The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Paolo Bacigalupi was born in Colorado, August 6th 1972. He has appeared in a wide variety of publications, ranging from local newspapers, to Slate, and Wired for nonficition. When it comes to fiction writing he has written stories for middle-school aged kids, young adult fiction, and of course science fiction stories with heavy emphasize on how humanity might possibly deal with climate change. His short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and have won three Nebulas, four Hugos, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for best short fiction. The Windup Girl was actually his first full length novel.

The Windup Girl was published in 2009, and appeared in Time Magazine which declared it one of the top ten fiction novels published in that year. It would win the 2010 Nebula Hugo awards for best novel (tying with China Mieville's The City and the City). It would go on to win the 2010 Compton Crook Award and the Locus Award for best 1st novel. It would also win awards in Japan (the Seiun award), Germany (The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis), Spain (The Ignotus Award) and France (the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire), proving to be a book of international appeal and acclaim. So let's talk about this book, shall we?

The Windup Girl takes place in the 23rd century, in the Kingdom of Thailand. The world has been devastated by climate change, the end of oil and easy fossil fuels, and if that wasn't enough by a cycle of gene engineered plagues that attack both the people and their crops (Whoo! Those were some vicious resource wars. Damn). Many nations are trapped in a cycle of buying genetically created super crops that are immune from the plagues from international food companies called calorie companies, only to see them destroyed in a few years from brand new plagues that if they weren't created by a competing company were created by the very company they bought their crops from to ensure repeat business (Ok, I don’t think even Monsanto is that dickish. Sygenta maybe). With Peak Oil firmly centuries in the past, most power is provided via methane burning or more commonly muscle power. Giant genetically engineered elephants called megodants aren't just used as heavy transport but to turn the spindles powering factories and generators in this future (What? WHAT!? No. Just… No.  WHAT ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER!? WHAT ABOUT WIND, SOLAR, HYDRO, GEO-THERMAL?). That power is stored in kink springs (a fictional technology) that can power scooters and other devices that don't have a heavy energy requirement. Travel times are longer being handled by clipper ships or dirigibles. That said there are still plenty of high technology nations out there. Japan remains an center of technology, having solved it's population problems via the creation of “New People” genetically engineered humans who are created to fit certain tasks from assembly line work to personal security to military assassin. (WITH WHAT ENERGY!? Elephant power? Let’s assume that an elephant can pull 9 tons against a coefficient of friction of .5 at a rate of 5 ft per second. That’s about 81.8 horsepower. Let’s double that for super-elephants. That’s ~122 kilowatts for those keeping track at home and using sane systems of measurement. The average energy use of an industrial facility is about 250,000 kKh per year, and that same elephant can produce about 50,000 kWh per year. So five elephants per human factory, and that assumes 100% efficiency which is certainly not true. Energy loss in those sorts of mechanical work to electricity generators are on the order of 60%, so you’re looking at having to use 13 gigantic elephants per factory rounding up just… why? WHY?!) They of course aren't treated like human beings and are in many places considered soulless monsters because despite everything we've been through, humanity hasn't learned a damn thing (Time for the replicant revolution!). If you're wondering, that's not a criticism of the story, I find such bigotry perfectly believable. I am left wondering what the hell happened to solar, wind and nuclear power and technology like the hydrogen battery. These technologies aren't mentioned and it seems odd that in an age where people are constantly suffering from power shortages no one builds a fission plant or 10 (*editor has a apoplectic fit and dies*).

The Kingdom of Thailand is not a center of high technology or wealth but has through planning, sacrifice and a bit of luck maintained its independence from the hated calorie companies. Because Thailand has managed to keep and maintain something most other nations did not have the resources or foresight to. Thailand has a seed bank, a hidden fortress devoted to maintaining a treasure trove of heirloom seeds from before the dark days of bio-plagues. With their carefully maintained hoard of genetic engineering machines (which they power with WHAT!?{Coal strangely enough}) and trained scientists, Thailand has managed to keep the calorie companies out, using their own resources to create plague resistant crops and their own troops to hold the border shut. The white uniformed troops of the Environment Ministry (Now this idea I like.) have held the line for generations now but the Queen is a child and reduced to a figure head. In the absence of powerful central authority General Pracha of the Environment Ministry and his right hand man, Captain Jaidee are facing political opposition from Akkarat the Minister of Trade (I'll come back to these characters). This internal conflict now has the potential to explode and bring in external forces because the secret of the seed-bank is out and there are people who will lie, cheat, and kill for a chance to harvest it's riches.

One of those people is Anderson Lake, undercover calorie man, whose job it is to comb the world looking for new genetic stock for his Midwest based company (So… Not! Monsanto?) to use as raw material in the race to keep the world fed. For a price of course. Posing as a kink spring factory owner, Lake pushes his way into high stakes politics in the name of profit, food, and gaining access to the seedbank. What's interesting about Lake is that he honestly believes he's doing the right thing and that his work will result in a better life for everyone. Eventually. He isn't an idealist though and seems to have accepted that a large number of people will have to be pushed under the bus before it can roll into the promised land. He's rather cynical and willing to go to extreme ends to fulfill his goals but he's not sitting there scheming to break the Thais. Instead he’s focused on the idea that gaining access to the Thai seed vault will allow his company to bring forth new plenty and prosperity, which would include the Thai people. This makes him a rather human character, in fact Mr. Bacigalupi is very skilled in making a number of these characters very human.

On the other side of the coin, Captain Jaidee is also a true believer willing to go to the very wall to do what he believes is needed to protect Thailand and more importantly it's people. Given his job as an enforcer for the Environment Ministry, that can mean anything from burning a village to ashes to prevent the spread of plague to raiding an airport and seizing the cargo of wealthy and powerful men. Meanwhile he is also a devoted father and gentle husband who wants to see his family taken care of and his sons to grow up healthy and free. It's that very belief that creates his legend and his loyalty to his family that leads him to his fate in the story. Meanwhile his Lt. Kanya is a women torn between conflicting loyalties and working frantically to reconcile them. She is constantly hedging and trying to find a middle path that will let her make everyone happy and it's almost to late when she makes her final choice. She is a good reminder that you cannot serve two masters, sooner or later you must choose one over the other. There are venal and corrupt figures in the story, Minister Akkarat being among them but for the most part many of the characters believe they are doing the right or at least necessary thing in their actions. A good amount of it is rationalization but that's also a very human trait.

I would argue that none of these characters are our main character however, I would argue that Emiko is the main character of the story. Emiko is a genetically engineered human, created and trained in Japan to serve as a personal companion. She's faster and stronger then a baseline human, but due to how her skin was engineered, she overheats easily. She was born, trained, and lived in Japan until brought to Thailand as a translator on a business trip. She was abandoned by her owner in Thailand, because he felt it was easier to simply ditch her in Bangkok and get an upgraded model when he got home (I told you there were venal and vile characters in this story didn't I?). Called a windup girl, her very presence is illegal within the borders of Bangkok and she's forced to work in a sex club being humiliated and sexually sold at night just to survive (Yep. Definitely time for that replicant revolution…). Her mental conditioning trained her to never use her superior speed or strength and to constantly obey baseline humans, especially her owner. However a life of constant hate, humiliation and lack of any hope of improvement is slowly but surely wearing away at that conditioning without her even realizing it. Emiko's story arc is one of realizing that most of the limits forced on her are entirely artificial and that she can strike back and hope to survive while doing so. She grows from a hopeless, embittered person, faced with the fact that she is nothing more than property and worse believing that's her rightful place in the world, to being a woman willing to take action to defend her life and her freedom and fully understanding her abilities. What starts this journey is her meeting Mr. Lake, who reveals that there are communities of New People but what really kicks it into gear is the fact that Lake treats her like a person. This causes Emiko to both have a goal for herself and to see herself as someone who deserves to have goals and a chance to strive for them. I won't say he treats her with any great dignity or such but he acknowledges her as a person with her own interests and agenda which is more than she’s gotten from any other person in her life. Which is heartbreakingly sad when you think about it. Emiko's story is very personal in scope and hidden among grand events that decide the fate of a nation and perhaps an entire people but it's her story, her actions, and her interactions with the other characters that end up driving the plot forward. A whole nation will find its course changed, because a wind up girl wanted to life with her own people and be treated like a human being.

The Windup Girl is a story of tightly written intrigue and action driven by complex characters who are often trying to bridge the gap between conflicting goals, which is an honestly human thing to do. It's set in a world that is plague ridden but with the seeds of new life emerging (I see what you did there.) and the hope that eventually a new ecosystem may arise and move the story of life forward... A new ecosystem that may even have humans in it. It's a story of corruption, humiliation, and enslavement; and how people can rise above such things if they're willing to act and brave the consequences. So while the world of The Windup Girl can be very dark and grim, I can't call the story itself grim, although there is a lot of unavoidable darkness in it. I'm giving The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalup an A. Seriously read it.

To tie back to our theme of Solar punk, I've had people contest The Windup Girl's inclusion within the emerging genre. I have to admit that The Windup Girl may be on the edge of the genre but I do think it lies within it. This is due to its theme of learning to exist in harmony with nature rather then trying to beat it into submission and accepting that life must change if it is to stay in such harmony. That, and it's a world without fossil fuels and dependent on alternative means of power (even if there is no solar power in the story, seriously Mr. Bacigalupi what happened to Solar Panels, I mean we can make massive elephants, super cats, 10-armed people but we can't make Solar panels?[*Screaming*]). So I'm going to argue that a story about how we might get to a environmental harmonious existence (by changing ourselves to fit into the environment instead of the other way around) does fit into it. Now if you excuse me, I have to tranq my editor.

Next week, we see how far we can push these boundaries by looking at Paolo Bacigalupi's other major work, The Water Knife. Join us Sunday, as I discuss one of the roots of Solarpunk, the Cyberpunk genre. Keep reading.

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen.
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.