We explore these through the eyes of several characters, including colony-dweller Jonathan, who looks out into star-spangled black space from a window in a sterile space station straight out of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. He has a master’s degree in screenwriting, which is on vivid display in his hypnotic descriptions of Goliath’s two new human worlds. Onyebuchi started out writing sci-fi for young adults before reaching a wider audience with the multi-award gobbling novella Riot Baby in 2020. In a lesser writer’s hands, it could lead to lazy and cynical caricatures, but Onyebuchi uses it only as a jumping off point into a deeper examination of the idea of home, and what we will do to get there. Some tourists find themselves captivated by the communities that have emerged, and decide to return to Earth. So, while the rich predictably leave for pristine space colonies, abandoning those who can’t afford to escape, there is money to be made from tourism to the ruins left behind. In Tochi Onyebuchi’s Goliath, human nature is eternal. In the more hopeful, people leave the planet in search of another world where they can start again, with lessons learned and a determination not to repeat the same mistakes. SCI-FI dystopias of a ruined Earth are thick on the ground these days, filled with the wreckage of climate change: drowned continents, great extinctions and air that is no longer safe to breathe.
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