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Title: Pump Six and Other Stories
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Genre: SF short story anthology
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: A collection of seriously dystopic, but beautifully written tales from the author of The Windup Girl.
Thoughts: If you're not a fan of the well-thought-out dystopia, this book is not for you. These stories are grim. Set in worlds where the oil has run out, chemical buildup causes massive birth defects, and worse, these are the cautionary tales that give environmentalists nightmares. At the same time, they're lyrical, rewarding, and for all that they play with world-shaking cataclysms, focus on the best of stubborn, resilient humanity.
For fans of The Windup Girl, there are two stories here from that universe. "Yellow Card Man" gives us the backstory of one of the minor characters from the novel, while "The Calorie Man" features a quiet rebellion against the big agriculture companies set along the Mississippi River.
There are other stories of small desperations--this is a collection about the hopeless underdog who won't stop fighting. The eponymous heroine of "The Fluted Girl" is a victim of star-hunting and surgical modification gone to barbaric extremes who finds her own way of resisting. "The Tamarisk Hunter" features folks trying to make a living when the water rights run out. And the title story, "Pump Six" features a sewage engineer trying not to succumb to the increasingly dangerous shallowness of the culture around him.
Bacigalupi's imagination is terrifying--he conjures worlds that we would hate to live in, but seem all too plausible. But he has such a gift for description and for characterization that you can't help but be pulled in, and find yourself rooting for his all-too-flawed characters to find, if not peace, at least a kind of dignity.
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Genre: SF short story anthology
Thingummies: 5
Synopsis: A collection of seriously dystopic, but beautifully written tales from the author of The Windup Girl.
Thoughts: If you're not a fan of the well-thought-out dystopia, this book is not for you. These stories are grim. Set in worlds where the oil has run out, chemical buildup causes massive birth defects, and worse, these are the cautionary tales that give environmentalists nightmares. At the same time, they're lyrical, rewarding, and for all that they play with world-shaking cataclysms, focus on the best of stubborn, resilient humanity.
For fans of The Windup Girl, there are two stories here from that universe. "Yellow Card Man" gives us the backstory of one of the minor characters from the novel, while "The Calorie Man" features a quiet rebellion against the big agriculture companies set along the Mississippi River.
There are other stories of small desperations--this is a collection about the hopeless underdog who won't stop fighting. The eponymous heroine of "The Fluted Girl" is a victim of star-hunting and surgical modification gone to barbaric extremes who finds her own way of resisting. "The Tamarisk Hunter" features folks trying to make a living when the water rights run out. And the title story, "Pump Six" features a sewage engineer trying not to succumb to the increasingly dangerous shallowness of the culture around him.
Bacigalupi's imagination is terrifying--he conjures worlds that we would hate to live in, but seem all too plausible. But he has such a gift for description and for characterization that you can't help but be pulled in, and find yourself rooting for his all-too-flawed characters to find, if not peace, at least a kind of dignity.
