The Windup Girl is easily the best fiction I have read in at least the past 18 months. The all too plausible dystopian future that Bacigalupi's paints blew my mind.
In the not so far distant future, the oil has run out, world economy collapsed, and the white man sent scurrying back home. Global warming has claimed coastal cities. Kink spring-powered skiffs and airships are the new face of global trade. Bio-engineering agriculture corporations control the food supply with constant releases of new varieties of engineered crops that are one to two seasons ahead of the now out-of-control bio-engineered plagues that these corporations long ago released.
The Oil Economy is long dead. Welcome to the new Calorie Economy.
Anderson Lake is a "Calorie Man", an executive for AgriGen. He is working undercover as a factory manager in a kink spring factory in Thailand. His true job is to locate the source of Thailand's pure, untainted fruits and vegetables so AgriGen can exploit them for their own uses. There he meets Emiko, a windup girl, aka, a New Person -- an engineered being with perfect skin, hypnotizing non-fluid jerky movements, and a genetic predisposition to obey. Jaidee is an officer of the Environmental Ministry, aka, white shirts, whose group is locked in a battle with foreign interests who seek to exploit Thailand and also the Trade Ministry. Their paths crossing sets in motion a chain of events that changes everything .
This book was ridiculously good. So good that it won a Hugo award. Go get it now.
In the not so far distant future, the oil has run out, world economy collapsed, and the white man sent scurrying back home. Global warming has claimed coastal cities. Kink spring-powered skiffs and airships are the new face of global trade. Bio-engineering agriculture corporations control the food supply with constant releases of new varieties of engineered crops that are one to two seasons ahead of the now out-of-control bio-engineered plagues that these corporations long ago released.
The Oil Economy is long dead. Welcome to the new Calorie Economy.
Anderson Lake is a "Calorie Man", an executive for AgriGen. He is working undercover as a factory manager in a kink spring factory in Thailand. His true job is to locate the source of Thailand's pure, untainted fruits and vegetables so AgriGen can exploit them for their own uses. There he meets Emiko, a windup girl, aka, a New Person -- an engineered being with perfect skin, hypnotizing non-fluid jerky movements, and a genetic predisposition to obey. Jaidee is an officer of the Environmental Ministry, aka, white shirts, whose group is locked in a battle with foreign interests who seek to exploit Thailand and also the Trade Ministry. Their paths crossing sets in motion a chain of events that changes everything .
This book was ridiculously good. So good that it won a Hugo award. Go get it now.
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