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The Windup Girl

(The Windup Universe #1)

Paolo Bacigalupi (Goodreads Author)

3.75 · Rating details · 68,765 ratings · 6,485 reviews

Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...

Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; ...more

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Paperback, 361 pages

Published May 1st 2010 by Night Shade (first published September 2009)

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Speculative Fiction of Southeast Asia

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Jun 11, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Long, scorching days are science fiction/fantasy weather. Back when I was in middle school, after quitting baseball but not quite when I could take the L across town to Wax Trax, I would walk the four or five miles to the Harlem-Irving Plaza a couple times a week. The mall had a Waldenbooks, and off to the right about three quarters toward the back (if you were standing at the entrance) stood the science fiction/fantasy section. I would take my hard-earned cash from umpiring t-ball games (actual Long, scorching days are science fiction/fantasy weather. Back when I was in middle school, after quitting baseball but not quite when I could take the L across town to Wax Trax, I would walk the four or five miles to the Harlem-Irving Plaza a couple times a week. The mall had a Waldenbooks, and off to the right about three quarters toward the back (if you were standing at the entrance) stood the science fiction/fantasy section. I would take my hard-earned cash from umpiring t-ball games (actually, that was a great job) and purchase books from writers like Roger Zelazny and Phillip Jose Farmer. Then I would walk home, slip into the air conditioned house, and read for hours. Each summer since I pick up one or two science fiction/fantasy books come July, drifting toward William Gibson, Neil Gaiman, Stephenson, etc. A few weeks back I heard someone compare Bacigalupi to Gibson and noticed the novel face-forward displayed at Barnes and Noble. I checked the library reserve list and snagged one of the first copies in the system. Score.

Nah, only about half a score. The novel functions as an interlocking set of characters’ stories in Thailand after the “contraction”, in which the world’s people struggle to redefine existence without fossil fuels or an expansive food source after a series of plagues and famines. The United States is fractured into different republics and the Midwestern seed companies have risen to multinational power. Dirigibles carry genetically modified rice across the globe and scientists race to stay one step ahead of the next genetic disaster. Thailand is hot (as, um, the author reminds the reader about every third paragraph) and the rising water serves as a constant threat to a one of the last remaining cities in Southeast Asia. Bacigalupi creates a fascinating and realistic future complete with spring-technology (no oil, remember) and “Wind-Up New People” created by the Japanese. His vision retains elements of the past as if the elements were rusted, unidentifiable metal pieces in a vacant lot and scavengers were trying to assign them value.

Here’s the problem. Bacigalupi writes as if he’s a reporter. The Wind-Up Girl carries a bloodless, clinical quality that I couldn’t quite transcend. I didn’t care much about the characters and the money-shot plot developments weren’t that alluring. My heart didn’t race and, while I was interested in the storyline, I was interested in the “when the hell is this novel going to really start?” way. The middle third is probably the best, really, as I felt like the book picked up around page 100 but lost steam around page 325. I admired the framework and intellect inherent in The Wind-Up Girl, but I admire the same about, I don’t know, those doorstop best sellers from David McCullough about American history that I will never read. So The Wind-Up Girl is good, but not much fun, and I feel a little cheated. This might be my fault, to be fair, as I was looking for something like Snow Crash or Pattern Recognition and Bacigalupi is, well, Bacigalupi. He’s smart and talented, but were this book and me at a party, I would politely excuse myself before the novel started telling me a long story about what he heard on NPR that day or something.
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Apr 05, 2012 Jeffrey Keeten rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“We rest in the hands of a fickle god. He plays on our behalf only for entertainment, and he will close his eyes and sleep if we fail to engage his intellect.”

In Paolo Bacigalupi's imagined future, Bangkok has become a simmering stew pot of paranoia, brutality, despair, and betrayal. Genetic manipulation has brought the world to the brink of extinction. With great advancements also came tragic mistakes. Blister rust, Cibiscosis, the Genehack weevil brought death and famine. The very compani ...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Paul Bryant rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: sf-novels-aaargh

The Story of Goldilocks and the Three Authors

Once upon a time, a little girl named Goldilocks decided to go for a walk in the forest. Very soon, she came upon a house made of books.

She knocked at the door but no one answered, so being a rather bold and sassy little girl, she walked right in.

At the table in the kitchen, there were three science fiction novels. The first one was called The Wind-Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Goldilocks began to read. “Ugh!” she exclaimed, “This plot is too cold, no ...more

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Mar 10, 2012 Nataliya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Nataliya by: Catie

Shelves: hugo-nebula, 2012-reads, locus-winner, location-is-the-true-protagonist

My grandmother reads food labels to see if they contain any genetically modified products. I used to laugh at it. Now, after reading The Windup Girl, I'm tempted to take a closer look at the food labels myself.

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl is a bleak and depressing story set in the future run by calorie monopolies, where genetically modified products and manufactured foodborne plagues have wiped out the foodchains, wars are waged for precious seeds, and quarantines for food-borne diseases a My grandmother reads food labels to see if they contain any genetically modified products. I used to laugh at it. Now, after reading The Windup Girl, I'm tempted to take a closer look at the food labels myself.

Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl is a bleak and depressing story set in the future run by calorie monopolies, where genetically modified products and manufactured foodborne plagues have wiped out the foodchains, wars are waged for precious seeds, and quarantines for food-borne diseases are a must. Calories are precious - a hilariously sad concept in the modern obesity-epidemic world where calories are our worst enemy, if you believe TV ads. Genetic engineering is not limited just to food - there are genetically modified humanoids as well, viewed as property in some countries and abominations that need to be destroyed in others.

"We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it."

The Windup Girl raises a question common to sci-fi novels - how far can science go before it becomes threatening? To which lengths can people take playing God? On one hand, the scientific advances in medicine and agriculture are necessary to make our lives better, to feed the ever-expanding population, to cure the ever-aging population. On another hand, the eventual impact of these scientific advances is unknown, and will it be too late when we figure it out? Will it be too late when the genetic weapons and other scientific advances find their way into the hands of companies greedy for immediate profit? It is already happening, let's not kid ourselves, but will it eventually destroy the world as we know it? Or is the future change as portrayed by Bacigalupi a part of evolution, a part of the strongest-survive doctrine?

"Everyone dies." The doctor waves a dismissal. “But you die now because you cling to the past. We should all be windups by now. It’s easier to build a person impervious to blister rust than to protect an earlier version of the human creature. A generation from now, we could be well-suited for our new environment. Your children could be the beneficiaries. Yet you people refuse to adapt. You cling to some idea of a humanity that evolved in concert with your environment over millennia, and which you now, perversely, refuse to remain in lockstep with.

Blister rust is our environment. Cibiscosis. Genehack weevil. Cheshires. They have adapted. Quibble as you like about whether they evolved naturally or not. Our environment has changed. If we wish to remain at the top of our food chain, we will evolve. Or we will refuse, and go the way of the dinosaurs and Felis domesticus. Evolve or die. It has always been nature’s guiding principle, and yet you white shirts seek to stand in the way of inevitable change."

'What is natural?' is another question of this novel. Again, it resonates with the present-day obsession-fad with everything 'green', organic, sustainable, unmodified, 'natural'. What can we reject as unnatural? IS there even such a notion? In Bacigalupi's novel, the genetically modified 'windups' are viewed as something less than human, an abomination, a soulless property - because they are test-tube created, engineered, unnatural. But is it ever fair to make such a distinction? The knee-jerk response is 'no'. But we already live in the world that denounces certain lifestyles, certain preferences, certain viewpoints as 'unnatural' - and uses that as an excuse for discrimination and unequal treatment. Is is protecting the 'natural' or blatant discrimination? Depends on your viewpoint, I guess. In the world of genetic destruction that Bacigalupi created, such horrifying treatment of the windups is perfectly understandable to the surviving society but terrible to us. Would many of our conventions based on our ideas of natural and unnatural seem just as horrific? (I'm afraid they would, by the way.)

"“My body is not mine,” she told him, her voice flat when he asked about the performances. “The men who designed me, they make me do things I cannot control. As if their hands are inside me. Like a puppet, yes?” Her fists clenched, opening and closing unconsciously, but her voice remained subdued. “They made me obedient, in all ways.” And then she had smiled prettily and flowed into his arms, as if she had made no complaint at all."

The style of this novel is oppressively bleak. There is nothing uplifting, nothing cheerful; even the events that may lead to hope and satisfaction are only hinted at, and we don't know whether they will ever happen. The badness is palpable, the goodness is hinted at. This is not a novel for a leisurely read. This is not a feel-good story. It is a story that keeps bringing you down and throw you into a depressed mood. And yet I loved it, every page if it. I loved that the bleakness made it so realistic, and, more importantly, made you think - because it's thinking that makes you human. I love that there were no easy ways out of the situations, and yet little glimpses of simple humanity were so heart-warming, even if not always resulting in anything tangible. I loved the absence of info-dumps, and Bacigalupi's obvious respect for the intelligence of his readers, and his refusal to spoon-feed us the information. I loved that there was never a black-and-white approach to anything, including the main characters who are as deeply flawed as you can ever imagine. I loved how, despite my attempted refusal to go any deeper into this hopeless world, something kept bringing me back to this story day after day after day.

I loved this book despite the bleakness and the complete lack of the fell-good factor. I highly recommend it, especially to sci-fi fans. 4.5 stars. This book is a true gem!

"We are alive. We are alive when whole kingdoms and countries are gone. When Malaya is a morass of killing. When Kowloon is underwater. When China is split and the Vietnamese are broken and Burma is nothing but starvation. The Empire of America is no more. The Union of the Europeans splintered and factionalized. And yet we endure, even expand. The Kingdom survives."

...more

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Jun 07, 2010 February Four rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommended to February by: Hugo Awards

Caveat: I am Malaysian, and I am a Hugo voter who is reading the Hugo consideration edition. I hated the book so much I stopped reading it without even getting to the titular character Emiko. Make of that what you will.

Here is my biggest problem with this book: the name of my country is MALAYSIA. Not Malaya. MalaySIa. I don't mind as much if Andersen Lake gets it wrong--he's portrayed as an asshole who doesn't bother to get the local cultural details right anyway, and he seems quite racist to me ...more

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May 20, 2012 Lyn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is a biopunk novel that won the Hugo Award in 2010 along with China Mieville’s The City & the City.

I picked up the book because I also enjoyed City and the City and because I was intrigued by the genre “Biopunk”. The novel is full of referenced to “gene ripping” and DNA experimentation and also a great deal of examples of how such experimentation can go terribly wrong as some new invasive species have taken over as readily as kudzu on a roadside hill in Alaba The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is a biopunk novel that won the Hugo Award in 2010 along with China Mieville’s The City & the City.

I picked up the book because I also enjoyed City and the City and because I was intrigued by the genre “Biopunk”. The novel is full of referenced to “gene ripping” and DNA experimentation and also a great deal of examples of how such experimentation can go terribly wrong as some new invasive species have taken over as readily as kudzu on a roadside hill in Alabama.

Set in “post-contraction” Thailand (meaning that the world’s expansion economy has collapsed and regions are more isolated and poverty stricken) the novel sets up a long foundation that examines and explores life after two centuries of global warming where sterile gene ripped agriculture has created a wasteland, calories have become currency and the world is always only one step ahead of the next mutation of plague and crop blighting infestation.

The world Bacigalupi has created is ugly, brutal, feral and teaming with corruption and survival strategy. At the heart of the novel is Emiko, a Windup, meaning that she has been genetically engineered to be a “new person”. Subjected to years of abuse, neglect and forced prostitution, her significance is as a vehicle for the author to explore the origins of soul and what it means to be alive in an ever changing, frequently hostile environment. If this is a dystopian novel, and I could see someone placing it in this sub-genre, it is at least a very pragmatic and unique vision.

The novel is full of well-developed characterizations and has a group dynamic that is both entertaining and compelling. His ideas are fresh and thought provoking. My only criticism is that he takes a long way to get where he is going, albeit that he uses the reader’s time wisely by setting up the denouement in such a way that if the reader can get to the last quarter of the book he is well rewarded as the ending is satisfying and brought together well.

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Oct 20, 2016 Kevin Ansbro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Kevin by: Apatt

Shelves: dystopian, immorality, misogyny, urban-fantasy, human-cruelty, morality, sci-fi

"She can barely remember the last time she slept without pain or fear, and she is groggy with it. The rooms are dim, lit only by the glow of the street's gaslights flickering alive like fireflies."

As I begin my review, I would like to 'fess up and state that dystopian novels really aren't my thing. Prior to reading this, I felt dystopian to be a by-word for introspective, poorly-written tosh.
I even swore an oath that I would rather tip Tabasco onto my eyeballs than ever read anything resembl ...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Apatt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, favorites

I just realized something, neologisms - like bow ties - are cool. Explaining made-up words in a glossary or through infodumps is uncool. Nowadays sf authors seem to delight in making up new words and leave the readers to figure out their meaning through context. Depending on the skill of the author this can be an exercise in frustration or a lot of fun for the readers who like a bit of challenge.

Plenty of newly minted words in The Windup Girl, plus lots of Thai words which are equally unexplaine ...more

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Jun 25, 2012 carol. rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: awards, urban-fantasy, nebula, hugo, my-library, my-library-hardcover

Interesting and provoking. Misleading title; I kept waiting for the story to focus more on the wind-up girl. Perhaps it should have been called The Company Man.

It's one of those dystopian allegories where she represents something or other to a guy that is involved in exploiting the world. I think. I should have wrote a better review. Interesting message, uncomfortable delivery.

His vision of the future is very dark, and I think he spends a lot of time, in all his works, exploring the fractures i ...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Suz rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: borrowed, award-winner, book-club, dystopian, science-fiction

Wow, this book was immensely unsatisfying.

And for the life of me, I don't know why it's won so many awards, accolades and general love from so many people.

The story takes place in Bangkok, after the "Contraction" (both peak oil events and the general destruction of the ecosystem, complete with plagues cause a collapse in society as we know it and quality of life), where a host of not-quite-interesting characters interact. Everything from eco-terrorist types trying to keep their country clean and ...more

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Jun 14, 2010 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: goodest-reads-2010, 2000s, fiction-that-speculates, most-popular-reviews

Try to picture a world where big corporations own the rights to the food we eat, and engineer it specifically so that the seeds can't be reused. Picture a world where the natural resources are steadily depleting, but everyone is still trying to act as if nothing is wrong. Picture a world where technology is barely managing to address the problems of the moment, and perhaps won't be able to keep up in the face of unexpected catastrophes.

That wasn't too hard now, was it?

The best science fiction i ...more

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Nov 17, 2013 David Putnam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

This is my top favorite book in the fantasy genre, it blew me away. The world he created felt so genuine and real. If you are a fantasy reader give this one a whirl, you won't be disappointed.
No but it is near future after GMO has ruined the world. I don't know if your into fantasy but this is a fantastic book. It swept the scifi awards, The Hugo Award for best Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novel John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, Seiun Award for Best Translated Nove ...more

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Aug 20, 2016 Simona B rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2000, science-fiction, in-italian

The Windup Girl belongs to a very specific category of novels that make my heart ache as if it were being ripped open from the inside; said category being, great-concept-poor-excecution.

At page 100 (around 25% into the book) I still had to figure out what all the fuss was about. While I should have been eagerly wondering what was going to happen next, the one question that haunted me was "Why am I even reading this?", or, "What's the point of the whole thing?". I think the book failed to get my ...more

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Nov 28, 2009 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, playing-god

The wife got me a cool gadget for Christmas. It’s a LED flashlight that is powered by turning a little crank on it so I won’t be cursing a lack of fresh batteries when I need it. In The Windup Girl, I could make some money by cranking that flashlight for someone.

It’s set in Thailand after corporate warfare between agricultural firms went biological. In the process of trying to taint the other guy’s crops, most of the world’s food supply is now perpetually at risk of being overwhelmed by the next The wife got me a cool gadget for Christmas. It’s a LED flashlight that is powered by turning a little crank on it so I won’t be cursing a lack of fresh batteries when I need it. In The Windup Girl, I could make some money by cranking that flashlight for someone.

It’s set in Thailand after corporate warfare between agricultural firms went biological. In the process of trying to taint the other guy’s crops, most of the world’s food supply is now perpetually at risk of being overwhelmed by the next genetic modification. Global warming is causing massive restrictions on carbon output and oil based fuels are gone. With limited coal and methane allowed to be burned, most energy comes from muscle power. Kinetic energy is harnessed in kink-springs and released as needed. The springs are wound by genetically modified elephants called megodonts or old fashioned human muscle power. With food limited and muscle power at a premium, calories are the new currency.

A ‘calorie man’ named Anderson Lake is under cover from one of the corporations trying to find untainted foodstuffs to use as the basis for further modifications, and he thinks he’s got a line on a rogue geneticist and Thailand’s seed bank. His life is complicated when he gets infatuated with a New Person named Emiko. She’s a windup girl, genetically engineered to serve by the Japanese and abandoned in Thailand by her former master, and she’s now essentially a slave at a sex club. Anderson’s ambition to get his hands on Thailand’s seed bank conflicts with several other characters such as a Thai environment official desperately trying to keep corruption from allowing his country to be overwhelmed like the rest of the world and an exiled Chinese factory foreman who wants to rebuild his shipping business by stealing plans for a new type of spring from the factory that Anderson runs as a cover.

Bacigalupi did some serious world building in this book. A Thai society that barely managed to save their food supplies when most of the rest of the world wasn’t so lucky, but is about to be undone by the corruption within it’s own government was fascinating in itself. Add in the idea of an energy starved world clinging to the remnants of high technology, and some unique and fully formed characters and you’ve got one helluva good sci-fi story.

My only real complaint is that the author never offers any explanation as to why solar or wind or water power aren’t utilized. He put so much thought into creating the rest of this rich and detailed setting that it’s a little odd that nothing is ever mentioned about it, but that’s a minor complaint about a great story. ...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Catie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books, sci-fi, read-in-2011, audio

This is the kind of book that unceremoniously dumps you in the middle of a teeming, noisy world and demands that you sink or swim. Oh, and that noise that I mentioned? Yeah, it’s all slang, and in about five different languages – none of which you can understand. My advice is just try to float with it. Don’t stress out if you can’t understand half the words, or the vague references to “the incident” or “the situation in Finland.” All will come clear…trust me.

This story is set in a futuristic Tha This is the kind of book that unceremoniously dumps you in the middle of a teeming, noisy world and demands that you sink or swim. Oh, and that noise that I mentioned? Yeah, it’s all slang, and in about five different languages – none of which you can understand. My advice is just try to float with it. Don’t stress out if you can’t understand half the words, or the vague references to “the incident” or “the situation in Finland.” All will come clear…trust me.

This story is set in a futuristic Thailand, which is one of the last countries “surviving”, after several plagues have wiped out the majority of human and plant life* and the sea levels have risen to cover most cities. Thailand has managed to endure by using levees and pumps (operated with spring-power, since all other fuels are scarce) to hold back the rising waters, and a hidden seed bank to provide new genetic material for food engineering. Unfortunately this makes it a nice fat target for the masses of human refugees, looking for a place to rebuild, and the greedy calorie corporations, which have already monopolized most of the world’s food supply by engineering plant species that can’t reproduce (thus ensuring that no one else will be able to grow them).

There are upwards of four main characters in this story (some of the minor characters take on larger roles later in the book) which seems like quite a lot. I think that the biggest danger with too many characters is that there won’t be enough time or energy devoted to any of them and in the end there’s no connection for the reader. I’ve definitely come across novels like that, where I just didn’t care enough about the characters because there wasn’t a chance to become attached to any of them (Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven comes to mind). There really wasn’t one single character in this book, no matter how minor, that I didn’t end up caring deeply about. One of the minor characters actually ended up becoming my favorite (Kanya!). All of these characters are deeply scarred (some more literally than others) by the years of famine and tragedy that they’ve gone through. Not one of them is a truly good person, and yet I cared for all of them and wanted them all to succeed (which was really hard, because they were often trying to manipulate and/or kill each other). It was powerfully moving to witness them all fight and flounder, and eventually realize that it doesn’t matter how much opium or how many jewels you’ve got stashed away in your bamboo walls, or how much you’ve betrayed everything you believe in just to get ahead – you can never escape the destructive power of nature, or your karma.

I can easily see how this book won’t be everyone’s cup o’ tea (Christina, I’m looking at you). There really isn’t very much action in this story (although I found myself frequently shocked by all the twists and turns). Instead there’s creepy political maneuvering and enough sinister machinations to get my evil laugh going and my fingers drumming together like Monty Burns. This is definitely more for those, like me, who are just as excited by psychological action as physical. The pacing is a bit slow, but I really enjoyed that – the writing is so good that I was happy to just float along and wallow in all the nice pretty words. This book was 100% right up my alley – I can even say that I genuinely enjoyed being confused for much of it. This one’s going on the favorites list!

*Brief scientist rant below:
One tiny little niggling problem I had with this book is the whole idea of viruses moving from plants to humans. While viruses frequently break through the animal/human barrier, I had always assumed that due to the differences in cell structure and modes of infection, plant viruses would be extremely unlikely to move to humans. However, I just googled this and found this article.

Oh. My. God. It’s happening! Watch out everyone; it’s time to start hoarding baht and brushing up on your Thai!

Also seen on The Readventurer. ...more

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Mar 07, 2018 Mario the lone bookwolf rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction-new

Biopunk is, unfortunately, such an underrepresented genre compared to steampunk and other Sci-Fi subgenres with a potential that has to be unleashed.

I could imagine such a setting in a real dystopian, Mad Max Style world where everything is based on biological technologies and nothing technical can be used anymore. Probably with different ideologies regarding the use and development of biology as the main power blocks.
In the case of this novel, many problems such as peak oil, super pests and ra Biopunk is, unfortunately, such an underrepresented genre compared to steampunk and other Sci-Fi subgenres with a potential that has to be unleashed.

I could imagine such a setting in a real dystopian, Mad Max Style world where everything is based on biological technologies and nothing technical can be used anymore. Probably with different ideologies regarding the use and development of biology as the main power blocks.
In the case of this novel, many problems such as peak oil, super pests and rampant climate change accumulated to a mixture of the game Bioshock and the wildest biotechnological dreams. Everything is organic and energy can just be produced by sheer muscle power.

Imagine the possibilities that come with creating a living environment in a dystopian setting. Not those cozy, happy utopias with freedom, peace and prosperity, but dirty and gritty. With different kinds of genetically engineered and wildly and uncontrolled evolved plants, cattle, insects and living infrastructure.

Parts of these ideas have been realized as bioships or gaiaships, but not in a way like a complete series with the potential of really convincing reasons for war, like the need to do extreme terraforming to make new worlds liveable. Because a conflict between mushroom vs plant, amphibians vs reptiles, etc is ineluctable as long as the tech is not advanced enough to do proper terraforming.

Space wales, huge living, immortal conscious superstructures, that float through space forever, probably to seed new life, are another biopunk option.

In general Sci-Fi, authors often have backgrounds in computer science, maths, physics, astrophysics and other tech disciplines. There will come a biologist with the ambition to create the large biopunk saga with the same accuracy and all the nerdy details that make hard science fiction so great. Or create even a new subgenre like Biopunk Spaceopera or Hard Biopunk Social Sci-Fi or whatever. Gosh, the sheer potential that alone the known biosphere has for plot devices and unique ideas that are instructive at the same time....drool.

Tropes show how literature is made and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph... ...more

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Jan 20, 2010 Stephen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 6-star-books, sub-press-lettered-or-best, all-time-favorites, award-nominee-campbell, award-nominee-nebula, signed-first-or-limited-edition, audiobook, eco-medical-biological, award-winner-nebula, love-those-words

6.0 stars. The most recent addition to my list of "All Time Favorite" novels. This is Science fiction "noir" AT ITS BEST. By "noir" I mean science ficiton (and fantasy) books that are characterized by: (1) a dark, dystopic world; (2) main characters that are "grey" as oppossed to black or white when it comes to morals; (3) plots that involve complicated questions of morality and characters doing the right thing for the wrong reason and vice versa.

Prime examples for me (all of which are also on ...more

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Oct 25, 2010 Foz Meadows rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. There were some truly fascinating ideas in this book, but despite that, it just wasn't for me. Possibly this is less a fault of the book than it is a question of my own taste - The Windup Girl has, after all, received rave reviews and won two major awards - but while I can certainly tip my hat to Bacigalupi's imagination, I still feel as though there were blanks in the worldbuilding. These aren't my only objections, but they come across in my head as being the least biased ones, so they're where There were some truly fascinating ideas in this book, but despite that, it just wasn't for me. Possibly this is less a fault of the book than it is a question of my own taste - The Windup Girl has, after all, received rave reviews and won two major awards - but while I can certainly tip my hat to Bacigalupi's imagination, I still feel as though there were blanks in the worldbuilding. These aren't my only objections, but they come across in my head as being the least biased ones, so they're where I'll start.

The setting is a future, not-quite-dystopian Earth where most of the world's population is fed by sterile wheat, soy and rice varieties created by calorie companies: agricultural outfits whose monopoly stems from the fact that, at some time in the past, human meddling with plants and animals - what the book called generipping - lead to the evolution of new and deadly plagues that wiped out an incredibly high number of original plant (and, as a direct result, animal) species. Those that remain are generipped copies created by scientists from the small amounts of surviving seedstock, though thanks to the fact that the plagues and blights are constantly reshaping themselves, this is an ongoing process. Most of the world we know has been altered irrevocably as a result of all this. Thus, the story takes place in Thailand, one of the few countries to pull together and survive as a result of its generipping prowess. Also, there is no more oil, which changes the technological landscape quite drastically, although - unless I missed it - there is never a clear explanation provided as to why a history of agricultural plagues would suddenly cause the world's oil reserves to dry up. Possibly we're meant to infer that the story is set in a far enough future that this has just happened anyway, but with so much ambiguity about the dates and with the recent history of this new era only ever hinted at, never described in detail, it is hard to tell.

But, I digress: many old species are dead, both plant and animal, plague and starvation are ever-present threats, and the entire language of society is altered to fit the idea of working for calories, rather than money, as food is what ultimately powers everyone. There is a lot of repetition throughout the book - or rather, several specific ideas are reiterated, particularly early on - and one of these is the constant fear of blister rust and cibiscosis, both fruit diseases that threaten the new crops. There is also fear of ivory beetles, which seem to have taken the place of locusts. Everyone is careful about threats to the food supply, who eats what, where it goes and at what calorie cost. And yet, Bacigalupi has populated this environment with two new generipped species - the giant megadonts, being 10-foot-tall elephant-creatures used to power machinery, and the tiny cheshires, who first interbred with and then replaced actual cats - without ever touching on how they can feed themselves. Because so far as we see, there are no mice or rodents in this world for the cheshires to eat - certainly, if there are, it feels as if we should hear about them as a threat to the grain, the cheshires praised for keeping their numbers down instead of being culled and cursed - and yet their numbers are so great as to require culling in the first place. And then there are the megadonts, which apart from being improbable creations in a world without any other big animals that we can see, must surely require vast amounts of calories to live - enough that their usefulness as engines might be diminished.

In a similar vein, there is Emiko, the eponymous windup girl. Another of the book's repetitions is the fact that, as a generipped human - a New Person - her stop-start movements constantly set her apart. At the same time, we are told she has preternatural speed, eyesight, healing, immunity and agelessness. Fine, fine, these are standard SFF dreams - but why, when New People only exist because of Japan's dwindling population, and when most of them, like Emiko, work as aides and translators and bedroom companions, do they need any of these things? How can the generippers create an awesome megadont, a cheshire that constantly fades in and out of reality, and a practically superhuman breed of New Persons, and yet fail at something so basic as fine motor control? And then there was the concept of phii, used as a term for (I assumed) ghosts or the soul, which came to be very crucial later on in the book, and which early on was associated with generipping, but which - like many things - was never explained, and couldn't properly be inferred from the context. This matters because we can't tell if the phii are real or not: one character mentions seeing them and another accepts this, and then, after someone dies, one of the POV characters starts to talk to the dead man's phii, which seems to follow her everywhere. Is it a voice in her head, or a real ghost? I couldn't tell, and that really bothered me. Finally, there were the whisper sheets, which seemed to be the equivalent of local newspapers. It was never explicitly stated that they were printed on paper, yet that was what we were left to infer - but in a world where trees are rotting everywhere, and where a government permit is required to fell one for use in a factory, where would cheap paper come from? How could it be made? All these aspects of the generipped world could doubtless be explained one way or another, and yet the fact that they weren't within the confines of the novel made me feel that, worldbuilding-wise, Bacigalupi had put more effort into deconstructing modern-day Earth than building the rules of its future.

In terms of the characters, I didn't end up really liking any of them, though some were definitely interesting. Again, this could well have been an issue of personal preference, but it also felt as though every time a character was brought to a crucial or tense moment, their chapter would end, forcing us to read about someone else, so that by the time we came back to whoever it was, the big climactic moment had already happened off screen. I found this an isolating experience; it also served to make the characters feel inconsistent. Tan Hock Seng, for instance, starts out feeling comparatively misanthropic, if not openly misogynistic, what with thinking of his dead daughters as being less worthy than his dead sons, calling them "daughter mouths" and never naming either them or his wives in his thoughts; he also despises the Thais and seems strongly racist in early scenes. Yet, by the end, he has become sympathetic to a Thai girl named Mai, who he looks after and protects even to the point of endangering himself - and yet we never witness the point at the narrative in which he switches from one mindset to the other. Rather, he seems to change between chapters for no discernible reason.

The narrative has similar problems. I don't require all novels to be cathartic, but when they're as long as The Windup Girl and get off to such a long-winded start, I really want those early scenes to matter at the end. These ones didn't; all the talk about the ngaw fruit only serves to bring Anderson Lake to a particular place in the middle of the story, then stops; none of Hock Seng's deals go anywhere; and Jaidee, for all his importance to Kanya, is very short-lived for the amount of early screen time he receives. And then there's the fact that, for a lot of the book, it feels as though Bacigalupi has been deliberately hiding Anderson's thoughts from us, even when we're reading in his point of view, just so the end events feel slightly more mysterious than they otherwise might have done. What this means is that a lot of the book is heavy with a species of internal monologuing - which, again, I don't necessarily mind, but for the number of questions I had left at the end about the world, the politics and the history of both, it felt as though those sections could have been put to much better use than repetitive introspection.

But finally, we come to the real reason I didn't enjoy the book: Emiko herself. The first time we see her, she's being raped, and that never really changes throughout the book. We are told that part of what makes her a New Person is, in addition to those qualities already mentioned, both a deeply ingrained servility and an unconscious sexuality, so that she is literally forced to orgasm even when she hates what's being done to her. Possibly I could have dealt with that, but then comes her sexual relationship with Anderson, the motives and emotions of which are largely hidden from both their thoughts. We do not see the crucial decision Emiko makes to sleep with Anderson; that scene is from his point of view, and very much written with a male gaze in mind. By the time we come back to her, she is already thinking of him as Anderson-sama - an honorific I am very certain he doesn't deserve - and the only explanation we are ever left with for her sleeping with him are the selfsame sex-slave qualities she so hates about herself. Even this much could be salvageable, if we saw Anderson struggle to view her as a person, if any kind of romance features in their relationship, but he doesn't, and it doesn't, and it all just feels hollow and abusive and, frankly, needless.

Possibly this is the point, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Given that she's the titular character, I'd expected more from Emiko in every respect: more screen time, more clout, more personality. Instead, the vast majority of her appearances render her as nothing more than the classic hentai victim, the helpless-sexy objectified girl who pleads and pleads against her own rape, and yet is shown physically to be enjoying what is done to her, even against her own wishes, and which her rapists therefore use to justify themselves. That her violent reaction against these crimes eventually sparks off the climax of the novel is small satisfaction: she is not the protagonist the title makes her out to be. To draw a brief comparison with Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, Emiko is equivalent to wife of the disgraced party member who finally shoots Chancellor Adam Susan out of revenge for the life his actions have forced her to live; she is not Evie Hammond, and she certainly isn't V. And unlike the fallen wife, Emiko doesn't even have the distinction of knowing who her victim really is, or what the consequences of killing him will be, so that there is no political catharsis in the act, either - and even worse, it is yet another scene which happens after a fade to black, the results shown only in hindsight. Which leaves a rather large hole in the middle of The Windup Girl, because if Emiko isn't the main character, then who is? Arguably, she is just one member of an ensemble cast, but given that all their individual stories never quite come together at the end, I finished the book uncertain of what journey I'd really been on, and what the point had been.

So, there you have it. Doubtless a lot of people will disagree. I still enjoyed Bacigalupi's imagination, and am still keen to read Shipbreaker, his YA novel. But through whatever quirk, The Windup Girl just wasn't my bag.

...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Aubrey rated it really liked it

Shelves: r-2014, 4-star, reviewed, 1-read-on-hand, r-goodreads

When it comes to sci-fi, I have plenty of caveats: plethoras of men, mounds of white people, all of the worth submersed in several provocative "ideas" built up by science and a great deal of solipsism. It took Le Guin's phenomenal The Dispossessed to give the genre a place in my further reading, and while this book doesn't measure up in terms of prose and thought experiments, it hits that international flavor that TD doesn't, something realistic future fiction should always aim for. Unless the n When it comes to sci-fi, I have plenty of caveats: plethoras of men, mounds of white people, all of the worth submersed in several provocative "ideas" built up by science and a great deal of solipsism. It took Le Guin's phenomenal The Dispossessed to give the genre a place in my further reading, and while this book doesn't measure up in terms of prose and thought experiments, it hits that international flavor that TD doesn't, something realistic future fiction should always aim for. Unless the narrative touches on a past filled with race wars before the main action hits, there's no excuse for piss poor representation.

The drawback, of course, is tropes, and as I haven't read any Thai lit and know the bare minimum about Thailand and its history/culture/contemporary business (I don't even know if Thai iced tea is really Thai or just some misnomer like French fries, I just really like the stuff), Bacigalupi could've molded my unfounded perceptions like putty. Lucky for me, he included a little thing about not interpreting his book as a true representation of Bangkok as it is now, something that left me free to enjoy the world he conjured up out of Buddhism and Megadont Unions and the very real threat of biowarfare waged between humanity and the world's genetic diversity. In terms of the ubiquitous "world building", this is some of the best out there, both in newness and familiarity.

While the characters themselves depend heavily on the culture around them for engagement, it is Bacigalupi's choices of personas that shine through the rather stock third-person POV. Out of the five narrators, one is white, two are women, and the "Western" culture is made the clear outsider in far more definite and understandable terms than simple whinging and obstinacy. Lesbianism is touched on as a normal aspect of living in a diverse world (I had to reread the first instance of its appearance to make sure of what I was seeing), and while none of the characters are supremely well crafted, their common humanity and will to do terrible things to survive is brought to the forefront. It is these terrible things that drive the plot through its contortions, all leading up to an ending that is one of the best open ended conclusions I've seen in a long time; that's a hard thing to pull off in a linear/non-experimental piece of work.

Finally, the dystopia. The word is all the rage nowadays, but rarely do I see it done in such a way that makes a true impact, where the excesses reaped today flourish inexorably as our ultimate doom tomorrow, humanity scrabbling for life on the sinking ship of the world with evolution as the only lifeboat. In short, I'm glad this won the awards it did, and seeing as how this is Bacigalupi's first book, I have a lot to look forward to. ...more

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Jun 30, 2010 Althea Ann rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What? I haven't said anything about this book yet?
I've now read this book for two different book clubs. And I'm working on reading everything that Bacigalupi's ever published. The Windup Girl won the Hugo and the Nebula, and well-deserved both.

What makes this book so excellent?
Well, first, it posits a frightening, fully believable, and wholly realized future. Set an indeterminate amount of time from now, not all the details are filled in. The Expansion (a time period that we're obviously in rig What? I haven't said anything about this book yet?
I've now read this book for two different book clubs. And I'm working on reading everything that Bacigalupi's ever published. The Windup Girl won the Hugo and the Nebula, and well-deserved both.

What makes this book so excellent?
Well, first, it posits a frightening, fully believable, and wholly realized future. Set an indeterminate amount of time from now, not all the details are filled in. The Expansion (a time period that we're obviously in right now) has occurred, followed by the Contraction (a period of economic and ecological collapse), and now it's been long enough that some people have schemes and dreams of rebuilding... but things potentially are just getting worse. What I like about the setting is that although not every detail is IN the book, you get the impression that they EXIST. Wars have occurred, names of countries have changed, crises have happened elsewhere, offstage... All the action takes place in the context of a world, not a little narrative bubble.

Bacigalupi also excels at portraying the intersection of individual and culture. All his people have depth of character as individuals, but their actions and behaviors are also informed not only by their circumstances but by their cultural background and/or group identity. Nearly all of the characters in the book are reprehensible people, who do unforgivable things. As a reader, however, you can't help feeling empathy, or at least, understanding, for nearly all of them, because their motivations make sense. Everyone in this book has a believable reason for behaving in the way that they do. Circumstance drives people to do as they do, and if you want to survive in this world, you have to have an eye for the main chance.

I don't think that a description of all the main characters is called for. The book reveals them. But it's unavoidable to mention the titular character, Emiko. A character genetically engineered and trained to be a slave and a sex toy. The mere premise causes a knee-jerk reaction in some people, and admittedly, doing this right could be hard to pull off. However, Bacigalupi does a fantastic job with her character. (I have to note here that any 'reviewer' who refers to Emiko as a "robot" did not actually read the book.) In creating her, and depicting what happens to her, he harshly criticizes some very real aspects of certain cultures which fully warrant that criticism, and does so fairly and accurately. (Not one culture or group in this book gets a pass, or is portrayed as 'good' - just about everyone has somehow been complicit in bringing the world to where it is.) But Emiko also exists not just as a political statement but as a fully realized, sympathetic character. Like all of us, she is torn between one instinct and another, conflicted, having to endure, able to find hidden reserves of strength to survive. She also shows us that whatever people try to do to humanity, people will always strive for freedom. And she also, finally, tells us that although technology may be the instrument and cause of our downfall, it also may be the only slim straw of our hope.

The book is not without aspects that I quibble with. One of the main premises of the book is that food is in short supply, and energy is measured in calories. People are described as on the brink of starvation. However, the book itself is FULL of food. People are constantly walking through markets full of fruits and vegetables, stopping at noodle stands, eating, eating eating. It undercuts the stated scarcity of food when you're seeing food everywhere. Also as far as the calories - I love the megadonts. It makes cultural sense that the Thai would want to genetically engineer giant elephants. BUT - how are they feeding them? Do you really get enough work out of feeding them to justify the expense? (That's actually already an issue with today's, smaller elephant in Southeast Asia.)

I loved that the book takes place in Thailand. In reality, Thailand is the only Asian kingdom that has continually maintained its independence and never fallen to an invader or colonial forces. It makes sense that in the future, they could be a last holdout, maintaining strength in isolation, protecting their heritage even while torn by internal conflict.

I didn't actually have a problem with the imaginary kink-spring tech. It's something people are working on. (http://www.asme.org/kb/news---article...)

Bacigalupi obviously thinks genetically modified foods are a threat. I'd say he's far more against them than I am. But, hey, it is entirely possible that Monsanto (oh, I mean AgriGen) could and would create genetically engineered crop plagues that would force industries worldwide to rely on their products. It's not the technology, it's about the use to which the technology is put. And, I suppose, if you believe that technology will never be put to its worst possible use, you have rosier view of human nature than either I or Bacigalupi has. There's an inevitability there... OK, I'm rambling. But, yay, seedbanks! Yay crop diversity! And yay, rambutans!

Go read this book. And then go read Pump Six.

Addendum: I think everyone should also read Apatt's review, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ...more

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Oct 03, 2010 Tatiana rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, locus, nebula, dystopias-post-apocalyptic, hugo

3.5 stars

Unfortunately, I ended up enjoying The Windup Girl significantly less I than I thought I would.

I blame it on two things:

1) the narrator read this novel way too slowly for my taste;

2) the world of the novel was a little too familiar after reading Ship Breaker and Pump Six and Other Stories. Bacigalupi's version of the future where natural resources are exhausted and the world is enslaved by genehacking "calorie men," who have total control of food and energy supply and who are the sour ...more

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Feb 23, 2012 Megan Baxter rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I don't know if I've ever read a book quite like The Windup Girl. Normally, I try to situate a book I've just read in relation to other books, no matter how tenuous and personal the connections may be (I can't explain why I always think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a more interesting version of On the Road, for instance.)

But this, I'm at a loss. Nothing springs to mind. It so rarely happens, but The Windup Girl stands alone in my mind

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due t ...more

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Jul 23, 2015 Gabrielle rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, read-in-2018, own-a-copy, dystopian, recommended-for-jason, mandatory-reading, sci-fi, reviewed, post-apocalypse, speculative-fiction

Updated review, after a re-read in November 2018.

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Imagine a future where we have actually run out of oil and fossil fuel, where genetically modified food has gotten completely out of control, where people have figured out a way to make genetic weapons that ruined other countries’ harvests, and foodborne plagues have screwed up every level of the food chain and killed millions. Calories are now the most sought-after currency: clean calories, that is. Anderson Lake, the sort-of main character of Updated review, after a re-read in November 2018.

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Imagine a future where we have actually run out of oil and fossil fuel, where genetically modified food has gotten completely out of control, where people have figured out a way to make genetic weapons that ruined other countries’ harvests, and foodborne plagues have screwed up every level of the food chain and killed millions. Calories are now the most sought-after currency: clean calories, that is. Anderson Lake, the sort-of main character of “The Windup Girl”, works for a calorie company named AgriGen. He is located in Thailand, one of the few places where there is still profit to be made from the import of resources, and a shaky alliance between varying branches of government controls trade and environmental preservation and maintains a precarious peace. In this Bangkok on the brink of civil unrest, he will meet Emiko, the titular windup girl. She is an artificially created creature, almost human, engineered to be the toy of a wealthy Japanese man. And like most toys, she ended up thrown away, and now she is a very popular entertainment for decadent men who frequent the club she works at. Anderson’s rampant ambition and attraction to Emiko are some of the many factors that will set in motion a series of events of destructive consequences. Their story is interwoven with that of Jaidee, a city official trying to do the right thing, and that of Hock Seng, a Chinese refugee working for Lake who is struggling to make his life safe again.

The multiple points of view that show this strange new world under very different lights, the tension built by the civil unrest that boils over as a reaction to the corrupt government agency calling the shots, the paranoia of being a target leading characters to do things they would never have done under normal circumstances: all those things make the book very affecting, even if character development is not very sophisticated. No one trusts anyone in this dog-eat-dog world, and bribes are what seems to keep everything running, so everyone is constantly walking on eggshells, creating a tense and urgent atmosphere up until the very last page.

But there is no denying that this is a bleak book. The world it is set in is dirty, cruel and dangerous – and yet so meticulously imagined that it feels 100% real. The classic sci-fi questions addressed by Bacigalupi (how far can science go before it turns against us, nature vs. nurture, what is evolution, etc.) are nothing new, but the context in which he forces us to think about them is key: it is a terrifyingly close and believable future. The slow and unavoidable breakdown of the world as we know it due to lack of natural resources always taken for granted. This idea of a slow and creeping apocalypse is in many much more unnerving than that of a quick and brutal one: I don’t think anyone worries about the atomic bomb blowing us all to smithereens anymore, but we watch sea-levels rise around our feet and freak out. In many ways, it reminded me of the masterful “The Sheep Look Up” (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), which also tackled the idea of ecological apocalypse and its consequences – albeit in a very different setting.

The character of Emiko is fascinating because she is a strange form of AI - or post-human creature, really - who feels, wants and thinks, but her engineering also limits her. She was not naturally born, her suffering is not taken seriously by most and some people even consider her to be demonic, because she is technically stronger than humans, and is only kept relatively inoffensive by some genetic programming that makes her subservient. What if those barriers were removed? What if she was given the chance to evolve freely? Post-human evolution or transhumanism is a fascinating and unsettling topic. Gibbons, the geneticist encountered in the second half of the book talks about windups as an upgrade on human beings since they are impervious to the diseases that have killed so many, are often stronger and better suited to live in this new world that has been so devastated by plagues and crop failures. While some people consider them an abomination, he sees only that one needs to adapt in order to survive, and that the windups are simply better adapted than good old-fashioned humans.

Did this biopunk fiction make too many people uncomfortable? Is that why it is so scandalously unknown (I know it won a bunch of awards, but for some reason, none of my friends had heard of it, and it took me ages to find a bookstore that had it in stock)? I found it to be so darkly fascinating, beautifully written and yet completely fucking depressing. The slow apocalypse, not triggered by one world-changing event, but by a series of seemingly small disasters one after the other… if you read any report written in the last decade by a climatologist, you can’t deny that this is what we are experiencing right now, in our lifetime. Not all genetically modified food is bad: sometimes it helps grow stronger crops in hard-to-cultivate areas. But when it’s used unwisely or greedily, it can have a lot of terrible repercussions. I am definitely a science person, but I do think that we need a solid moral compass with which to evaluate how far we go in pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. Things backfire, good science in malicious hands becomes a weapon and then we all pay the price.

This is a really unique and amazing book that I recommend to all sci-fi fans, and fans of great writing in general. I will be re-reading many times. ...more

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Sep 04, 2013 Penny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-fantasy-club-2014challenge, bookclub, books-they-say-i-should-read, favourites, highly-recommended, scifi-and-fantasy-club-bookshelf, award-winner, locus-award, nebula-award, dark

I absolutely had to read this after reading Paolo Bacigalupi's collection of short stories Pump Six and Other Stories. Two of the stories in the collection are set in the same world as The Windup Girl and both resonated deeply with me. I found the collection hard to read and impossible to put down. I couldn't leave Paolo's imagination just yet and so I had to read this novel next. I'm so glad I did.

This story is set in a not impossible, or frankly unlikely, version of our current world. It is se I absolutely had to read this after reading Paolo Bacigalupi's collection of short stories Pump Six and Other Stories. Two of the stories in the collection are set in the same world as The Windup Girl and both resonated deeply with me. I found the collection hard to read and impossible to put down. I couldn't leave Paolo's imagination just yet and so I had to read this novel next. I'm so glad I did.

This story is set in a not impossible, or frankly unlikely, version of our current world. It is set in Thailand which has survived the reordering of the world in its own way but maintains what seems to be a very real flavour of its current culture. I don't make this claim lightly, I make it based on comments from Thai members of our book club who have commented during the Q&A with Paolo that he captured the country and the culture so well. I mention this in particular because of the windup girl, also called the New People, who are said to have no soul. There's an interesting question around this point. What makes up a soul? Is it in our genes? Who gets a soul? The Buddhist believe they can come back in their next incarnation as a dog which means that animals can have souls, why not genetically engineered humanoids too? In this new world with fewer people, is this where old souls go to be reborn?

Questions of souls have always interested me so I found this platform for thought on the topic highly engaging.

Genetic engineering is another topic that I find fascinating. I think it could save the world by feeding everyone, but I think it's far more likely to ruin it due to the inherent greed embedded in human nature. No one has ever presented this argument quite as well as it is here in this book or in the short stories set in this world in Pump Six.

Besides having lots of very interesting food for thought, this is also a great story written with good pacing and characters you can relate to even when you hate them. It isn't a light fluffy tale, but it is real and it'll make you think. I can't recommend it highly enough. ...more

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Jun 16, 2012 Clouds rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, pub-2000s, science-fiction-stand-alone, 5-star, hugo, reviewed, nebula, read-in-2013

Following the resounding success of my Locus Quest, I faced a dilemma: which reading list to follow it up with? Variety is the spice of life, so I’ve decided to diversify and pursue six different lists simultaneously. This book falls into my HUGO WINNERS list.

This is the reading list that follows the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". I loved reading the Locus Sci-Fi Award winners so I'm going to crack on with the Hugo winners next (but only the post-1980 winners, I'll follow up w ...more

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Aug 30, 2014 Rusty's Ghost Engine (also known as.......... Jinky Spring) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, sci-fi-or-dystopia, this-is-fucking-awesome, cultural

Full review @Scaredy Engines End of Line Library

Five QUINTILLION stars! Seriously though it has been such a long time since I stumbled across a book I love this much and to top it all off it’s set in a place I visited a lot on holiday while growing up: Bangkok!

But this wasn’t the Bangkok we all know, it was one that is a result of the aftermath of global warming and what humans are doing to the planet. I read this book while on holiday in Thailand so I got a deeper experience of the many culture ...more

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Dec 14, 2010 Becky rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: apocalyptic-types, 2015, dystopias, bad-shit-and-atrocities, audiobook, science-fiction, owned, social-justice, reviewed, politicalish

Well... That was interesting. I really had no idea what this book was actually going to be about when I started it, and even if I had read the description or reviews, I don't think it would have helped much. I just finished this book, after being immersed for a full week in this world, a plausible future Earth, and I'm thinking that I'll be pondering the lessons and themes in this one for a while yet. There's just so freaking MUCH to this book... It's hard to say that it's about any one thing. I Well... That was interesting. I really had no idea what this book was actually going to be about when I started it, and even if I had read the description or reviews, I don't think it would have helped much. I just finished this book, after being immersed for a full week in this world, a plausible future Earth, and I'm thinking that I'll be pondering the lessons and themes in this one for a while yet. There's just so freaking MUCH to this book... It's hard to say that it's about any one thing. It's about many, many things. Not least of which is a question of what it means to be human.

This book was fascinating to me once it got going and I started to piece together the snippets of the description to form a picture of this future Bangkok. We're just plunked down in this world, and from the very beginning we have to rush to catch up. We're always two or three steps behind, trying to learn the ins and outs of this alien world that seems like our own, but is so different. There are the food plagues, the shortages, calories as currency, but also regular currency (baht), racial tensions, bio-engineered species tensions, a political tightwire act... and so, so much more that it's almost boggling to my mind how Bacigalupi kept it all straight. I'm... almost terrified to imagine what happened in Burma in his head. I don't know if he wrote about it - there are related short stories - but from the hints and the little bits of info we get throughout this story, it's awful. (Of course I have to read more to find out though. The concepts he's come up with here are too good - and potentially horrifying - to pass by.)

It took a bit for this to get going, to build up some steam, but man. Once it did, the shit hit the crank-fans. There was just so much going on that it felt like it never let up from the 50% mark to the end, and it just dragged me along for the ride.

I really enjoyed all of the characters in this book. Every single one of them seemed real and well written and true to life. All of these people are flawed and human (or not), and they all seemed... familiar. It really helped to live in this world, to see such familiar trends among people. The reasons and details may be different... but that hatred and fear that we love to use as a blunt instrument is forever.

I listened to the audio, read by Jonathan Davis (not the Korn one!), and he did an excellent job. I usually go on and on about readers 'doing the voices' and how much I hate it... but when it's done well, it can make such a huge difference. And Davis does it well. It really helped me to fully feel like I was immersed in this book, in the cultures portrayed, and felt like I was part of it. I did read along (as I'm not familiar with the Thai language, so it helped to see the text) and I found myself reading ahead and then making myself stop because I wanted to hear him read it to me instead. It was great. There was never a time when I mixed up a character, or was confused as to who was speaking, because he did such a great job at giving them their own personalities that it honestly felt like a full cast reading at times.

Though, I have to say that one of the voices was a little distracting to me. That was the voice of Gi Bu Sen, a white bio-engineer genius, who Davis made sound a teeeeensy bit too much like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. It was kind of fascinating. I wonder if it's intentional. I could see Sheldon growing into that type of person (though maybe for different reasons). The way their minds work with regards to scientific discovery, the pure passion and desire to keep learning and discovering, is there in both of them, I think. Or I could be wrong about Sheldon - I've only seen random episodes of BBT, so I might not have a full understanding of him. But from what I've seen... I think it's a fair assessment.

Anyway. I really did enjoy this book, though it is disturbing and brutal at times. It's a frighteningly plausible future... One I'm glad that I wouldn't be around to see, if I'm honest. ...more

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Jun 09, 2015 Mogsy (MMOGC) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, audiobook, science-fiction

3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/08/28/b...

This was a great book. And the only reason I’m not rating it higher is because I’ve read better from Paolo Bacigalupi. If I had read this a few years ago, I think I would have enjoyed it unconditionally, but of course that’s not what happened. Instead, I read The Water Knife earlier this year and loved it, and as I usually do when I read an amazing new book by an author I’ve never read before, I went and picked up a bunc 3.5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum http://bibliosanctum.com/2015/08/28/b...

This was a great book. And the only reason I’m not rating it higher is because I’ve read better from Paolo Bacigalupi. If I had read this a few years ago, I think I would have enjoyed it unconditionally, but of course that’s not what happened. Instead, I read The Water Knife earlier this year and loved it, and as I usually do when I read an amazing new book by an author I’ve never read before, I went and picked up a bunch of Bacigalupi’s older titles. I decided to read The Windup Girl first, his multiple-award winning debut that shot him to stardom, and figured too that it was the perfect choice to review for Backlist Burndown.

The book takes place in 23rd century Thailand in a world ravaged by increasing temperatures and rising sea levels. Frequent disasters, both natural and manmade, cause widespread devastation to crops and human populations. Humanity is now dependent on biotechnology for food production, and megacorporations control the market using their own genetically modified seeds, which have all but replaced the natural order. The capital city of Bangkok only survives due to technology, and would be underwater if not for the levees that hold back the flood.

The story features multiple POVs. Major characters include Anderson Lake, a Calorie Man for the megacorp AgriGen, a sort of economic hitman sent to work undercover at a factory in Thailand. It is a front for his real mission, to search Bangkok’s street markets for produce thought to be extinct in order to discover the location of the Thai seedbank. Anderson leaves the running of the factory to his manager, Hock Seng, a Chinese refugee who was a businessman in his former life in Malaysia before being exiled from the country. Seng plots against Anderson, embezzling from the company while planning to steal secret designs and documents from his boss.

Then there’s Emiko, a “Windup Girl”. She is a genetically engineered being, and not human in the strictest sense, due to all the different modifications to her DNA. Windups are made to be docile slaves, programmed to obey. Abandoned by her Japanese master, Emiko lives a dangerous life in Thailand, because she would be destroyed if caught. She is forced to put up with sexual abuse and humiliation at the club where she works, in exchange for a measure of protection against the Thai government. She dreams of a day when she can finally buy her freedom and leave this place forever for a refuge in the north.

What I found interesting are the many similarities The Water Knife had to The Windup Girl. Bacigalupi seems to fancy writing dystopian science fiction about humans screwing up the future of the world. Both stories feature a shortage of vital resources, their supplies controlled by megacorporations or corrupt authorities. Both books even have a corporate hitman/mercenary-type character in a main role. So, perhaps comparisons between my experiences with his latest novel versus my experience with his first novel were going to be inevitable.

First, there’s the realistic premise, an important factor that makes all the difference. For me, dystopian novels tend to be more impactful when they take the form of cautionary tales or commentary on current issues, given how much easier it is to imagine them really happening. I also spent a part of my childhood in Bangkok, so reading this story also had a strong effect on me in more ways than one.

There are some unpleasant and difficult themes to deal with as well. Bacigalupi’s novels are certainly not happy stories. Characters in The Windup Girl live in a grim and very brutal world, and many are subject to discrimination, violence and other kinds of abuse. Emiko, the book’s titular character is especially subjected to the worst kind of treatment – rejected, beaten, raped, tortured, hated – all because of what she is and what she represents. Created to be nothing more than a toy for the wealthy, Emiko is helpless to control her situation or even her own actions because of her genetic modifications.

As well-written as this was, the author has certainly come a long way since his debut novel. The Windup Girl is a fascinating and engaging tale. Compared to The Water Knife though, it’s not nearly as well-plotted or polished. I sensed that Bacigalupi’s storytelling was still outpaced by his imagination at this point, in part due to the uneven pacing as well as the unexpected turn of events in the last quarter of the book. I can’t say I’m too fond of the last 100 or so pages; what should have been a ramp up to a killer conclusion instead had me fighting to keep my interest, but for all that, I still thought this was a great read. ...more

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Aug 13, 2011 Angela rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: hugo-nebula-winners

Overall: Disappointing that this should have won the Hugo/Nebula. For a number of reasons.

THE GOOD

Bacigalupi's worldbuilding is great: he imagines a far future Kingdom of Thailand, where risen sea levels + GMO mayhem have managed to destroy the planet. This biopunk dystopia feels desperate, immediate and urgent, and, on a meta level, it's a scathing commentary on (fair) trade, ag subsidies in the US/Europe, the American food industry and people (such as myself) burning up the atmo in environment Overall: Disappointing that this should have won the Hugo/Nebula. For a number of reasons.

THE GOOD

Bacigalupi's worldbuilding is great: he imagines a far future Kingdom of Thailand, where risen sea levels + GMO mayhem have managed to destroy the planet. This biopunk dystopia feels desperate, immediate and urgent, and, on a meta level, it's a scathing commentary on (fair) trade, ag subsidies in the US/Europe, the American food industry and people (such as myself) burning up the atmo in environmentally-unsound jet planes. In Bacigalupi's future history, we arrogant, over-happy, over-traveled 21st century citizens are living during the brief "Expansion" era - soon to be followed by a violent and unpleasant "Contraction" where no one will travel any further than where their feet can carry them. Bacigalupi's future Thailand is just after the Contraction, now poised on the edge of a possible second "Expansion", using resurrected woolly mammoth (OK, megodonts - but wtf is a megodont) strength and methane composting to fuel industry.

THE BAD

Bacigalupi may be an inventive worldbuilder, but he is not an inventive writer - nor even a particularly good one. He violates the sacrosanct Law of Good (or at least Decent) Writing, which is "show us, don't tell us" - often bluntly introducing characters as "terrifying" or "charming". Um, why not save some word count and just say, "The villain entered." Another tiresome authorial tic was repetition: if I saw Emiko the Cyborg Lady described one more time as exhibiting "telltale stutter-stop herky-jerky" movements or a character described by their (often "pale" or "icy" or "watery" blue) eyes... oh my God. Oh. My. God.

THE UGLY

This was the dealbreaker. I forced myself to finish this book, as I have a spiritual obligation to all Hugo/Nebula joint winners, but wtf is up with this thinly-veiled retrograde Orientalist male chauvinist fantasy? To whit: Chapter 1 introduces Anderson Lake, the blond/blue-eyed American male hero who will guide us through this exotic (EXOTIC) foreign land of small, shy, deferential, and pitiably incompetent Asians. Chapter 2 introduces Anderson's Chinese sidekick, Hock Seng, a survivor of an Islamic fundamentalist genocide against ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. Hock Seng is embittered, often described as scheming or cowering or untrustworthy, and he spends the entire book lamenting his victim state and attempting (but always failing) to make a better life for himself. Just in case it's not clear: Hock Seng has no agency. Chapter 3 introduces the titular "windup girl", Emiko, a Japanese sex slave robot woman who is repeatedly raped (described in - DARE I SAY IT - loving (!?) detail), works in a stereotypical Miss Saigon-style brothel, and dreams of a better future where New People (i.e. windups) live free and unmolested. She has also been programmed to serve (one geneticist character speculating she has Labrador DNA in her!) and is repeatedly described as a "dog".

Unsurprisingly, when Anderson isn't planning to overthrow this "little country" in order to make room for American profiteering GMO interests (from the Midwest! the Heartland!), he falls hard in love with the poor, bruised, whimpering, helpless Emiko. Various scenes of rescue and damsel-in-distress ensue.

OK, I'm assuming Bacigalupi has never been exposed to post-colonialism/Orientalism/feminism, because this entire premise just reeks of unreconstructed American/white/male hegemonic views. Not only is it alarming and disappointing that this type of story still has any sort of currency at all (but then, alas, my beloved scifi genre is one of the most unreconstructed in this regard...), but it's also incredibly tedious, unnecessary and unrealistic. I'm a scifi writer and fan, and a lady, and all I can hope for is to read about other future-ladies being... victims, objectified and sexualized? (Even Mai, Hock Seng's sidekick, is a little girl who does little more than cry out in alarm as plot twists promise ruin.) The only woman who enjoys any sort of agency in this story is Kanya, a Ministry of Environment official who is described as an unsmiling hardass (also, wait for it, a victim! her village was destroyed by evil men!) and, surprise, a lesbian.

Bacigalupi excuses himself from any potential attacks re: his portrayal of the Other by noting that this is THE FUTURE and thus not really Thailand at all. He then recommends a number of ethnically Thai authors. Um, I have no problem with writers of one ethnicity writing about other ethnicities, as long as they're respectful and informed and not idiotically exoticizing about it. I even don't have too much of a problem of white/male authors writing about non-white/non-male issues - fraught as that may seem, given the world we live in - because I'm sure it can be done well. What I CANNOT STAND is lazy narratives of romanticized victimization and macho Orientalist fantasies. And for that, I hated this book and am disappointed that it was so lauded by the arbiters of good sf. ...more

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Sep 13, 2012 David Sven rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi

I read this to sample a bit of steampunk. Not what I was expecting. I kinda had in mind an alternate Universe with steam powered technology and Zeppelins. What I got instead was a future dystopian world...

"when whole kingdoms and countries are gone. When Malaya is a morass of killing. When Kowloon is underwater. When China is split and the Vietnamese are broken and Burma is nothing but starvation. The Empire of America is no more. The Union of the Europeans splintered and factionalized."

Steam is I read this to sample a bit of steampunk. Not what I was expecting. I kinda had in mind an alternate Universe with steam powered technology and Zeppelins. What I got instead was a future dystopian world...

"when whole kingdoms and countries are gone. When Malaya is a morass of killing. When Kowloon is underwater. When China is split and the Vietnamese are broken and Burma is nothing but starvation. The Empire of America is no more. The Union of the Europeans splintered and factionalized."

Steam isn't really used, but there are Zeppelins or rather dirigibles, and there are alternate methods of harnessing energy such as "kink-springs" which basically work on kinetic energy on the same principles as windup clocks and toys etc. Coal fuel is still around but very rare, and methane gas is a popular alternative for cooking and lighting.

But really, the book is more biopunk. Plagues, many engineered, have wiped out much of the world's ability to produce food. Corporations have taken over and patented genetically engineered alternatives, gene ripping and gene hacking crops in a race to stay ahead of the diseases that always seem to eventually attack any new strains of food developed. Governments bow to these "calorie companies," held hostage by the threat of embargo from food conglomerates like the Midwest Compact.

It's not just food that gets its genes hacked, there's also genetically engineered fish, designed to be easily caught. There are the megodonts, the genetically modified elephants, designed to wind the giant kink springs that power factories. There is the Cheshire's, chameleon style cats that change colour to blend with their environment. Somebody designed them to be cute I think and something went wrong and they're all gone feral. And then there are "Windups" or "new people" or more disparagingly, the heechy-keechy. Test tube grown and genetically modified humans, designed by the Japanese to supplement their waning man power.

There is a lot to see in this book. and Bacigalupi whacks all of that into a future dystopian Thailand, one of the few countries holding back the subversion of the calorie companies. The Thais have there own seed bank, and when long extinct old world foods start popping up in the Bangkok marketplaces, the Midwest Compact wants to get its hands on the source.

It took me about a quarter of the book to really get my head around the whole Thai setting. It was very authentic sounding, though that's not saying too much as I'm not familiar with Thai culture; but from there I was just sucked into the story with all its ethnic tension between local Thai's, refugees (Yellow Cards), Europeans (ferang), Japanese, and then there's the political factions of the Environment Ministry and the Trade Ministry and the underworld element. There is a lot going on.

By halfway the pace just picks right up and hurtles to the end. I enjoyed it. I didn't see the end coming.

4 stars ...more

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About Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi

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Paolo Bacigalupi is an award-winning author of novels for adults and young people.

His debut novel THE WINDUP GIRL was named by TIME Magazine as one of the ten best novels of 2009, and also won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Compton Crook, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. Internationally, it has won the Seiun Award (Japan), The Ignotus Award (Spain), The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis (Germany), and the Grand ...more

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Quotes from The Windup Girl

“We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your potential fully upon it.” — 58 likes

“Politics is ugly. Never doubt what small men will do for great power.” — 50 likes

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