The Windup Girl
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4.2 • 95 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Recipient of the Sturgeon Award, Paolo Bacigalupi's writing has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and the environmental journal High Country News. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated into numerous western newspapers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Noted short story writer Bacigalupi (Pump Six and Other Stories) proves equally adept at novel length in this grim but beautifully written tale of Bangkok struggling for survival in a post-oil era of rising sea levels and out-of-control mutation. Capt. Jaidee Rojjanasukchai of the Thai Environment Ministry fights desperately to protect his beloved nation from foreign influences. Factory manager Anderson Lake covertly searches for new and useful mutations for a hated Western agribusiness. Aging Chinese immigrant Tan Hock Seng lives by his wits while looking for one last score. Emiko, the titular despised but impossibly seductive product of Japanese genetic engineering, works in a brothel until she accidentally triggers a civil war. This complex, literate and intensely felt tale, which recalls both William Gibson and Ian McDonald at their very best, will garner Bacigalupi significant critical attention and is clearly one of the finest science fiction novels of the year.
Customer Reviews
A trigger warning for those who need it
Features some very graphic and difficult rape scenes. (Escalating abuse is what drives the title character.)
This won a Hugo?
There’s only enough content in this book to fill a short story or novella at best. All of the story occurs in the last 20% of the book. It reads like someone wrote historical fiction based in colonial Thailand and then decided to change it to Science Fiction by searching a replacing technologies in the text. The technologies introduced are not new. They have been covered better in stories such as “Do Electric Sheep Dream of Androids”.
Great Read
One of my all time favorite books.