Goliath

by Tochi Onyebuchi

Overview

A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick!

A Most Anticipated Pick for USA Today | Bustle | Buzzfeed | Goodreads | Nerdist | io9 | WBUR | Polygon | The New Scientist

Connecticut Book Award for Fiction winner! Dragon Award Finalist!

"In this ambitious novel, dense with perspectives and social commentary, Onyebuchi dreams up disparate lives in a crumbling future America—with gentrifiers returning to Earth from space colonies and laborers trying to make a precarious living—while leaving room for moments of beauty and humor."—The New York Times, Editors' Choice

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.

In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. As they eke out an existence, their neighborhoods are being cannibalized. Brick by brick, their houses are sent to the colonies, what was once a home now a quaint reminder for the colonists of the world that they wrecked.

A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives—a space-dweller looking at New Haven, Connecticut as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of laborers attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal trying to solve a kidnapping—into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250782953
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/25/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	20,897
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of the young adult novel Beasts Made of Night, which won the Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African, its sequel, Crown of Thunder, and War Girls. His novella Riot Baby, a finalist for the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Ignyte, and the NAACP Image Awards, won the New England Book Award for Fiction and an ALA Alex Award. He holds a B.A. from Yale, a M.F.A. in screenwriting from the Tisch School for the Arts, a Master's degree in droit économique from Sciences Po, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. His fiction has appeared in Panverse Three, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Obsidian, Omenana Magazine, Uncanny, and Lightspeed. His non-fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Nowhere Magazine, the Oxford University Press blog, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places.

Editorial Reviews

11/08/2021

A desolated Earth is the vivid backdrop for this harrowing, visionary sci-fi novel from Onyebuchi (Riot Baby). A highly politicized viral pandemic has divided America, and conservatives who resent regulations leave the planet to establish the first space colony. Radiation and pollution due to climate change soon cause wealthy, privileged parties to follow to the Colonies in a drastic, extraterrestrial form of white flight, leaving the disadvantaged abandoned on the hazardous Earth with little help. Decades later, Jonathan and David, a white couple from the Colonies, move to New Haven with romantic ideas of starting a new life on Earth. The perspectives of Black New Haven laborers Linc and Bishop form a sharp contrast, and they know better than to idealize their circumstances. These are just a few of the large cast Onyebuchi cycles through in a collection of narrative vignettes that allows readers glimpses of a land plagued by the persistent nightmares of racism, gentrification, radiation poisoning, and escalating street violence. Onyebuchi’s biblically inspired cautionary tale offers a hauntingly beautiful portrait of the decaying planet, though the mosaic structure and blurring timelines can sometimes take readers out of the narrative as they work to piece events together. Still, the emotions are raw and real, and Onyebuchi doesn’t shy away from the more heart-wrenching moments. It’s urgent, gorgeous work. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick!

A Most Anticipated Pick for USA Today | Bustle | Buzzfeed | Goodreads | Nerdist | io9 | WBUR | Polygon | The New Scientist

"In this ambitious novel, dense with perspectives and social commentary, Onyebuchi dreams up disparate lives in a crumbling future America—with gentrifiers returning to Earth from space colonies and laborers trying to make a precarious living—while leaving room for moments of beauty and humor."—The New York Times, Editors' Choice

"Goliath contains a sprawling collection of characters making their way across a future Earth—already abandoned by the wealthy—that feels vividly, grimly real. This is an arrival."—John Scalzi

“Onyebuchi sets fire to the boundary between fiction and reality, and brings a crumbling city and an all too plausible future to vibrant life. Riveting, disturbing, and rendered in masterful detail.”—Leigh Bardugo

"A work of stunningly careful craftsmanship on every level. A vision of a future so plausible it’s frightening. Onyebuchi’s at his best here."—R. F. Kuang

“Harrowing, visionary. . . . it's urgent, gorgeous work.”—Publishers Weekly

"An ingenious premise: Onyebuchi suburbanizes outer space and makes battered, almost uninhabitable provincial America the frontier. . . . [He] showcases an impressive range. . ."—The New York Times

"Onyebuchi weaves together disparate tales about those living both on Earth and above it. And through those stories we question who gets to be the hero of any history. This is an epic of biblical proportions, the kind of sci-fi storytelling that feels ever more vital."—Nerdist

"With interweaving timelines and characters, this is a dense read that, like the best dystopias, critiques current political and social problems."—Buzzfeed

"One of our favorite SFF books of 2022."—Polygon

“Goliath is a haunting and incisive look at a world that could very much be our own.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“The premise is wry and au courant. 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.”—The New Scientist

“This brainy, brawny sci-fi story that uses futuristic concepts to comment on 2022 and eternal issues of class, disenfranchisement, and cold, hard capitalism.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Onyebuchi's adult novel debut is a full sensory experience of language and imagery, readers are given a near-future world where race, class, and gentrification still drives the narrative, both on Earth and in the stars.”—Library Journal

"Onyebuchi masterfully pivots through a range of perspectives in nonlinear fashion to create this entirely believable landscape of future history."—WBUR

Praise for Riot Baby | An Alex Award Winner | Winner of the New England Book Award | A World Fantasy Award Winner | An Ignyte Award Winner | A Hugo Award Finalist | Nebula Award Finalist

“Onyebuchi’s voice work is magnificent, sharp and whipping. . . . This book recognizes that intimate knowledge of suffering can be a source of strength, can be sustaining as well as depressing — that we can grieve the inheritance of generations of ancestors’ pain while marveling at their endurance, and recognize that resilience as part of their legacy.”—The New York Times

“Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether.”—Marlon James

“Onyebuchi has woven a story as uplifting as it is heartbreaking, an epic ode to the future and past, tiny acts of resistance, love, and the wild unstoppable sweep of revolution.”—Daniel José Older

“Equal parts provocative and riveting, Riot Baby is what all speculative fiction should strive to be: wholly captivating.”—Salon

“At its core, Riot Baby’s about sibling love, broken communities, loss, sacrifice and harnessing one’s power to break free. . . . An experience and an absolute must-read.”—FIYAH

From the Publisher

01/14/2022

In Onyebuchi's (Riot Baby) adult novel debut, the Earth is no longer the home to all of humankind. Space colonies have been developed, and wealthy and privileged people have left Earth's cities—and their fellow humans—behind. Some of those who stayed on Earth are trying to create a safe existence among of the planet's decaying infrastructure, while others are disassembling the homes and buildings left behind and preparing to ship them to the space colonies so that the wealthy Colony-dwellers can enjoy their comfortable existences inside quaint, historic brick and stone mansions. This scene on Earth is seen through the eyes of several characters, including Jonathan, who hopes that coming to New Haven, CT, will somehow reconnect him to his Colony lover David; and Linc, who demolishes old homes to send their bricks to the Colony and wonders if he can build hope for the future. Violent encounters and a kidnapping bring more characters into the story, and the plot lines are woven together by Onyebuchi's vivid worldbuilding and realistic voices. VERDICT Onyebuchi's novel is a full sensory experience of language and imagery, set in a near-future world where race, class, and gentrification still drive conflict, both on Earth and in the stars.—Kristi Chadwick

Library Journal