'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi is a dystopian tale set in a future Thailand where genetic engineering of plants, animals, and humans has led to a world ravaged by epidemics, food scarcity, and environmental disasters. The story follows a diverse cast of characters including an undercover calorie man, a genetically engineered windup girl, and a civil servant amidst political corruption as they navigate through a dark and complex world. The author's writing style is described as intense, well-written, and fast-paced, creating a richly detailed world full of political and cultural clashes.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The Windup Girl includes high levels of content warnings, primarily around themes of sexual violence, graphic descriptions of abuse, and exploitation.
From The Publisher:
Winner of the Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, the break-out science fiction debut featuring additional stories and a Q & A with the author.
Anderson Lake is AgriGen's Calorie Man, sent to work undercover as a factory manager in Thailand while combing Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories.
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, 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 this 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 and forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly-acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.
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Ratings (33)
Incredible (6) | |
Loved It (11) | |
Liked It (9) | |
It Was OK (4) | |
Did Not Like (2) | |
Hated It (1) |
Reader Stats (91):
Read It (33) | |
Currently Reading (1) | |
Want To Read (42) | |
Did Not Finish (1) | |
Not Interested (14) |
1 comment(s)
Wow. What an unpleasant book, full of unpleasant things happening to not-very-likable people. I kind of see why it won the Hugo and Nebula -- the world-building is good -- but that's the only reason I'm giving it two stars instead of one. If I could un-read it I think I would. Also, while you can make a case that the author is using the eponymous Emiko as a vehicle to consider the issues of nature, nurture, free will, and genetic engineering, you can also make a case that she is a poor, pathetic thing created by the author only to serve as the target of the voyeuristic male gaze.
What can you read after
The Windup Girl?
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