![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Purposefully engineered plagues have wiped out much of the native food stores (and much of the population). Biodiversity and genetic engineering also dominate the story. The climate has already changed and coastal cities lay under water or under the protection of tenuous systems of dykes and seawalls. The Windup Girl also brings two other facets of our near future to the fore. It's a fully realized world were Joules and Calories are now longer taken for granted but are the new coin of the realm. Beasts of burden reappear though now in the form of giant genetically modified elephants called Megatons. Humans once again have to supply the energy they need to get work of whatever form done. Computers still exist but they are run with treadles like sewing machines of a century ago. The strength of The Windup Girl's vision is that is does not imagine humanity falling back to barbarism but understands that without current flowing out of every wall people will find what ways they can. World trade becomes a memory as society grasps for energy in any of its forms. Instead it faces "The Contraction", a long painful diminution in which traveling even 50 miles becomes a herculean task. Unlike the Mad Max visions of global apocalypse, the world does not descend into a new Stone Age. The Windup Girl takes on the world 150 years or so after "The Expansion" has ended. what? The carbon-based fuels which powered the exponential expansion of culture, capacity and population will be all but gone and we will be left to think long and hard on the meaning of "energy." Soon - very soon - we will reach the peak of what can dredged up "cheaply" and be on our way down the long slide towards. It's no secret that we are hurtling towards the cliff our dependence on fossil fuels. While other authors have explored this territory before The Windup Girl presents us with a fully fleshed-out vision of the world after oil. Though I am a bit late in finding Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl (it was published in 2009) it belongs in that "at its best" category.
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