We are nature. Our every tinkering is nature, our every biological striving. We are what we are, and the world is ours. We are its gods. Your only difficulty is your unwillingness to unleash your full potential upon it.
Ok so this should have been my week off, but I need to catch
up after a weekend away – and I still have more planned so maybe not a week off
after all… Never mind. I’m back (albeit 3 days late) with some more apocalyptic future visions in
the shape of Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. I read this book as
part of my English dissertation on power principles and what it means to be human
back in 2017/2018; re-reading it, my perspective is still much the same,
although I have definitely picked up on a few new things I missed before.
To summarise, The Windup Girl is a dystopian sci-fi set
in a futuristic yet impoverished Bangkok. Here, produce is genetically modified
to combat new kinds of diseases, energy (or calories) is highly valued and
rarely wasted, and gene-spliced ‘Cheshire’ cats have supplanted their normal
feline cousins, roaming the streets as detested as rats and the ‘yellow card’
Chinese immigrants who live alongside them. Politics is a very big theme in
this book, a topic I can never manage to get my head around, so you can imagine
how difficult it was at times to fully understand the situations unfolding before
me. But no matter how oppressive society is, over it all hangs a persistent
heat ‘so intense that it seems no one can breathe’, a heat which is almost literally
felt throughout the entire book (much like the metaphorical 'burning' in my last book review). For one character in particular, this heat is a
serious problem. The titular ‘Windup Girl’ Emiko is genetically engineered to
perfection as a Japanese ‘toy’ or companion, which includes a reduction in pores
to make her skin flawlessly smooth with the side effect of overheating. Her
skin becomes ‘scalding’ like a ‘furnace’, so hot that, when dropped into water,
it is expected for ‘the sea of boil around her’ and her brain to be ‘cooked’. Such
visceral imagery also appears to be something Bacigalupi is unafraid of.
From sex to gore, this book deals lightly yet unashamedly in
shocking topics from Emiko’s unfortunate abasement as a sex toy, delivered
through implicit yet affecting detail of her many violations, to the brutal
deaths of factory workers ‘heads carved open like soft mangoes’ and the overwhelming,
almost frightening, final battle scenes scattered with bodies. And this is
somehow almost matched by the sudden twists which Bacigalupi manages to sneak
in, allowing characters to be surprised, the mood to shift, and action to erupt
out of nowhere.
One thing I also noted in this story is its similarities to
David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas. The structure of the story is the biggest parallel,
each chapter viewing events from a different perspective – Hock Seng the sly ‘yellow
card’ factory worker, Anderson Lake the calorie rep with a taste for novelty, Jaidee
& Kanya the yin and yang ‘white shirt’ officers, and of course, Emiko the windup
with a deadly secret. And links are made between the chapters when different
characters interact or hear about each other, much like how Mitchell strung a
thread between each section of his story to tie them all together. Emiko’s life,
in particular, echoes that of Mitchell’s character Sonmi-451 who is also genetically
manufactured, and lives in an Asian diner where she must always be subservient
to her patrons.
This power dynamic was something I analysed in my
dissertation, this uncertainty about where the true power lies: with those in
obvious seats of influence or the underdogs – the immigrants, Cheshires and
windups – who are essential, prolific and/or better engineered? Ultimately, this
balance can only be broken by oppression, through poverty, objectification and
violence, to keep the threat at bay, much like the wall which holds back the
sea threatening the city in the wake of so much environmental damage. Which
brings me to another recurring theme: the past. Characters like Hock Seng and
Kanya recall their past, either when life was better or when it was worse,
while for Anderson, imagining a time when fruit and vegetables were
disease-free and wildly varied is beyond his comprehension. And for Emiko that
past is one of security and love, one she often wishes for again.
I could go on analysing and extolling this book’s virtues, but I think it’s better if you read it for yourself. The application of various Thai and Chinese words in place of their English equivalent can be a little tiresome and superfluous at times but it definitely adds character, and while you may find the politics a little dry or convoluted, you should be able to get enough of a grasp of its principles to scrape comfortably by. You will find this to be a thrilling and open read about our potential future, laced with as much political tension and religious iconography as our present day, and enough action to keep the pages turning.
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