The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi

Orbit (Little, Brown)
2 December 2010/ ISBN 9780356500539
Science Fiction / Near future / Thailand
Amazon

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

Set sometime in the near future, this is a compelling view of a bleak dystopian world that might come true if we are not careful. Anderson Lake works for AgriGen as a calorie representative. Based in Thailand, he searches the markets for food that most people think has long vanished, and one day he meets up with the mysterious Emiko. She is one of the New People, genetically engineered to be the expensive toy of a wealthy Japanese man and now the object of Lake’s obsession. She seems inconsequential enough, but never judge a book by its cover…

Much has been made of this book, and it has already won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Bacigalupi has certainly created a very believable and unsettling view of the world’s possible future: a world where global warming and resources like oil have run out. There is plenty of genetic engineering going on, and people are trying to grab hold of as much of what we take for granted as they can. Everybody is trying to escape from – and to – something, so expect a thriller as much as a thought-provoking SF novel.

I would have liked this to be a one-off, as that would have been really impressive, but this is part one of a series, and much of what happens towards the end serves to hook the reader into the next installment. There is plenty in here to divert if not exactly entertain: a cautionary tale as much as anything else where we are not being told anything new but being told it in a compelling and well realized way. I think what lasted longest in my memory afterwards was the author’s imaginative choice of location and the way he writes about it.

Reviewer's Note: Graphic and violent sex scenes