this world. I don't mind being confused as long as the writing is good and interesting moments are involved along the way.  It provided excellent moments like...

“The bedsheets chilled their bodies with sweat-soak, rumpled beneath them. They lay side by side, David and Jonathan, and, behind their blindfolds, they traced the arc their drones made over the earth. Lux levels rose in golden bars just outside their vision as the drones dipped through clouds cover and flew past domed cityscapes. Chicago glowed through a blanket of clouds. The drones swooped upward and dwarf galaxies turned from cosmic smudges into multihued ninja shurikens.”

 This is not only great prose but excellent world-building where we get a view of the have and have nots. The idea that the wealthy colony folk monitor the earth and wistfully watch the planet they left doesn't drive the story forward but it builds the world. In the moment that will sail past many readers. I wasn't sure at the moment what it meant but I was curious. I am not sure why everyone wants to understand everything right away.

John Brunner in 1969 used a similar tactic of storytelling wise, not confining the story to one point of view, and giving a wide scope of points of view. Goliath does this in way fewer pages. Both books separated by half a century share themes and methods, but of course, the points of view of the authors are radically different. It is funny to see come of the same negative comments too. Not me both books are masterpieces and value radically different takes on the same general idea.  Sadly SOZ is hailed now as prophetic for predicting school shootings and reality TV to name just two things, we can only hope Goliath is warning we need, and we avoid this future.

The message as I saw it move from the page into my eyes and straight to my heart was clear. This novel is about the intersection between Racism/Classism and the growing climate change apocalypse. That was Brunner's message as well, but TO's window into it is fresh and vital in a way a book by a radical white Brit in 1968 just can't do anymore no matter how amazing it still is.  

“Had nothing to do with the type of life I lived beforehand. Because I think everybody comes to prison, deep down, wanting that. Or at least some version of that. Who comes to prison wantin’ to be turned into an animal?”

During that third part, the book takes on a historical feel. Based on some real events but pushed into the future and fictionalized this part is inspired by the Attica prison riots. It was at this point that I thought I was detecting the wavelength this book was putting out. There is no greater example of the dehumanization of modern racism than the modern prison industrial complex, something I know far too well as I experienced it as an activist. There are many punishments involved in the imprisonment system but the lack of dignity is the root of so much and this novel expresses that very well. There is no way to write about prison without admitting its dark nature of it. The masks come off, racism is open, the class strata of who is fully given human dignity and who is not is open and on the surface so to me this was a really great choice.

How about an example...

“…Your population of guards is pulling from the rural South Carolina job Market? Lotta poor white people bein’ eft behind while the planet’s getting’ warmer and the rich folk are fucking off to space. A lot of the bad stuff white did to Black folk, they did to these kids. Some of these kids came in beyond hope. They watched their parents get spied on by police and picked up in unmarked vans. Had their first taste of first-gen toasters. They just knew how the whole system was. They knew and didn’t give a fuck. I think it just made them more likely to blow the whole place up. Ain’t no cage for their kind of angry.”

 This is already a reality of the prison COs and the inherent problems in the system but TO extrapolates this into his speculative future perfection. The first generation toasters are AI mech fighters who alongside drones take high-tech police repression to support the ruling elite of this future. The prisons are full of frontline rednecks but the system is supported by technology.

So is the mission statement of this novel this simple...

 “And that is how it started. That’s how…all this got started. The red dust storms, the radiation, the fallout, the war, The Exodusters. All of it.”

A short but powerful moment, but nearly every page of the book contains powerful statements. It is a book that might not be understood when you first go through it. As I started this review I kept talking about the challenge of it.  A brutal and literary David Versus Goliath re-mix that never flinches anyway from the hard is what the genre needed this year. Give Goliath all the awards next year at least nominate it for everything. This is as vital a new sci-fi book as I have read in years. Maybe since Carrie Vaughn's Bannerless, or Rivers Solomon's Sorrowland.

The thing is TO has such a powerful voice, singular in tone, training, and writing ability this book is a miracle of awesomeness I have to celebrate. I am dying to have the author on my podcast, to break down this amazing work.  I will have to read Riot Baby, but this book feels like an author unleashed. Even though it is my first time reading him. So more than anything I can't wait till the next one.