Just Finished Reading: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

On the streets of a not too distant future Bangkok undercover company man Anderson Lake has made a startling discovery – a new kind of fruit seemingly completely immune to the host of bio-engineered plagues running rampant across the globe. Millions of people are already dead and billions more live on the edge of starvation or in constant fear that a cough or otherwise innocuous rise in body temperature might be the first stage in a frightening new disease. But the fruit holds out some hope that mankind can once again dominate the world’s ecosystems rather than constantly react to the every changing and ever more deadly environment. Meanwhile the Japanese are developing a different response to the bio-crisis. In their labs they are producing New People - ‘more Japanese than the Japanese’ - used as slaves, soldiers and sex toys. One such toy is Emiko – a Windup Girl designed to bring endless pleasure to bored Japanese executives working away from the Homeland. Abandoned on the teeming streets of Bangkok where her kind are outlawed she must face daily degradation to survive. When she meets Lake in a seedy nightclub he gives her hope for a better future by telling her of villages deep in the hills where the Windups live without masters. But Emiko has a different fate ahead of her, one that is deeply entwined with the future of the city itself.

This was another of those books I picked up in one of the ‘3 for 2’ offers at my local bookshop. It’s a great way to experiment with new authors or less read genres. Initially I thought this was either Cyberpunk or possibly future based Steampunk (if that isn’t an actual contradiction): I found to my surprise, and honest delight, that it was neither. I don’t know if this sub-genre has a name yet but I’m going to coin the term Genepunk. With luck I’ll be the first person to use the term and I’ll be remembered for decades because of it. Anyway, the future world brilliantly imagined by the author is one where the old oil-based economies have collapsed. At the time of this story the old Great Powers are at last resurgent thanks to genetic engineering and a world wide ruthless use of industrial espionage. Whole countries have fallen in the wake of agents from the various western agricultural conglomerates. Bangkok is determined not to be numbered amongst them. It is in the offices and on the streets of this incredibly detailed and totally believable city that the well drawn characters play out their parts in the great drama to come. You can smell the rotting decay, feel the crushing humidity and the constant jostling of the millions of refugees who will do anything to live just one more day. It is not a place I’d like to live in nor one I’d like very much to visit except in my imagination but I couldn’t help but be drawn into this detailed, well rendered and above all else heartbreakingly believable world. The memory of those few virtual days in future Bangkok will remain with me for many months. One of the best books I’ve read this year and in consequence highly recommended.