“The Windup Girl” was written by Paolo Bacigalupi in 2009 and was one of Time magazine’s top ten science fiction books of the year. It has since won the Nebula and Hugo award in science fiction writing. This was a really good book. The best sci-fi I’ve read in awhile.

This book shows a bleak picture of the future of the world. It takes place in the 23rd century. In this story, the Earth is plagued by diseases. We have run out of fossil fuels. Global warming has risen the oceans. Much of the planet has been wiped out. Many countries have dissolved. The cause? Food companies. Food had become bio-engineered. Diseases became bio-engineered. The diseases started to flux and change and food became unsafe and fickle. Food becomes a luxury. Much of the world starves while diseases kill the plant life. In this world, calories are the most important thing. People work and spend their calories in hopes of getting paid with new calories.

This story takes place in Thailand. It is one of the few lands where government survived. The story follows a man who is working undercover for one of the Midwestern calorie companies. Anderson Lake is trying to find if there are any plant species still existing in Thailand that they don’t have in the former US anymore.

The story also follows a windup girl. Windups are bio-engineered people. Part human, part robot who were designed by the Japanese as servants. Emiko struggles to understand what she is and what her purpose is in the world. She was a servant windup who has been abandoned and is now brutally used and abused by her new master.

There are many plots, mysteries, and character story lines in this book and all the characters are interesting and well written. But what is most gripping about the book is the future it portrays and how easy it is to see it happening. Food is getting more and more engineered. The oceans are rising. We are over populated and dependant on fossil fuels. What happens when all this comes crashing down on us?

I love that science fiction shows us possibilities. It shows us what we could be. What we could do. This was a really interesting book that I’m not doing justice by my description. I would highly recommend it. It is weird and interesting and new and that isn’t necessarily something you come across all the time.