The Windup Girl

First of all I love all things “Dystopian”, but in The Windup Girl the author took this whole concept to an entirely new level. Such amazing world building, I could smell the smells and feel the heat, and felt like I was rubbing shoulders with all manners of people on these busy streets and back alleys. Set in Thailand of the 22nd century after global warming and resource depletion, this is a world that has seen different bio-diseases sweep through crops and now natural food is just about impossible to find. Large, overly powerful corporations, bio-terrorism, calories as currency, all these concepts have a terrible ring of truth about them that at times made this book difficult to read.

The story is richly, deeply layered and we show more move between a number of characters. Each character has his own distinct voice from Anderson Lake, the American who works for the giant corporation of AgriGen, to sly Hock Seng, an immigrant that works for Anderson, to Emiko, a Japanese windup girl who has been genetically engineered with a predisposition to serve real humans, and Jaidee, Tiger of Bangkok, a leader in the White Shirts terror organization whose destiny is to become a catalyst in the ever changing political power swings by the corrupt Ministries that are meant to be protecting the Kingdom of Thailand but are, in fact, building their own power base. These characters and many more come together, interact and separate in their ongoing bribery deals, backroom politics, plots and overthrows.

I admire that author Paolo Bacigalupi never allows the story to become preachy, just as he doesn’t allow his characters to be simply good or bad, they are fully formed and real. Not an easy read, being intense, violent and grim, but a convincing and well-crafted story with a strong environmental message. show less

This is one of those sorts I'm going to be processing for a while. While this build is frustratingly slow, I love that it's a narrative that is writing against traditional narrative structure. We get a full world-building experience and limited access to characters, so the story is fragmented, but solidly situated in time and space, which is a very experimental way of constructing a story. In all, I found myself more and more engrossed in the twists and turns of the narrative, and beyond place with the beautiful prose, which had an oral tradition like feel to it.

I'd absolutely recommend giving this one a go! Just be patient for a while.

There is a scene early in Paolo Bacigalupi’s novel The Windup Girl in which a giant, bioengineered elephant (a “megodont”) goes on a rampage. The people near the animal scatter in fear. That’s how you’ll fear for the first hundred pages of the book, as Bacigalupi drops you into late twenty-second century Bangkok and tramples you with his Big Ideas.

The future Bacigalupi envisions is a grim place. Global warming has forever altered the landscape; Bangkok is preserved only by giant pumps that keep the sea from flooding the city. The end of oil led to “the Contraction,” the collapse of the global economy and the old political order, including the United States and the European Union. Corporations bent on profits at any cost show more have unleashed on the world bioengineered plagues that have ruined entire ecosystems.

Bacigalupi’s characters vie for power against this grim backdrop. Anderson Lake, corporate shill, is looking for a way to open the Thai market to his company’s produce. Hock Seng, a Chinese refugee from Malaya, is trying to rebuild the shipping empire he lost when his countrymen were butchered by native Malaysians. Emiko, the titular “windup girl,” who takes her nickname from the stuttering movements programmed into her bioengineered DNA, seeks a home. But nothing comes easy to anyone in Bacigalup’s world, and one would be hard pressed to separate the winners from the losers.

Bacigalupi does not make it easy for the reader. The narration is not intrusive, taking for granted the facts of the world of The Windup Girl. The effect is disorienting, which is as it should be: It’s part of Bacigalupi’s Big Idea to confront the reader with the world we’re all helping to create every day. And yes, it’s horrifying not because it’s so alien, but because it’s so recognizable. Still, the shifting perspectives, from Anderson to Hock Seng, and so onward, quickly situate the reader. Indeed, by revealing the knowledge of what humanity has done to the world throughout the book, rather than with an introductory chapter, makes the story more discomfiting. The reader knows that, with each turn of the page, some gruesome new revelation is at hand.

Bacigalupi is at his best when setting the scene. If there is a weak point in The Windup Girl, it’s the plot, which comes unwound like the springs that are manufactured at Anderson’s facility. The story heads one way and then another, never quite resolving into a cohesive unit. It may be that Bacigalupi was trying to follow too many characters, or it may be that his Big Idea was too big to fit into less than 400 pages. The reader gets the sense that the story is meandering. Still, given the scope of the book, concern over the plot is a minor quibble. After all, Bacigalupi’s characters are little people adrift on the currents of history. It’s not surprising that events pan out in ways that neither the characters nor the reader could have anticipated.

Bacigalupi followed The Windup Girl with two spiritual, if not direct, successors. Both Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities, which are young adult titles, have shades of The Windup Girl, including some graphic violence, but they lack some of the nuance of Bacigalupi’s first book. Highly recommended for fans of dystopian science fiction. show less

My kind of story. Sort of a futuristic 'steampunk' style although machinery and weapons are powered mostly by super-tightly coiled springs instead of steam, (SpringPunk?).

There are some deep characters here. The story sprawls out at first and it is therefore a bit of a chore to keep track of everyone. As the narrative develops though, several things are revealed about the protagonists that are not readily apparent at the beginning. For instance, it's difficult to tell who the good guys and the bad guys are. I would go so far as to say that there are very few such caricatures in this book. While there are some peripheral characters that may as well be cardboard cutouts, by contrast, the main characters are portrayed as individuals with show more their own motivations and dreams. You know, kind of like real life. I liked the way the ending wrapped up and I hope that Mr. Bacigalupi manages a sequel. There was definitely an opening for one at the end of the epilogue. show less

I was charmed by the abstract sci-fi ideas (and clear influences of Gibson, Stephenson, and most especially Ballard) while simultaneously bored/annoyed by the banal scaffolding of plot and characters. This book has too many adjectives ("His dark face is a sweat-streaked combination of grit and palm-oil spray." [11]) and wayyyyy too much "Exotic Orient" sign-posting ("Even though his blue gajin eyes are like pools chemical bath acid and his face is kabuki pale, he has presence." [41]). Worst, of course, is the sexualizing of Emiko within her own POV: no person in the history of time taking a shower has ever thought, to themselves: "Water courses down her face, runs over breasts and ribs and thighs, trickles onto hot concrete. Another show more ladleful, soaking her black hair, coursing down her spine and curling around her buttocks." [102] Gross! show less

Now I know how SF readers in the 60's must have felt when authors wrote about the world after a nuclear apocalypse. Bacigalupi's description of a world that has endured all sorts of ecological disasters evokes visceral fears--you want to convince yourself that this isn't where our world is heading, but it's difficult. The story follows a number of characters all with very different motivations in a near-future Bangkok, but I found it difficult as reader to sympathize with or even like any of them. Despite that, the story ended with a resolution that was really to none of the characters' likings; it was as if the whole book was an exercise in futility. I wonder how much attention that author intends that we pay to the very minor show more character Gi Bu Sen. He's portrayed as abhorrent, and literally every character in the book hates him, but he's the only one who can escape the myopia of his own situation and think globally--even if his philosophies are anathema to modern environmental thinking. In any case, this book was a little bit difficult for an optimist like myself to stomach, but it certainly provides plenty to think about... show less

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is the Coen Brothers meets Blade Runner.

It's the 23rd century and global warming has run amok. The great cities of the world are under water. Enormous corporate conglomerates genetically manipulate strains of wheat and rice to feed the world while extorting the last bit of cash and blood. Countries incessantly war over resources. Genetically created diseases ravish societies. And the Japanese genetically generate the New People, their perfect servants to support a rapidly aging and non-replenishing society.

Set in Bangkok, Thailand, the book follows the stories of four main characters "Song of Ice and Fire"-like: Anderson Lake, the American 'calorie man' coming for Thailand's stock of genetic show more diversity, Hong Seck a Chinese Refugee from the US, Jaidee Rojjanasukchai a "white shirt" Tiger of Bangkok who works for the ministry that polices the health of the country and Emiko, a discarded "windup," a genetically modified human turned into the perfect servant but now without a master.

The four main plotlines sort of wander along telling four parallel stories that cross over and intersect and explode in exciting ways while exploring this science fiction future of ecological devastation. This is not an uplifting or positive book -- it is /very/ Coen Brothers where people are generally awful in an ever increasing tide of awfulness until the plot explodes on everyone in a mess of fiasco.

It definitely does move. As a book, it is well written, if not meandering at times. The problem is that the plot does meander and some of the stories don't feel terrifically satisfying. The story of Emiko the Windup Girl is by far the best of the four stories in the book but the other three tend to fall flat at times without drive.

I knock it one star for occasionally losing its point. As a science fiction book its a thinker. A downer, but a thinker. show less