The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi, 2009
Night Shade Books
300 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781597801584
Summary
Winner, 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winner, 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover 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; she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism’s genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of “The Calorie Man” (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner and Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and “Yellow Card Man” (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these important questions. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 6, 1972
• Raised—Paonia, Colorado, USA
• Education—Oberlin College
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Paonia, Colorado
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and was nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the environmental journal High Country News. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated in newspapers including the Idaho Statesman, Albuquerque Journal, and Salt Lake Tribune. He was a webmaster for High Country News starting in 2003.
His short fiction has been collected in Pump Six and Other Stories (2008). His debut novel The Windup Girl (2009) won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards in 2010. It was also named by Time as one of the Top 10 Books of 2009. Ship Breaker (2010) was awarded the Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult novel and was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.
The Windup Girl, along with many of his short stories, explores the effects of bioengineering and a world in which fossil fuels are no longer viable. Bioengineering has ravaged the world with food-borne plagues, produced tailored organisms as mimics to both cats and humans, and replaced today's fossil-fuel reliant engines with megodonts (an elephant-like beast), which convert food energy into work. Energy storage is accomplished through the use of high-capacity springs, as well as simply transporting food to feed either megodonts or human labourers. His writing deals with the ethics and possible ramifications of genetic engineering and western dominance, as well as the nature of humanity and a world in which, despite drastic changes, people remain essentially the same.
Awards
2006: Theodore Sturgeon Award for "The Calorie Man" (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2005)
2009: Locus Award for Best Collection, for Pump Six and Other Stories (2008)
2009: Locus Award for Best Novelette, for "Pump Six"
2010: Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel for The Windup Girl
2010: Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Windup Girl (tied with China Mieville's The City & the City)
2010: John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel for The Windup Girl
2010: Locus Award for Best First Novel for The Windup Girl
2010: Nebula Award for Best Novel for The Windup Girl
2011: Michael L. Printz Award for Best Young Adult Novel for Ship Breaker
2012: Seiun Award for The Best Translated Novel for The Windup Girl
2013: Seiun Award for The Best Translated Short Story for "Pocketful of Dharma"
(Author Bio brom Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/10/2014.)
Book Reviews
Not since William Gibson's pioneering cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer (1984), has a first novel excited science fiction readers as much as Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.… Readers of science fiction will recognize multiple influences on this excellent novel: Cordwainer Smith, J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, China Mieville and even, possibly, Margaret Atwood…Clearly, Paolo Bacigalupi is a writer to watch for in the future. Just don't wait that long to enjoy the darkly complex pleasures of The Windup Girl.
Michael Dirda - Washington Post
(Starred review.) Noted short story writer Bacigalupi proves equally adept at novel length in this grim but beautifully written tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation.... This complex, literate and intensely felt tale...is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.
Publishers Weekly
In a future of rising water levels, bioengineered plagues, widespread food shortages, and retrotechnology, calories have become currency.... [A] captivating look at a dystopic future that seems all too possible. East meets West in a clash of cultures brilliantly portrayed in razor-sharp images, tension-building pacing, and sharply etched characters.... [A] cautionary thriller.
Library Journal
This highly nuanced, violent, and grim novel is not for every teen. However, mature readers with an interest in political or environmental science fiction or those for whom dystopias are particularly appealing will be intrigued. If they are able to immerse themselves completely into the calorie-mad world of a future Bangkok, they will not be disappointed (adult/high school). —Karen E. Brooks-Reese, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PA
School Library Journal
Bacigalupi is as unflinching in his examination of the unthinkable cruelty, humiliation and banal evil that humanity inflicts on the Other as he is on the bleak future that our mass consumption society will inevitably unleash.... The Windup Girl will almost certainly be the most important SF novel of the year for its willingness to confront the most cherished notions of the genre, namely that our future is bright and we will overcome our selfish, cruel nature.
BookPage
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.)