The Windup Girl

Paulo Bacigalupi

Here is how the future looks according to Bacigalupi. If our present represents a global expansion, of trade and interconnectivity, we will soon enter a contraction. The contraction will be based on scarcity of liquid fuels and will lead to nations looking inward and becoming self protective. Follow this with another expansion based on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) that a few corporations develop to help solve global food shortages. The shortages are so severe that the corporations (calorie companies) are given free reign to experiment in a wide swath of nature (both flora and fauna, both of necessity and for entertainment). Of course, the GMO experimentation includes the development of a few diseases that mutate very fast and are very deadly, causing famine and plague and leading to a second contraction. Throw in the fact that we are well in to the severe effects of global climate change (e.g. elevated sea level, restrictive carbon credits) and you have the setting for Bacigalupi's book.

Set it Thailand, the Thai Kingdom is a bastion of isolation, resisting as much as possible the efforts of calorie companies like AgriGen and PurCAL from controlling their society. They import the sterile, but disease resistent for at least a month, seeds to grow SoyPRO soy and U-Tex rice, but also work to develop their own food sources. The calorie companies just try to stay one step ahead of the dreaded Blister Rust mutation that has caused widespread disease and famine. The details here are wonderful. An entire industry set up around energy storage (in a post fossil fuel world) and developing a 2-gigajoule portable spring storage device (about 500,000 Calories worth of energy) plays a central role around which to spin the plot. The megodont union (GMO elephants) have a monopoly on using the creatures to wind springs for energy storage. The Environmental Ministry is responsible for maintaining GMO purity where possible, for protecting the Thai seed bank from the calorie companies and for protecting the Thai Kingdom from disease. The Trade Ministry promotes entering into expansion and increasing wealth. The Japanese have been leaders in gene-ripping mammals and have created the megodonts, cheshires (GMO cats that have all but eliminated natural cats on earth) and even "windups" (GMO people or New People) to help combat a shrinking Japanese population.

Now this is where the ethics becomes interesting. The GMO animals are just as much animal as the natural animals, but GMO. The GMO plants are real plants, just GMO. But the GMO people are seen as less than human, people without a soul. It raises questions of what you think about humanity and what is a prerequisite for a soul. I always enjoy a good metaphysical thought experiment and this book, by throwing a GMO/Climate Change induced future at me, gave me exactly what I love. Read it and find some friends who will be willing to discuss.

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