Paolo Bacigalupi

First, let's get the obvious out of the way - he needs a new name.

That said The Windup Girl is a fantastic book. PB (there is no way I am typing Bacigalupi more than twice) has, according to the blurb on the back page, written a lot of short stories that won awards and acclaim and some people read. I didn't TS:DR. So Windup is kind of like a first book. Fuck, google him if you give a shit about his biography. I want to talk about TWG.

Yes, this is going to be filled with acronyms. Live with it or go back to looking at kittens that look like celebrities.

TWG takes place after two significant events: the end of oil and global warming fucking everything up. So instead of measuring energy in joules or watts of whatever, they measure it in calories. Easy to forget the calorie is a unit of energy. When characters in the book think about industry they wonder how anyone could get the calories to power such a great enterprise. Which brings us neatly to PB's first wonderful invention - the calorie man. This is the derogatory name for employees for one of the big agri-combos that control most of the worlds food production. They are almost omnipotent in most of the world but Thailand has successfully kept them at arm's length.

Setting the book in Bangkok was another brilliant idea. Anywhere else and the action would have to take place in several different cities but Bangkok is the political, religious, and economic center of Thailand so one stage fits all. And, to my very white, very North American eye the politics and social realities of Thailand could be as fictional as the Windup Girl herself but I wouldn't know. It's extremely weird and very sci-fi to read about murdering rapists deeply shocked by a perceived insult to the Child Queen.

The agri-combos competitions with each other have introduced new pestilences and plagues that have forced most of the world to the brink of starvation and humanity's future is measured in planting seasons. Generippers (genome hackers) try to keep one step ahead of them but everything they come up with must be hidden and protected in case it infringes on the agri-combo's patents. Everything the characters eat is ripped one way or another - by the combines or the generippers.

Up against the calorie men and the Ministry of Trade and just about everyone else are the White Shirts - the kamikaze attack squads of the Ministry of the Environment. The White Shirts combat invasive species, including plagues. They're preferred tool is the torch. They are hated and feared and corrupt as hell.

The other great sci-fi invention is the Windup Girl. Japan have the opposite problem than the rest of the world - too many jobs, more than enough calories and not enough people. So they created New People. And, being pragmatic, they anticipated the desire of New People's owners to fuck them senseless. Think genetically engineered Geisha. They are called windups or heechy-keechy because they were engineered to move in a stuttering / clock work kind of way so no one could think they were human. Except they are people - smarter, healthier, faster, and more intelligent that "from the womb" humans.

What stands out, even in a book that is filled with invention, is PB's view of humanity. It is bleak but not brainlessly so. Some sci-fi I have read recently takes the position humanity being what we are means everything we do must finally be fucked up by our small-mindedness, short-sightedness or other-flawedness. There is nothing so passe as a hero in TWG and no clear villains either. People are self-interested, selfish, flawed and still interesting. The end is bleak but not completely so. If one accepts oil running out will fuck us up and global warming is a threat and yet, senselessly, we are doing nothing about either, PB's view of humanity isn't hard to accept or endorse.

Reading this again it sounds like an amateurish book review. Which I guess it is. I'm trying not to drop any spoilers because TWG is really worth reading if you like sci-fi and so is the follow up The Water Knife. I can't really think of anything profound or even amusing. I blame the fact I'm listening to Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell while I write this. Fucking love this album. So hopelessly cheesy and wonderfully great at the same time. Also Todd Rundgren is a genius.

Fuck it. Buy the book. Read it. Enjoy. Also listen to Bat Out of Hell more. You can skip Two Out of Three Ain't Bad. I give you my permission. If you want to read something at least a little inspired about modern fiction - try my thing about Murakami called "Piblokto Madness". It's a good one.