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Title: The Windup Girl
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Genre: Dystopian bio-punk
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: After the coal wars drove the great Contraction and the agribusiness generippers let loose plagues that unraveled the food web, global trade is only just starting to recover. With clever geneticists and ruthless environmental protections, Thailand has managed to remain one of the few countries independent of the calorie men--until now. But vigilance is lapsing and trade is beckoning. And the calorie men want in. The fate of Thailand will be determined by that of a windup girl--a genetically engineered piece of contraband whose stutter-stop motions and perfect obedience were programmed into her at a genetic level--again, until now.
Thoughts:Well, it certainly earned its Nebula and Hugo awards. Makes me feel a little presumptuous/late-to-the-party to heap on additional accolades. (I don't intend to always be this nice, but right now I'm working my way through my Christmas books. Most of which came very highly recommended, which is why I asked for them. I promise there will be some significantly lower ratings later in the year.)
The world-building here is exceptionally well done. Bacigalupi manages to evoke exoticism without (in my white-privileged eyes, at least) stooping to Orientalism. The politics are realistic and while the characters do reflect their respective cultural milieus (Hock Seng's contempt mixed with love for his "daughter-mouths", Emiko's distain for the barbarism of her masters), they never feel like caricatures. It's a seriously dangerous place to go, to dig into the slums of an Asian city in a time of imperialism, and he carries it off gracefully. The future-history makes sense, and is revealed naturally and clearly, without obvious info-dumping. It's a remarkably difficult trick to pull off.
But this is not stunt writing. It's a fast-moving but deeply insightful novel told in clean, tight prose. The plot crisscrosses, weaving together some very different characters, many of whom never meet but still impact each other. The only threads left dangling were ambiguous on purpose. And the characters are truly sympathetic, as each of them do despicable things, usually for entirely understandable reasons.
The steampunk folk have eagerly claimed this novel as their own. Initially, I was annoyed. It seemed that the only grounds for claiming it are the presence of dirigibles and the windup girl of the title. Emiko isn't actually even windup--she's a genetically engineered Companion-equivalent who moves with a jerky motion deliberately coded in to make her stand out from regular people. There are no gears, no corsets, no steam. The book is set in the 23rd century, not the 19th, and the relevant science is almost entirely biological, usually on the genetic level. Most of the novel is told from the perspective of non-Europeans, the scientists are barely minor characters, and manners are certainly not a topic of interest. And I don't think there's a single pair of goggles. In short, the book has almost nothing of the trappings expected of steampunk. It seems rather presumptuous of people to try to claim it so, as if they're just trying to make the current Big Thing their own.
But on current reflection, I can see some of their point. While the trappings are all wrong, the themes of the novel do deal with a lot of the big themes of Victorian literature: imperialism, the promises and dangers of science, what it means to be human and whether science itself can destroy that. Emiko may not be clockwork, or pieced together like Frankenstein's monster, but the mobs want to destroy her all the same. Anderson and Carlyle swan about a white men's bar with their whiskey and opium as much as their predecessors did centuries before. The warrens of Bangkok, with their prostitutes and hopeless poverty, are not so very different from those of London. And well, there are dirigibles.
I still don't quite buy it, but I can see where they're coming from.
Yarr, here there be spoilers. Not total ones, but I'm going to stop being careful.
I love how Bacigalupi introduces his characters. He very carefully sets it up so you cannot easily choose good guys and bad guys. Anderson, by all rights, should be the villain here. By starting in his perspective, in which he seems entirely reasonable and his motives vaguely pure (the Thais are hiding priceless resources that the entire world needs!), the author keeps the entire book firmly in shades of gray. Only gradually do you realize that first, he's kind of a racist jerk, and then that he's an evil capitalist bastard. Hock Seng seems utterly pitiable, until you realize he's actually killed at least a couple people. Jaidee, the most morally pure character, first appears as a greedy bribe-taker, while Kanya is a self-righteous afterthought. And Emiko seems utterly helpless and servile. No one stays in their niche, all of them round out to complex people with complicated motivations. Each tries to do what they think is right, even if their moral code is twisted, and all of it is utterly believable and human. A complete catastrophe, caused by understandable forces.
The rape scenes are graphic and incredibly discomforting. But I think they may have been necessary. I'm not usually a fan of using rape as a motivation for female characters--it's lazy as well as sexist. But the plot very much revolves around Emiko's very nature as something both lusted after and loathed. It becomes rather metaphoric for countries and their uses for foreigners in general. And to some extent, I think the degredation is necessary to explain how deep her programming goes and how much deeper one must go to undermine it. It's unpleasant, but I'll grant him this one as long as he promises never to do it again.
Finally, I rather like the ending. I feel like there was a trend in the late eighties or so for science fiction to feature dystopian societies that end horribly. The overall theme seemed to be that technology and human nature intertwine to inevitably degrade us all in an unstoppable spiral of despair. This is definitely a dystopia, what with the entire ecosystem ruined and big business basically running the world and all. But the ending is remarkably hopeful in general. And the endings for each specific character feel fitting and satisfying. For a novel that speaks a lot about kamma (karma), the fates of most of the characters do fit their natures. No one gets an ideal ending--none of them are entirely good people. But it feels just, including the ambiguous ends for ambiguous characters. I'll admit that I was rather afraid that I'd be disappointed at the ending, as I've been disappointed at the endings of a number of ambitious books I've read lately. This one, though, did it right.
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Genre: Dystopian bio-punk
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: After the coal wars drove the great Contraction and the agribusiness generippers let loose plagues that unraveled the food web, global trade is only just starting to recover. With clever geneticists and ruthless environmental protections, Thailand has managed to remain one of the few countries independent of the calorie men--until now. But vigilance is lapsing and trade is beckoning. And the calorie men want in. The fate of Thailand will be determined by that of a windup girl--a genetically engineered piece of contraband whose stutter-stop motions and perfect obedience were programmed into her at a genetic level--again, until now.
Thoughts:Well, it certainly earned its Nebula and Hugo awards. Makes me feel a little presumptuous/late-to-the-party to heap on additional accolades. (I don't intend to always be this nice, but right now I'm working my way through my Christmas books. Most of which came very highly recommended, which is why I asked for them. I promise there will be some significantly lower ratings later in the year.)
The world-building here is exceptionally well done. Bacigalupi manages to evoke exoticism without (in my white-privileged eyes, at least) stooping to Orientalism. The politics are realistic and while the characters do reflect their respective cultural milieus (Hock Seng's contempt mixed with love for his "daughter-mouths", Emiko's distain for the barbarism of her masters), they never feel like caricatures. It's a seriously dangerous place to go, to dig into the slums of an Asian city in a time of imperialism, and he carries it off gracefully. The future-history makes sense, and is revealed naturally and clearly, without obvious info-dumping. It's a remarkably difficult trick to pull off.
But this is not stunt writing. It's a fast-moving but deeply insightful novel told in clean, tight prose. The plot crisscrosses, weaving together some very different characters, many of whom never meet but still impact each other. The only threads left dangling were ambiguous on purpose. And the characters are truly sympathetic, as each of them do despicable things, usually for entirely understandable reasons.
The steampunk folk have eagerly claimed this novel as their own. Initially, I was annoyed. It seemed that the only grounds for claiming it are the presence of dirigibles and the windup girl of the title. Emiko isn't actually even windup--she's a genetically engineered Companion-equivalent who moves with a jerky motion deliberately coded in to make her stand out from regular people. There are no gears, no corsets, no steam. The book is set in the 23rd century, not the 19th, and the relevant science is almost entirely biological, usually on the genetic level. Most of the novel is told from the perspective of non-Europeans, the scientists are barely minor characters, and manners are certainly not a topic of interest. And I don't think there's a single pair of goggles. In short, the book has almost nothing of the trappings expected of steampunk. It seems rather presumptuous of people to try to claim it so, as if they're just trying to make the current Big Thing their own.
But on current reflection, I can see some of their point. While the trappings are all wrong, the themes of the novel do deal with a lot of the big themes of Victorian literature: imperialism, the promises and dangers of science, what it means to be human and whether science itself can destroy that. Emiko may not be clockwork, or pieced together like Frankenstein's monster, but the mobs want to destroy her all the same. Anderson and Carlyle swan about a white men's bar with their whiskey and opium as much as their predecessors did centuries before. The warrens of Bangkok, with their prostitutes and hopeless poverty, are not so very different from those of London. And well, there are dirigibles.
I still don't quite buy it, but I can see where they're coming from.
Yarr, here there be spoilers. Not total ones, but I'm going to stop being careful.
I love how Bacigalupi introduces his characters. He very carefully sets it up so you cannot easily choose good guys and bad guys. Anderson, by all rights, should be the villain here. By starting in his perspective, in which he seems entirely reasonable and his motives vaguely pure (the Thais are hiding priceless resources that the entire world needs!), the author keeps the entire book firmly in shades of gray. Only gradually do you realize that first, he's kind of a racist jerk, and then that he's an evil capitalist bastard. Hock Seng seems utterly pitiable, until you realize he's actually killed at least a couple people. Jaidee, the most morally pure character, first appears as a greedy bribe-taker, while Kanya is a self-righteous afterthought. And Emiko seems utterly helpless and servile. No one stays in their niche, all of them round out to complex people with complicated motivations. Each tries to do what they think is right, even if their moral code is twisted, and all of it is utterly believable and human. A complete catastrophe, caused by understandable forces.
The rape scenes are graphic and incredibly discomforting. But I think they may have been necessary. I'm not usually a fan of using rape as a motivation for female characters--it's lazy as well as sexist. But the plot very much revolves around Emiko's very nature as something both lusted after and loathed. It becomes rather metaphoric for countries and their uses for foreigners in general. And to some extent, I think the degredation is necessary to explain how deep her programming goes and how much deeper one must go to undermine it. It's unpleasant, but I'll grant him this one as long as he promises never to do it again.
Finally, I rather like the ending. I feel like there was a trend in the late eighties or so for science fiction to feature dystopian societies that end horribly. The overall theme seemed to be that technology and human nature intertwine to inevitably degrade us all in an unstoppable spiral of despair. This is definitely a dystopia, what with the entire ecosystem ruined and big business basically running the world and all. But the ending is remarkably hopeful in general. And the endings for each specific character feel fitting and satisfying. For a novel that speaks a lot about kamma (karma), the fates of most of the characters do fit their natures. No one gets an ideal ending--none of them are entirely good people. But it feels just, including the ambiguous ends for ambiguous characters. I'll admit that I was rather afraid that I'd be disappointed at the ending, as I've been disappointed at the endings of a number of ambitious books I've read lately. This one, though, did it right.
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Date: 2011-01-08 05:26 am (UTC)From:no subject
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