This is Leslie VonHolten with another Radio Readers Book Byte.
Radio Readers listeners will know that I absolutely am not a science fiction reader. The minute someone time travels, or gets on a spaceship, or has a conversation with some other kind of sentient life force not from Earth—well, I am out. No thank you. Would you believe that this is something about myself that makes me sad? I have many close friends who are so into wizards and aliens, and they are wonderful, interesting people! I am even married to a sci-fi nerd. What is wrong with me?
So, I guess I will do a small humblebrag and tell you that I am a little proud of myself to have loved Bewilderment by Richard Powers so much. Granted, I will call this book “sci-fi lite”—the science fiction aspects are so subtle, they are barely even mentioned in reviews of the book. But they are there. Bewilderment is in a near-future world, one so close that even I can see it.
The near future in this book is one where cognitive scientists have mapped the brains of our loved ones, and we thus, with enough training, we are able to meet and feel their emotions. In Bewilderment, this training helps Robin learn to manage his emotions with imaging from his mother’s mind. It is science fiction that provides strength to a vulnerable human. It’s science fiction that I suspect is in the research stages already, as we speak.
But there are other science fiction attributes in the book: namely, a near-future world where the government is no longer working for the people and is instead enforcing draconian infringements on our freedom. Near-dystopia. This sounds familiar, no matter your political beliefs, and is also a common social critique found within the greater body of science fiction, one where the whole dominates the individual. In Bewilderment, this overpowering government is mostly a buzz in the background as we focus on the two main characters of the story, Theo and Robin, father and son. But it represents the many pressures that individuals face in a society that is not working for everyone. In this case, Robin and his autistic, but brilliant, condition.
Although I read Bewilderment as a father-son story with my heart softening at their everyday pain and the work that it takes to raise a child, I missed almost entirely that Richard Powers has written a book with most of the elements of science fiction: Space travel. Mind control and telekinesis. Aliens. And in the case for this book, I will say parallel universes—Theo and Robin as animal-rights vegans, eschewing the many dictates of their Midwestern neighbors and family.
And therefore, I have to say this: thank you, Richard Powers. You have eased me into science fiction. Maybe. You’ve at least made me sci-fi curious.
This is Leslie VonHolten for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club. I encourage you to read Bewilderment by Richard Powers, if you are a science fiction nerd or any other kind of nerd. Find more at HPPR.org, or Like us on Facebook.