Bacigalupi: The Windup Girl review

Paolo Bacigalupi places this tale in the not-too-distant future in the Kingdom of Thailand. Peak-oil has come and gone, and the world has not come up with a good, portable energy source to replace it. Global warming has caused the seas to rise considerably, leaving many coastal cities abandoned to the water. Genetically modified plants and diseases have run rampant throughout the world. Without a good replacement for oil, the societies of the world have changed. Without cheap and abundant energy, much of the culture of today is impossible. Energy is provided by burning methane, the use of genetically engineered animals, human power. Activities are thought of in calories (how many does a person burn to do something) and joules (how much energy can be stored or achieved by various means).

Most of the political borders of the world have been completely redrawn - the Kingdom of Thailand is one of the very few nations that seems to be mostly intact, losing only the southern portion on the Malay peninsula.

Anderson Lake, a man from Des Moines has come to Thailand. He runs a factory making kink-springs that power mechanical devices. But running the factory is actually a cover. He's really in Thailand to find out how the Thai are able to successfully fend off the various diseases and blights that afflict the environment and how his company, AgriGen, can profit from that. But Thailand is on the verge of civil war. The corrupt Ministry of the Environment (which has long protected the kingdom from these plagues) is feuding with the also very corrupt Ministry of Trade (which knows that the kingdom can't survive in complete isolation).

While in Thailand, Anderson meets a windup named Emiko. Windups are genetically engineered humans. They were created in Japan, where an aging population has access to energy but not enough workers. The windups are, in many ways, far superior to humans except they have been engineered and trained to be subservient. Also, they are infertile. Not only that, their movement is so stylized and ritualistic that it resembles clockwork toys, hence the term "windup". Emiko was abandoned by her patron and left in Thailand, where they consider windups to be an invasive species. The owner of a brothel becomes Emiko's new patron. He shields her from the Ministry of the Environment but uses her rather brutally. When Anderson meets Emiko, he becomes infatuated with her. That infatuation leads to many risks and a few interesting opportunities for Anderson's goals.

Then there's Hock Seng, Anderson's factory manager. He lived in Malaya (what is today southern Thailand) before a revolution destroyed his shipping business and left him a refugee in the Kingdom of Thailand. He sees signs of trouble brewing and does what he can to protect himself from repeating his flight from Malaya.

And we have Jaidee and Kanya. Jaidee is known as the Tiger of Bangkok. He was a champion muay thai fighter and now a high ranking officer in the Ministry of the Environment. Unlike other Environment officers, he does not take bribes. Because of this, he's loved by the people and celebrated by the Queen. Kanya is his right hand officer, but she does not share Jaidee's joy in their work, and perhaps holds a secret of her own.

All of these characters get involved in their own way in the conflict between the Ministries of Trade and Environment, between Thailand and the calorie companies like AgriGen.

This is a tale of revolution and civil war. A tale of corporations running governments, like in the bad old banana republic days. It delves into many themes, including the power of money, nature vs. nurture, racism, nationalism, intervention in the affairs of other nations, corporate bio-terroism, and many more. The only problem with this novel is that it touches on so many interesting themes, but does not delve very deeply into any of them. Fortunately, the writing is so good and the characters so well-done that the lack of depth into these themes is not a big issue.



You can also read a couple of short stories that Bacigalupi set in the same world, "The Calorie Man" and "Yellow Card Man" (both Hugo Award nominees):
PDF: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.pdf
HTML: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.html
RTF: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.rtf
Mobipocket: http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/WindupStories.prc


Also, I just heard that this novel won a Hugo (tied with China Miéville's The City and The City which I haven't read because for some reason I just can't get into his books.

/ [Viking]

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