By Lisabet Sarai
For the next two weeks here at Oh Get a Grip, we're going to be talking about what we've been reading lately. The timing is fortuitous, since only a few days ago I finished one of the best books I've read in very long time, The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi.
My husband picked up this fat science
fiction opus at a used bookstore. Although we often confer about our
finds before purchasing them (conserving funds – and space –
means buying books we both would consider reading), I didn't really
look at this one. I think we might have been in a rush. Anyway, he
began perusing the book before I did. We'd sit in bed together
reading, and I'd hear “Wow!” or “This is really dark!” or “I
can't believe this guy isn't Thai” coming regularly from his side.
He kept this up through the entire five hundred odd pages. I knew I
had to read it.
The Windup Girl takes place in a
dystopic world perhaps a hundred years in the future, during “the
Contraction”. Humanity has used up all the petroleum on the planet,
leaving biomethane, coal and animal (or human) power as the main
sources of energy. Much of humanity hovers on the edge of famine as a
few Monsanto-like corporations (the “calorie companies”) control
most of the world's genetic material, producing sterile (and of
course patented) U-Tex Rice, TotalNutrient Wheat, HiGro Corn and
SoyPRO. Genetic modification (“genehacking”) has also produced
new plagues and pests that have devastated the ecosystem, making the
world even more dependent on the calorie companies. The book implies
though never states that at least some of these blights were
deliberately engineered to decimate natural genetic diversity and
increase dependence on AgriGen, PureCal and their ilk.
Thailand, however, has been spared from
the worst of this ecological disaster, largely due to the vigilance
of the powerful Environment Ministry, which works to keep
unauthorized GM products and raw materials for generipping out of the
kingdom. Anderson Lake, an AgriGen employee, visits Bangkok under
false pretenses, trying to locate the source of the old-fashioned,
natural fruits and vegetables (tomatoes, eggplants and other items
unseen for generations) that regularly appear in Bangkok's markets.
Lake plots with the Ministry of Trade, Environment's traditional
enemy, to undermine the Environment Ministry and uncover its hidden
seed bank.
The “calorie man” Lake is only one
of many vivid characters in this drama, however. There's Captain
Jaidee, known as the Tiger, a former Thai boxer who now leads
Environment's enforcement – a man who earns both his real name
(which means “good heart”), for his generosity and sense of
humor, and his sobriquet, due to his ferocity. His somber, dutiful
lieutenant Kanya is his polar opposite, grimly pursuing her own
understanding of justice. Hock Seng is Lake's lackey at the factory
that serves as cover for his genetic researchers. A former wealthy
merchant, Hock Seng is now a stateless refugee after horrific
massacres of the Malaysian Chinese by Muslim Malays. And at the
center of the story is Emiko, the “windup girl” of the title,
engineered in Japan as a secretary and companion but then abandoned
by her owner in Bangkok. Emiko is in some sense the ultimate fruit of
the genetic manipulation that has crippled the earth, but she may
also be the planet's future.
The last scifi book I read before The
Windup Girl was China Mieville's The Scar. When I reviewed
that book, I commented that it included some brilliant ideas –
possibly too many of them. Paolo Bacigalupi strikes just the right
balance, throwing out fascinating notions about possible futures but
never straying too far from his central themes. The book is very
tightly written (if you can say that about a 500 page novel!). It
kept me on edge to the very last page; I really couldn't predict the
(surprisingly positive) ending.
All of the above would be enough to
make me recommend The Windup Girl. However, on top of
intriguing characters, a shocking yet plausible premise, and plenty
of action and intrigue, this book demonstrates an incredible
understanding of Thailand – environment, culture, politics and
psyche. I know Thailand well. I lived there for several years in the
eighties and now I visit it often. I can scarcely believe how
perfectly Mr. Bacigalupi has captured the realities and the
contradictions of the Thais. They embrace technology and yet they
continue to guard their economy from outsiders. They're peaceful
Buddhists and violent thugs. The competition between Trade and
Environment, the double-dealing and corruption, could have been taken
from today's headlines in the Bangkok Post.
Bacigalupi is spot on in his
description of the environment, too – the heat and humidity, the
vibrant street markets, the noise and the strange oases of quiet. His
depiction of Bangkok holding the sea at bay with massive flood walls
and coal-powered pumps may be only a decade or two away. Certainly, I
could imagine it perfectly, having walked along the banks of the Chao
Phaya River and seen the City of Angels meters deep in water.
This amazing verisimilitude made
reading The Windup Girl almost a peak experience for me. I do
wonder whether readers without my familiarity with Thailand will have
the same reaction. On the other hand, the book won both the Nebula
and the Hugo awards in 2010, the year it was published (a fact
neither my husband nor I knew when we bought it), so I guess a good
deal of the brilliance was obvious even to the uninitiated.
When my husband and I have both
finished one of our used-book-store finds, we normally donate it to a
charity for resale. The Windup Girl, though, has earned a
place on our “keeper” bookshelves, along with Arthur Conan Doyle,
Edgar Allen Poe, Gilbert and Sullivan, D.M. Thomas, Haruki Murakami,
and Shakespeare. We've already sent one copy (new, of course) to a
friend as a gift. I expect that will happen again.
If you enjoy intelligent science
fiction – if you're concerned about environmental issues – if you
have any interest in, or experience with, Thailand – read this
book.
