Review: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Review: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

by Rich Horton

Richard Powers is a very successful literary novelist whose works always address scientific ideas, and often cross the ill-defined border into actual science fiction. He became a bestseller with his 2018 novel The Overstory, about trees and forests. He is roughly my age, and we were at the University of Illinois at the same time (though I didn't know him), so I've long kept track of his work, and I loved his early novel The Gold Bug Variations. He has won a MacArthur Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize, and a National Book Award. 

His most recent novels have been intensely concerned with ecological systems and with ecological catastrophe. Bewilderment, from 2021, certainly fits that template. And it is definitely science fiction -- set in the present day more or less, but in a slightly alternate history.

Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin, with a nine year old son, Robin, who has some problems. Robin presents to this reader, at least, as somewhere on the autism spectrum (quite high-functioning.) He is prone to fits of rage, and he is very sensitive. Also, his mother Alyssa died in an accident a couple of years before the events of the novel -- a loss that has devastated both Theo and Robin. As the novel opens, the two are on vacation in the Smoky Mountains, near where Theo and Alyssa had honeymooned, and we see Robin's fascination with the stars (Theo's focus) and wildlife (Aly's focus.)

Back in Madison, we learn about Robin's troubles in school, and about Theo's impatience with the "medicate first, ask questions later" attitudes of school officials and doctors -- he doesn't think that treatment will help his son. The two are vegan -- learned from Aly, who was an animal rights activist. One of their shared pastimes is virtually visiting simulations of exoplanets, using a program Theo has developed with the intent of understanding how to detect signatures of life in the data from worlds circling other stars. One of Robby's obsessions is following in his mother's footsteps: doing everything he can to protect animals from the ecological devastation caused by humans. In pursuit of this he starts drawing animals from the Endangered Species List, and even stages a protest at the state capitol building.

Under pressure to enter Robin in a treatment regimen, especially after he broke a classmate's cheekbone in an understandable fit of rage, Theo takes up another Professor's offer of seeing if an experimental treatment will help. The technique is real -- Decoded Neurofeedback, or DecNef, and Professor Currier is hoping to use the treatment for emotional problems, indeed, to induce empathy in subjects. Theo and Aly had contributed some early brain state readings, but Theo has come to suspect that Aly and Currier had had an affair. Still, any hope for Robin is worth it, and Robin enters into the program, with good results that become astonishing when he trains himself using Aly's brain scans. Indeed, he begins to feel that his mother is somehow present in his mind.

But all this is set against an horrifying political backdrop. The President is viciously anti-Science, for essentially religious reasons. In many ways he resembles Trump -- though in his case his attempt to overturn an election result is successful. And his stance against science imperils not just the program Robin has been using; but Theo's life work, which depends on the Next Gen Space Telescope, and then on a follow on project which will allow very precise observations of exoplanets. Alongside all this, their are increasing climate-related catastrophes, and serious threats of plagues, and other more mundane issues.

I won't detail the way the book is resolved, though we are given hint after hint. (Most obviously, a book Robin and Theo read is Flowers for Algernon.) But it's a remarkable achievement. I did find myself arguing with it at times, and I do feel that Theo (and perhaps the author) failed to show empathy for some of the characters cast as villains, which I found ironic in a way. But the ultimate message comes through, and does so very powerfully, and the final scene is beautiful indeed. The various themes are wonderfully intertwined -- our empathy, for humans and other species is important. Understanding life on other planets is important. The various different forms of life Theo's simulations show is important. Alyssa's life, death, and lifework is a sort of running commentary. Beauty is everywhere, and so is ugliness and tragedy. And the scientific ideas are not only interesting in themselves but truly reinforce the novel's themes. Even the title is an intertwined them: "bewilderment" at the way people ignore science, "bewilderment" at the way Robin's mind works, and also a command, sort of, to "be wilder", or to engage in "bewilderment" as a sort of analog to "rewilding".

An outstanding book, and one of the best SF novels of the past several years, which, sadly, was not noticed with the field as much as it should have been.