Speculative Fiction Junkie

Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi's multiple award winning debut collection of short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories (review here), was one of Speculative Fiction Junkie's Top 5 Reads of 2008, and when you ask me to list my favorite authors Mr. Bacigalupi's name is always mentioned, on the strength of this collection alone. As such, I was highly anticipating the release of his debut novel, The Windup Girl. Uniformly positive reviews did nothing to abate this anticipation and I was finally able to read it recently. Did The Windup Girl live up to the high expectations that Mr. Bacigalupi's short stories have created? The short answer is no, it didn't.

The Windup Girl takes place in Thailand, in a future in which seas have risen and many of the world's great cities lie underwater. At the same time, many plant species have gone extinct and genetically engineered plagues pose a constant threat to those that remain. The calorie companies, as they're called, make big money by cultivating plague resistant food crops and selling them to those that can afford to pay. These upheavals have led to the expected warfare, mass migrations, and starvation. Thailand, though, has managed to withstand these calamities relatively well by erecting a ring of sea walls and adopting a corresponding protectionism towards foreign products and influence.

Mr. Bacigalupi explores his creation through the eyes of a handful of characters who each represent a different facet of future Thai society. First there's Anderson Lake, a struggling foreign manufacturer by all outward appearances who is in reality a calorie company man trying to gain access to the Thais' fabled seed vault. He is in many respects an embodiment of the foreign influence and meddling that the Thai government has sought so hard to resist. Second, there's Captain Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, renowned for being an incorruptible member of the famously corrupt Environment Ministry, whose task it is to ensure that nothing dangerous is imported, consumed, or distributed in the Thai Kingdom. Third, there's the Trade Ministry, whose interests are represented by a number of characters, which seeks to open up trade with the outside world. Next is Hock Seng, one of the much derided yellow card men, that is, a refugee from violence in his native Malaya who used to be fairly prosperous and dreams of being so again. Finally, there's Emiko, a windup girl, which is the name given to the genetically manipulated human-like individuals who are, subject to very limited exceptions, banned in the Kingdom and exploited.

The prose in The Windup Girl is fantastic as Mr. Bacigalupi's always is. Similarly, the book's characters are well fleshed out and the setting capably realized (for the most part). However, none of this can make up for the fact that the story being told does not, in my opinion, come anywhere close to reaching the high standard set by his short fiction. Judging the worth of a book's plot is a highly subjective business but I can honestly say that if Mr. Bacigalupi hadn't been the author of this book I wouldn't have been able to finish it.

The main problem with the plot is that there was nothing really moving it forward and it felt aimless a lot of the time. It was, in other words, almost boring. While the setting and Mr. Bacigalupi's ideas about the future are fascinating, anyone who has read Pump Six and Other Stories will already be familiar with these and will likely be looking to the plot to carry the book forward. Unfortunately, the plot just doesn't deliver. The main conflict in the book, between the protectionist Environment Ministry and the pro-liberalization Trade Ministry, doesn't yield as much as it might have plot-wise and is instead a relatively uninteresting conflict between two political factions that culminates in an action sequence that is mediocre at best.

Paolo Bacigalupi is a top notch writer and still one of my favorites. I'll continue to read anything he writes for the time being, but The Windup Girl is not his best work.

Rating: 6/10

The True First

The Windup Girl was first published in September of 2009 by Night Shade Books.

[This review was not based on a review copy]