Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi [Tordotcom Publishing, 2022]

Let's not mess around here: Goliath is one of the most impressive works of science fiction I've ever read. Tochi Onyebuchi's novel bills itself as "a primal biblical epic flung into the future", and it certainly delivers on that sense of both scale and mythology: a mosaic novel set in New Haven, Connecticut, centred on the lives of those left on a radioactive, oxygen deprived Earth by a space colonisation movement that was only ever accessible to the elite, the shifting dynamics as some of the spacefarers begin to return, and the damage that this gentrification causes to communities who have only ever tried to build a safe, comfortable life for themselves. Within that broad framework, Onyebuchi populates his narrative with a range of perspectives and characters, taking us through a meticulous, non-linear journey through their lives and concerns. At the heart of it are two groups, given equally sympathetic portrayals despite their very different positions. There's the young gay couple, Jonathan and David, who are returning from space and whose perspectives are portrayed as sympathetically as any others, albeit with an eye to showing how much their perspectives differ from those already living in the neighbourhood that they consider a blank slate opportunity (in the opening paragraph, Jonathan talks about the warnings he receives about "gangs" who populate Earth, before dismissing them in favour of his enthusiasm for the "shadow country" that is his vision of the planet). And then there's Linc, Bishop and their crew of demolitionists, whose job is to tear down houses (using a very cool bit of futuristic technology with potential for grim malfunctions that are quickly demonstrated) and then stack the bricks left behind so that they can be transported to the colonies. It's through the eyes of Linc and his buddies that we really come to grips with the extent to which the world has been broken, and the inescapably racist dynamics of who suffers from it. The group's banter swings from wild second-hand stories about former house parties to furious deconstructions of their political reality, and it's their reactions which sets the tone for the rest of the novel's politics.

There's no grand showdown or dramatic set pieces in Goliath: Jonathan and David's lives briefly intersect with Bishop, but not in any way that changes the course of the future history we are watching. Instead, Goliath just concerns itself with setting out that history: built, as the acknowledgements demonstrate, from a deep understanding of the dynamics of our recent past and extrapolating them into an era of space travel. The result is a very particular kind of novel: one which demands a lot of attention while reading and isn't in the business of giving instant narrative gratification, but which takes a sledgehammer to a lot of genre assumptions about near future science fiction, including how the sexy, exciting bits of those future get distributed and whose stories we consider worth telling because of that. I expect I'll be evaluating every book set in this narrative space against Goliath for the rest of my days, and I can't think of any better sign of quality than that.

when you foreigners
build your off-world colonies
and relocate in outer space
This is what we will do
We will dance
We will dance
We will dance
to a duck's tune
Ya kut unta pishno ma (we are doing this)
--Leanne Howe, A Duck's Tune

"White Flight" takes on new meaning in Tochi Onyebuchi's new science fiction novel. Men on the Moon, colonies on Mars. Earthlings have taken to the stars leaving their less fortunate brethren behind. Of course, colonization isn't what it's cracked up to be and colonizers soon become homesick. To combat this they take their favorite parts of Earth with them, leaving an already distressed planet in an increasingly dire position. Those left behind have to pick up the pieces, sometimes literally, to survive.

Imagine living in the future, exploring other planets, seeing new sights, and then being bored. Houses have a generic grey with a similar monotone planetary color. No signs of home with cherry blossoms blooming, birds chirping, and even a tumbleweed makes one wistful. Instead of attempting to build a new life, they get lost in the old. Drones circle Earth to take colonizers' homes and send them to distant planets. The wreckage is used by stackers to build and sell to make ends meet. They struggle to keep the lights on. Onyebuchi has a rotating cast of characters covering a seemingly vast amount of time. Characters like Linc keep their folks protected scavenging for parks. David and Jonathan have dreams to go to the stars themselves. Polluted skies cover impoverished areas of the planet, while affluent areas are kept blue to ensure their rocket ships have a clear shot into space. The planet regresses into some post-Civil War wasteland. Eventually, the colonizer's boredom gets the best of them and they return to Earth with gentrification in mind.

Onyebuchi's storytelling style can be a little unorthodox. We jump into scenes without preamble or exposition. It is a series of scenes that make a beautiful whole. It can make the reading slow going, but the experience is very visceral much like poetry.

I personally wasn’t into the book and stopped after Part 1 (~25%). Conceptually, the story is very interesting. It’s hard to say how our readers will feel about it, because the writing style is very unique and the story is slow, heavy, and political.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor for the ARC.

On this episode of Everything is Canon, Steve talks to author Tochi Onyebuchi all about his latest book Goliath, which is described as, “In his adult novel debut, Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and NAACP Image Award finalist and ALA Alex and New England Book Award winner Tochi Onyebuchi delivers a sweeping science fiction epic in the vein of Samuel R. Delany and Station Eleven.”

To listen to the full author interview, click the link below....

https://www.cinelinx.com/off-beat/shows/everything-is-canon-goliath/

Goliath hits you like an anvil. I had to purchase the (beautifully narrated) audiobook to finish this ARC because I felt so heavy and lonely reading it. Gorgeous worldbuilding. Difficult. Affecting.

Onyebuchi delivers another very powerful story. This narrative, like Riot Baby, models how to leverage speculative fiction genre conventions to get into the fabric of structural inequities. The characters exert a magnetic pull to reader identification. This is an area of fiction that is sprouting like bamboo shoots after a rain, and within this rich field of new works, Goliath is a top pick.

This is the story of those who are left behind on a ravaged earth post climate disaster, left to survive and contend with the side effects. To eke out a life, find joy and hope where it can be found. And what happens when those who left, return to lay claim.

This is a dark, ambitious, and hard book that follows a few different individuals' POV basically a series of vignettes of life via a very non-linear structure. The story sharply and bleakly crosses out hope as it relates to equity to be expected if the past is to shape the future. In this scifi world, post-climate apocalypse and post space colonies, this book mirrors the flight of rich white folks from cities and the return with gentrification tools in hand.

While I'm glad I read this, it is a difficult read with a difficult structure, and while it wasn't an enjoyable, its smart and so sharp, I can envision it being studied in classes. And it deserves it.

Thank you to Tordotcom for the gifted copy.

In GOLIATH, Tochi Onyebuchi’s debut novel for adults, a near-future America crumbles under the weight of politicized health crises, environmental catastrophes, and the dual-edged sword of white flight and gentrification.

In the 2050s, America has found itself divided after a viral plague turned political (sound familiar?). Resenting regulations and mandates, many wealthy conservatives have left the country to form America’s first space colony. With the bulk of the country’s funds and resources dedicated to ensuring their safe travel, upper- and middle-class whites have followed, leaving a resource-deficient, polluted and radiation-poisoned ghost country in their wake…not to mention most of the country’s Black and POC citizens, largely disadvantaged and disenfranchised by the country’s racial and political divides.

As a result, Earth-America has become a sort of Wild West wasteland, marked by its radioactive and cancerous air and home to a generation of the forgotten. Those who remain Earth-bound require a face mask to breathe safely. Even then, deadly illness is almost inevitable unless you are one of the lucky few who live in the Dome, where most residents are already augmented with cyber technology that allows them to filter air, detox their systems and even replace entire organs if necessary. But GOLIATH is not about these residents or the space colonizers who came before them.

Onyebuchi invites readers to New Haven, Connecticut, a “world leader in abandoned buildings, shattered glass, and gas stations without pumps.” While America’s underprivileged (read: mostly Black) citizens have been forced to reckon with the collapsing infrastructure left to them, they also have found themselves targeted by police and rationed resources. As the space colonies run low on materials and high on population growth, entire neighborhoods have been dismantled and sent into space. Left homeless, sick and destined for ruin, Earth inhabitants have grown dependent on anything and everything that lets them forget their grief for even a moment: sex, drugs, even destruction. It seems that life cannot get any worse. Then, discontented with the damage they have already wrought, white space colonists begin returning to the world they abandoned to begin a new era of white flight, gentrification and abuse.

In interwoven, nonlinear chapters, Onyebuchi writes in first-, second- and third-person, alternating between passages that read like classic Westerns, others that almost could be documentaries, and still others that bring to mind the best of literary fiction. We meet a team of “stackers” on Earth whose job it is to tear down houses deemed “uninhabitable” and salvage reusable bricks for the colonies; Jonathan, one half of a gay couple who has come to Earth to create a new life for him and his lover, David; and myriad other characters who have been drawn together by the country’s collapse.

Although Jonathan and David, as gentrifiers, play a huge role in GOLIATH, it is Onyebuchi’s profiles of the various stackers --- lovelorn Linc, preacher Bishop, “Atlanta-ass” Kendrick, resourceful Sydney, and so many more --- that form the emotional heart of the novel. In a world where the systems (racial, carceral, medicinal) and the people who continue to uphold them have become Goliath, an unbeatable adversary, the book celebrates the Davids, the survivors forced to topple their broken society and take back the label of “hero.” It is no surprise that Onyebuchi has applied the metaphor to race, but in doing so he provides readers with some harsh truths about America’s foundation and future.

If this sounds like an incredibly ambitious novel, then you clearly haven’t read Onyebuchi’s previous works, especially RIOT BABY. Without a real central plot to drive the narrative forward and several complicated themes to juggle, the book easily could have been weighed down by the pressure put on every scene to deliver. Yet he succeeds on every page by digging into his characters’ deepest pains and exploring the havoc that grief has raged on their psyche, health and sanity.

With deep emotional resonance, a strong biblical theme and tautly written speculative mechanics, GOLIATH is a real powerhouse of a novel. However, I’d be remiss not to mention its celebration of Blackness: the high-stakes tension of a game of spades, the pure poetry of the lyrics of Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar, the abundant energy of an “Atlanta-ass” story. Too often these elements are cast off as “urban” fiction or, if they find their way into (predominantly white) literary fiction at all, praised for “elevating” the culture (as if it arises from a place so low as to require elevation). But Onyebuchi, with his generous, intellectually layered prose, celebrates all of these details and more, making them near-heroic qualities, signifiers of resistance in a world hell-bent on stomping out culture.

Visceral, urgent and terrifyingly clever, GOLIATH is a prophecy in and of itself. Onyebuchi will change the way you think about systemic oppression and the need for resistance. Whether it is with this novel or his next brilliant work, he is sure to leave a lasting mark on the literary world.

Just as I was wending my way through various fantasy worlds, Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi slammed me back into a near future that is just a little bit removed from the ugly realities of today. Onyebuchi’s novella Riot Baby may have been a great outcry of pain, told in powerful prose, but Goliath is a deep examination of suppression of people of color by even well-intentioned white folks. It is wonderfully effective and moving when portraying the details of everyday survival in a radioactive post-apocalyptic USA, maybe less so in extended passages of lightly fictional journalism that tell the reader exactly who’s on top and who’s being ground down in this broken world and why.

Despite a few reservations, Goliath is an absolutely brilliant work that brings to unforgettable life the African American and Puerto Rican characters trying to get by in the poisoned neighborhoods of New Haven, Connecticut. You struggle through days with the Black workers Linc and Bugs as they collapse old houses to strip out bricks to sell to the colonies of White people living in space stations they can see through the stained air. You can feel Timeica’s horror, just as she has a thrilling vision of how life could be for the family she wants, when she sees Wyatt, her lover, spitting up blood and knows his end is near. The details of the struggle to survive in a largely deserted city by homesteading in abandoned houses are as vivid as could be. The simple pleasures of shared experience and the looming presence of disease and death are just as real.

Yet the story begins by focusing on two young men, returnees from the White exodus to space: Jonathan and his lover, David, who want to fix up a place for themselves. Armed with gas masks and warned about “gangs” (read people of color), they seem to be the leading edge of a gentrification movement that threatens the perilous way of life the poor are scavenging out of the ruins of the city. But they are not stick figures. Their lives, especially David’s, are filled out so that you them as well-rounded people, though part of an unjust system, even as they try to break away from it.

The story starkly contrasts the worlds and mindsets of Jonathan and David, who imagine that life is more significant on earth where it is more of a struggle, and Linc, a Black worker trying to build a home in a land so poisoned that the fortunate people either live under a dome or use a gas mask. Linc and his friends are not fortunate and have to work in the open air. David leaves behind his ailing mother, one of the pioneers in establishing the space colony, who sees in his desire to return to earth the same adventurous spirit she had. Linc earns a sketchy living by salvaging from old houses and stacking the bricks that will be sent to the space colony. While he participates in a system that often pushes Black families out of their homes, Linc is trying to preserve a family life of his own. Though Jonathan and David see themselves as fleeing the privileged world of space colonies, inevitably they participate in a post-apocalyptic form of gentrification, as part of a new generation of Whites taking over the houses of Black people.
........

This is not a novel of twisty plot and high adventure. It’s future realism that projects from our present into an all too plausible tomorrow of a wrecked world where people still have to survive and make do with what they have. Onyebuchi moves from one point of view to another, from the White returnees to the Black workers, weaving in stories of their pasts, always deepening the sense of each character. I found reading Goliath more and more enriching as I dwelt on the details of the winding narrative, going over different sections several times.

It’s a book to be read slowly to let its riches reveal themselves. It’s literary science fiction at its best, like The Book of Strange New Things or Central Station, that draws you back again and again.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF. I couldn't get with the non-linear story telling, and it just wasn't pulling me in.

I read and enjoyed Riot Baby, but this one I had difficult time connecting with. Unfortunately it ended up as a DNF, but not for lack of trying. I think the ideas at the heart of Goliath were interesting, but I couldn't quite get into it. I'll try his next book, though!

A decimated earth from irreversible macro-climate change, where privileged wealthy whites have fled to space colonies and black and brown people have been left behind to barely get by, frames this provocative and disturbing dystopian novel. It’s a sweeping indictment of our current country through the microcosm of a future New Haven in the 2050’s– from the haves to the have-nots, institutionalized racism, white flight, gentrification, and irreversible climate change. Throughout the novel, Tochi points out to instances of current environmental collapse that particular impacted the poor, such as Cancer Alley in Louisiana in the shadow of rubber plant waste.

On desolate radioactive earth, local black workers assisted by drones take down disintegrating uninhabited houses while scavenging bricks for sale, violent gangs rule the streets, drug use abounds, and government drones and robots try to maintain order but mostly in protection of the wealthier private neighborhoods. Children find solace and a shred of hope in some wild horses discovered in what remains of a forest. With so much energy put into surviving, the people left behind never can summon themselves to all out revolt.

Tochi drives home mockery of white liberalism where the original white colonists while aware of and sympathetic about racism ultimately seek to protect their own power and wealth. The more privileged whites who stayed planet-side have augmented themselves with bio-technology, including detoxing their systems. They wear face masks, try to erect protective filtered air domes, or get mechanically augmented lungs to lessen the effects of toxified polluted air.

Meanwhile, bored by the confinements of space, great grandchildren of the colonists come back to resettle the abandoned Earth, now reverse pioneers where they face local hostility. Earth for them is the new going West to seek their fortune and try to escape personal problems plaguing them in their space lives.

All this culminates in slim hope for humanity, with our current inaction on protecting the environment and racial divides setting the stage for near future apocalypse.

This book was a journey for me. On my first read I was very confused and disconnected and was thinking of dnfing it until I was in the right headspace but I continued and trusted the author and I am so glad I did cause I really loved this story and ended up re-reading it right away after finishing. Its dense in its writing, it will not hold your hand with the non-linear narrative structure and it will reference things without explaining it to you on page. Despite these barriers I thoroughly enjoyed my journey with this piece of literature. You can tell research and thought went into predicting this near future apocalypse and its one of those modern sci-fi books I can see becoming a classic.

[#partner Tordotcom]

📖I have a new book review up today for @thenerdaily!📖

After loving RIOT BABY, Tochi Onyebuchi’s adult debut GOLIATH was one of my most anticipated reads of 2022. I have to admit it won’t be making my best of the year list, though. ☹️

Check out some of my pros and cons below, then follow the link in my bio to read the full review!

“… Goliath is a wild ride of a story, incorporating reflections upon and imitations of so many—perhaps too many— current events and issues: a viral pandemic, economic recession, racism, classism, gentrification, even ventures of the wealthy into outer space, to name a few. Onyebuchi gushes forth a barrage of ideas, of words; which on one hand serves a function in spinning a tale as complex as the issues he is tackling here, but on the other hand creates a constantly meandering narrative which is difficult to connect with …

Despite these reservations, Onyebuchi is undoubtedly a skilled writer at the sentence level; his words set a clear tone here. Line after line slice through with smart commentary on the systems that constructed and continue to uphold racism and classism in America, an obvious yet necessary warning for a planet in peril from both its own climate and those who inhabit it …

… For readers who may begin the novel feeling perplexed or disinterested, the payoff is there in the second half if one can hold on long enough to watch the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place. It remains to be seen, however, if readers will do so, as the first half of the novel proves considerably more difficult to engage with.”

hhhhmmmm., I think the problem with this book is that there is way too much going on and that "too much" keeps readers distracted and very confused. It all read like a bunch of thoughts thrown together, no correlation just rambling plots.

This book is probably smarter than me. No, this book is definitely smarter than me, and that is why I didn't fully get it. Like- don't misunderstand, I got the importance of it- of the experience of its characters, the gentrification of its world. I just. Look, I mostly had no idea what was happening? Or, I suppose, if anything was? All of that said, I had an incredibly difficult time rating and reviewing, because it absolutely has merit and good points, but I also felt like parts of it were a bit unappealing to a reader.

As the story begins, we're introduced to quite a few characters. It was a lot, but I did sort out who was who after some time, and did become invested! And then... bam, we switch to some other people's stories and I am sure those people's stories are important too, but I was invested in those other guys which took a lot of time and... whew. It was just overwhelming, is what I am saying. Add to the many points of view, it's told in quite a non-linear way, which sort of went over my head.

To be clear, I did understand the main points, and they're certainly worth reading about, without question. The characters whose stories I did fully grasp, I did deeply feel for, which was great, and that alone makes the book worth reading. The author is an incredible writer (and I wholly recommend Riot Baby, while we're on the topic), and I love reading his work, I just didn't click as much with this story format as I'd hoped.

Another part that was really incredible was the world building. I mean, all the awful rich white guys who destroyed the environment use their money to just... leave? Yeah, that tracks. And then when that isn't as fun as they'd hoped, they come back and kick POC out of their houses? Again, sounds like something deplorable that would absolutely be happening in a few decades. That is the best/worst part of the book- its staggering believability. The best, because the author paints this picture so well. The worst, because as a society, we are still being like this. But just as with Riot Baby, the accuracy of this book will and should infuriate you.

Bottom Line: There is definitely a lot worth reading here, tons of fabulous commentary, but done at a much slower pace with a lot of characters to digest.

CWs: depictions of vomit; references to rape; graphic instances of drug use and addiction; descriptions of corpses, murder and death; racism, anti-Blackness, and racial slurs; references to lynching and suicide; descriptions of police brutality, incarceration, violence, and gun violence

I remember when I first heard Tochi talk about his inspiration for this book during an interview for Quarantined Pages (hosted by Britney of Melanin Eclectic) where he described it as "gentrification in space". Cue everybody in the audience absolutely *losing* their mind. To see the story go from a buzzy tagline in a video interview to becoming a fully-fledged novel is so gratifying, especially as a reader.

Goliath is a novel that is incredibly cerebral and abstract. It patchworks together a ton of different characters and perspectives in this not-so-distant vision of the future where those with the means to do so have left the planet for dead in favor of colonizing space. Though Goliath is very much a sci-fi story, it's also firmly grounded on earth as it strives to explore how systemically "forgotten" characters attempt to build their own future from the ruins.

This is a constantly-shifting kaleidoscope of a story where the reader is almost secondary to the storytelling process. It's one of those reading experiences where the world-building is fully-realized and the reader is left to try and catch up on their own as they go. In that way, it's a story that refuses to hold the readers hand at any point, which is something I really respect. This is a story that's best enjoyed slowly, because it forces you to engage, to be present and attentive, and I think the pay-off is worth that little bit of work.

What really struck me about Goliath is its sense of urgency. The story is set in the not-so-distant future, and even though it paints a completely different planetary landscape, it feels eerily familiar and realistic. It reads more like an inevitable trajectory for humanity as opposed to a fictional futuristic projection that spontaneously sprang from the author's imagination. I think what Tochi has highlighted so well is that the issues under-served communities are facing now are the same ones they’ve always faced and the same ones that they will *continue* to face if nothing changes. This vision of the future illustrates how even after the system "collapses," it will continue to function as intended to further marginalize already-vulnerable communities.

I also really appreciate the way Tochi develops dialogue between his characters, because it feels real. He allows characters to talk to each other in the discordant, chaotic way that people actually speak, where there's no way to tell where one thought begins or ends. Every conversation feels like being dropped right in the middle of a story at its climax, but it also feels familiar and grounds the reader amidst this new futuristic technology and landscape.

Above all, I think the question at the heart of this story is how do we understand and determine “value,” especially when it comes to society, community, and people themselves? What kind of legacy are we creating and imparting when we become comfortable with erasing people and leaving them behind, and who are we allowing to be heroes? I think the story presents a really interesting take on those questions, and even though I had some minor issues with the structure of the story towards the end, I still think it gets that message across very effectively.

If you enjoy gritty sci-fi, social commentary, and complexly character-driven narratives that ask big questions about humanity and the future, then Goliath is absolutely the book for you. I continue to be excited by the SFF worlds Tochi Onyebuchi is excavating from his imagination, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Happy Release Day to Goliath!

Thank you to MacMillan/Tor for the reader copy. This did not influence my thoughts or opinions.

I enjoyed this adult dystopian, sci-fi as I seem to be on a massive sci-fi kick lately. The year is 2050 and Goliath explores the lives of those left on Earth, as the wealthy have colonized space.

I liked the storytelling in vignettes and intersecting stories. Although this takes place in the future, it still feels familiar to today, and that is frightening in and of itself.

I received an ARC of Goliath from Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review.

I seem to have bad luck with books called Goliath. Scott Westerfeld’s Goliath left me disappointed a decade ago, and now I’ve had the same experience with Tochi Onyebuchi—but with a key difference: Onyebuchi’s Goliath is much better than Westerfeld’s. The problem this time is that I had difficulty connecting with the characters because the book doesn’t feel like it was properly assembled—it reads like a half-baked collection of short stories gerrymandered into a novel, and the juxtaposition of the vignettes causes them to clash rather than complement one another. I know there’s a good book here; unfortunately, I was unable to find my way to it.

Goliath takes place in the 2050s, and the US has become like Detroit on a macro scale—the haves are leaving Earth for space colonies, and the have-nots are being left behind in a world that is crumbling into disrepair. The story is splintered between several characters who each reveal a different facet of this “not with a bang but a whimper” apocalypse, and I do mean splintered: the POVs do not mesh neatly, and that may well be the point, but I found it exceedingly difficult to transition from one character to another, and I repeatedly put the book down because I was flung out of the story by these switches and then struggled to get back in again. It’s frustrating.

That said, there’s a lot to like in Goliath. Onyebuchi’s prose is rich and dense, the kind that forces you to slow down and take it in small bites, like a too-sweet dessert. It’s exquisite writing. This is also a Smart Book for Smart People™—it is saturated with socio-political commentary and literary allusions (surprise: there’s a character named “David” in this novel called Goliath), and I sometimes found myself struggling to hold on as Onyebuchi added layer after layer after layer. This is the kind of book I probably would have had a better experience with if I had engaged with it in a classroom setting, which has made a major difference for me before.

I’m not sure what to do with Goliath. I didn’t enjoy reading it, and I didn’t feel enriched by it. But I’m not comfortable claiming it’s a bad book—quite the opposite. I found some passages to be legitimately breathtaking; the first page of the novel is nothing less than a masterclass in worldbuilding, and Onyebuchi consistently demonstrates an extraordinary command of language throughout the book. But I can’t shake the feeling that this novel would have better achieved what it wanted to do if it had been restructured into a collection of interlinked short stories and allowed its characters to have cleaner and more contained arcs within their shared world.

Whether Goliath works for you, I suspect, will depend less upon the kind of stories you like than upon how you like your stories told. Even though it didn’t work for me, I would encourage you to give it a shot and find out for yourself.

The concept of this one sounds fabulous. Unfortunately, it just didn’t carry over into the story.

The time line was choppy, there was not noticeable character development, the world was fascinating but just didn’t carry the story well enough. I found myself confused multiple times.

Thank you to Tor Dot Com for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review!