After 100 pages of The Windup Girl, exactly 8 chapters, I’m astounded. The buzz around the blogosphere has been very positive for this novel (expect awards now that we’ve reached the end of the year), and I can see why. Paolo Bacigalupi wields his brush brilliantly, painting a grim vision of a dystopian future, an Earth shattered by climate change and the consumption of almost all viable fossil fuels. The entire world has been reduced to using the oldest of fuels, the lowly calorie, whether it be massive megodonts (10-ton elephants) harnessed to assembly lines or mere humans turning cranks. Imagine groups of men running up stairs and jumping onto counterweights that serve as ballast for elevators, or foot pedals generating the electricity required to operate computers. As the age-old food chains dissolved, most flora and fauna utterly disappeared, but now there are “New People,” artificial humans crafted as perfect servants in Japanese factories. Most countries have dissolved: China fractured by civil wars and ethnic purges, the European Union collapsed, the United States no longer united, their power usurped by agricultural mega-corporations engaged in an arms race of genetically engineered plagues and biotech crops (think Monsanto Company times ten, no, times a thousand). This is a very alien future from the comfortable, oil-based world economy we currently consider the status quo. Bacigalupi renders this dystopic vision with exacting detail, and he populates this desolate landscape with an intriguing cast of characters.
What most amazed me was how quickly this world felt honest to me as a reader. Within 10 pages, I pictured the streets, the buildings, the people, all vivid and real. This was especially impressive considering the setting is the slums and factory districts of Thailand, a country and culture truly unique from my decidedly Western mentality. In its immediacy, The Windup Girl reminded me of William Gibson’s seminal Neuromancer, which dropped the reader into The Sprawl, the prototypical cyberpunk metropolis, a living, breathing, sweating, dirty environment that oozed danger and excitement. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash also instantly summoned a completely new world: massive private highways, governments ignored in favor of sovereign enclaves founded on corporations or common ethnicity (“burbclaves”), and people connecting to the Metaverse, a re-imagined internet, similar to Gibson’s original vision of cyberspace. However, a story doesn’t need to be dystopian to have that powerful sense of immediacy. Dan Simmons’ Hyperion introduced a very distant future that was impossible, but still plausible. In a completely different genre, J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantastical The Hobbit created an almost unbelievably idyllic life, except that it was believable. I would argue that a large part of The Lord of the Rings’ success has been due to Middle Earth’s authenticity; every reader could believe in Hobbiton, its bustle and simplicity, but also the solemn majesty of the underground dwarven cities, the fey beauty of Lothlorien.
What is it about some stories, how do they grab you so quickly, plunge you into a world that is clearly impossible but that you still find yourself believing in?
