The Windup Girl
Encyclopedia
The Windup Girl is a biopunk
science fiction novel written by Paolo Bacigalupi
and published in September 2009. It was named as the ninth best fiction book of 2009 by TIME
magazine, and as the best science fiction book of the year in the Reference and User Services Association's 2010 Reading List. This book is a 2009 Nebula Award
and a 2010 Hugo Award
winner (together with China Miéville
s The City & the City
), both for best novel. This book also won the 2010 Compton Crook Award
and the 2010 Locus Award
for best first novel.
. Global warming
has raised the levels of world's oceans, carbon fuel sources have become depleted, and manually wound springs are used as energy storage devices. Biotechnology
is dominant and mega corporations like AgriGen, PurCal and RedStar (called calorie companies) control food production through 'genehacked' seeds
, and use bioterrorism
, private armies and economic hitmen to create markets for their products. Frequent catastrophes, such as deadly and widespread plagues and illness, caused by genetically modified crops and mutant
pests, ravage entire populations. The natural genetic seed stock of the world's plants has been almost completely supplanted by those that are genetically engineered to be sterile.
The current monarch of Thailand is a child queen. The capital city is below sea level and is protected from flooding by levees and pumps. The three most powerful men in Thailand are the Somdet Chaopraya (regent
for the child queen), the chief of the Environment Ministry General Pracha, and the chief of the Trade Ministry Akkarat.
. He leaves the running of the factory to his Chinese manager, Hock Seng, a refugee from the Malaysian purge of the ethnic Chinese. A businessman in his former life, he is plotting to regain his former glory even as he lives from day to day. He waits patiently for an opportunity to steal the kink-spring designs kept in Anderson's safe, and embezzles copiously.
Emiko is a Japanese-designed windup girl (a humanoid GM organism, used as a slave, and programmed to seek a master and obey him; windups call themselves "New People") abandoned by her Japanese master. As such, she is illegal in Thailand. Raleigh, a sex club owner, gives her some measure of safety by bribing the police to let her live, but at the price of forcing her to work in his club, where she is routinely abused and sexually humiliated. Among other genetic modifications, Emiko has a genetically altered pore structure, which makes her skin extremely smooth but prone to overheating—a life-threatening problem in the hot climate of Thailand. One of her customers tells her of the secret seedbank and a mysterious man named Gibbons. Anderson gleans this information from her and, in return, tells her about a refuge in the north of Thailand where people of Emiko's kind live together. This becomes fixated in her mind, and from then on she sets her mind on paying off Raleigh and escaping to this refuge.
Anderson's factory is destroyed by a rogue megodont (a GM elephant used to run the power train). Also destroyed are algae baths, which are critical to the manufacturing process, and whose spares are costly and must be smuggled into Thailand via dirigible. Anderson orders Hock Seng to fix up the factory as soon as possible, threatening him with the loss of his job if he doesn't do so. Hock Seng's job is made difficult by the fact that he has failed to bribe the customs officials, as he had embezzled the bribe money. Knowing that his time has come, he makes a money-for-plans deal with the Dung Lord, a gangster.
Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, an upright and courageous captain of the White Shirts (the enforcement wing of the Environment Ministry), intercepts the dirigible containing, among other things, Anderson's much needed spare tanks, and destroys the contraband. This raises the hackles of the white, foreign trading community in Thailand and they pressure Akkarat to make Jaidee back off. To 'persuade' Jaidee, known as the Tiger of Bangkok for his muay thai
skills and courage, and an icon among the white shirts, they kidnap his wife.
Jaidee submits and makes a public apology. False charges are made against him and he is condemned to monkhood for 9 years. Unknown to Jaidee, his wife has already been murdered. A triumphant Anderson and his main collaborator, Richard Carlyle, negotiate with Akkarat for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. Akkarat refuses, saying there are limits to his greed.
Jaidee, determined to track his wife's murderers, escapes from the monastery and infiltrates the Trade Ministry. He is caught, killed, and his mutilated body is deposited in front of the Environment Ministry. As the white shirts revere him as a hero, they declare him a martyr
, and rise up against the Trade Ministry.
General Pracha appoints Lieutenant Kanya, Jaidee's protege, as the new Captain and unleashes a reign of terror on Bangkok. Meanwhile, Mai, a child labourer in Anderson's factory, has discovered that her fellow workers are falling to a new plague that had previously made the algae tanks malfunction. She reports this to Hock Seng, who arranges to have the bodies disposed of surreptitiously. As the white shirts take control of Bangkok, he steals all of Anderson's petty cash, takes Mai with him and tries to escape. Meanwhile, Anderson has become close to Emiko.
Anderson discovers Hock Seng's flight and goes into hiding with Richard Carlyle. Kanya, who is Akkarat's mole
, discovers the new plague and sets about trying to contain it. (We learn that years earlier Kanya had been rescued as a young girl by Akkarat when her own home village was destroyed in the course of containing a genehacked plague.) She reluctantly seeks help from Gibbons, who is revealed to be a renegade AgriGen scientist. Gibbons is a brilliant geneticist and the last hope for the Thai defense against the plagues. He easily identifies the new plague and gives clues to Kanya.
Anderson and Carlyle meet with Akkarat and the Somdet Chaopraya, who is the regent to the young Thai Queen and the most powerful person in all of Thailand. Anderson offers to supply a new strain of GM rice and a private army to repel the white shirts in exchange for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. He also introduces the Somdet Chaopraya to Emiko. When the Somdet Chaopraya's acts prove too humiliating, Emiko snaps and kills the Somdet Chaopraya, Raleigh and eight other men. Then she seeks refuge with Anderson.
Because she has killed such a powerful man and all of his bodyguards, Akkarat assumes Emiko to be a military windup and accuses General Pracha of assassinating the Somdet Chaopraya. He also proceeds to arrest Anderson and Carlyle as suspects in the assassination conspiracy. Emiko escapes in the nick of time.
Kanya traces the origin of one of the plague victims to a village near Bangkok, and from information she gets there is able to identify Anderson's kink-spring factory as a possible source. She sterilizes the village with lye. Hock Seng fails to steal the kink-spring designs, so he decides to capture Emiko for ransom. He takes Mai with him.
Kanya is informed of the suspected assassination plot by her handler. Recognizing the harm the incident could cause, she visits the Japanese company that designed Emiko, learns of the true facts, and tries to explain it to Akkarat. But Akkarat has already decided to blame General Pracha for the assassination as a pretext for regime change
and mobilizes his reserves to destroy Pracha and the white shirts. Anderson is released and discovers that he may have contracted the new plague.
Hock Seng encounters Emiko in Anderson's apartment and holds her at gunpoint. Anderson and Carlyle arrive at the same time. They make a deal: Hock Seng would be patronized by AgriGen and Emiko would remain with Anderson.
Eventually, Pracha and most of the top Environment Ministry men are killed. Akkarat, now all-powerful, appoints his spy Kanya as the chief of the Environment Ministry. He also opens up Thailand to the world, and grants AgriGen access to the seedbank. Kanya, who acts subdued at first, reneges and executes the AgriGen team in the seedbank. She then proceeds to move the seedbank to a safer place with the help of the monks. With the hidden arsenal in the seedbank, she orchestrates an uprising and coup d'état. She destroys the levees, flooding Bangkok. Bangkok's people and the capital relocate to the site of Ayutthaya
, a previous Thai capital. There is now a new Tiger, a grim, unsmiling woman (Kanya), and it is implied that the Child Queen now reigns without a regent.
Hock Seng is allowed by Kanya to leave Thailand with Mai to start a new life. The plague slowly kills Anderson as Emiko nurses him through the agony. She is alone in the flooded city when Gibbons arrives with his androgynous (kathoey
or "ladyboy") companion. He promises Emiko that he will use her DNA to engineer a new race of fertile New People, thus fulfilling her dream of living with her own kind.
category, tying with China Miéville
's The City & the City
. In May 2010, the novel won the Nebula Award
for Best Novel
. In 2010, the novel won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
and concludes "when it hits its sweet-spot, The Windup Girl embodies what SF does best of all: it remakes reality in compelling, absorbing and thought-provoking ways, and it lives on vividly in the mind."
Biopunk
Biopunk is a term used to describe:# A hobbyist who experiments with DNA and other aspects of genetics.# A technoprogressive movement advocating open access to genetic information....
science fiction novel written by Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and was nominated for the National Book Award...
and published in September 2009. It was named as the ninth best fiction book of 2009 by TIME
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine, and as the best science fiction book of the year in the Reference and User Services Association's 2010 Reading List. This book is a 2009 Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
and a 2010 Hugo Award
Hugo Award
The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was officially named the Science Fiction Achievement Awards...
winner (together with China Miéville
China Miéville
China Tom Miéville is an award-winning English fantasy fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" , and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party...
s The City & the City
The City & the City
The City & the City is a fantasy/weird fiction novel by British author China Miéville. It was published by Macmillan on 15 May 2009. In the US it was published by Del Rey Books on 26 May 2009. Also in 2009, a signed, limited edition of 500 numbered and 26 lettered copies was published in the US by...
), both for best novel. This book also won the 2010 Compton Crook Award
Compton Crook Award
The Compton Crook Award is presented to the best first novel of the year in the field of Science Fiction, Fantasy, or Horror by the members of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Inc, at their annual Baltimore-area science fiction convention, Balticon, held on Memorial Day weekend in the...
and the 2010 Locus Award
Locus Award
The Locus Award is a literary award established in 1971 and presented to winners of Locus magazine's annual readers' poll. Currently, the Locus Awards are presented at an annual banquet...
for best first novel.
Setting
The Windup Girl is set in 23rd century ThailandThailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
. Global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...
has raised the levels of world's oceans, carbon fuel sources have become depleted, and manually wound springs are used as energy storage devices. Biotechnology
Biotechnology
Biotechnology is a field of applied biology that involves the use of living organisms and bioprocesses in engineering, technology, medicine and other fields requiring bioproducts. Biotechnology also utilizes these products for manufacturing purpose...
is dominant and mega corporations like AgriGen, PurCal and RedStar (called calorie companies) control food production through 'genehacked' seeds
Genetically modified organism
A genetically modified organism or genetically engineered organism is an organism whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. These techniques, generally known as recombinant DNA technology, use DNA molecules from different sources, which are combined into one...
, and use bioterrorism
Bioterrorism
Bioterrorism is terrorism involving the intentional release or dissemination of biological agents. These agents are bacteria, viruses, or toxins, and may be in a naturally occurring or a human-modified form. For the use of this method in warfare, see biological warfare.-Definition:According to the...
, private armies and economic hitmen to create markets for their products. Frequent catastrophes, such as deadly and widespread plagues and illness, caused by genetically modified crops and mutant
Mutant
In biology and especially genetics, a mutant is an individual, organism, or new genetic character, arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is a base-pair sequence change within the DNA of a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not...
pests, ravage entire populations. The natural genetic seed stock of the world's plants has been almost completely supplanted by those that are genetically engineered to be sterile.
The current monarch of Thailand is a child queen. The capital city is below sea level and is protected from flooding by levees and pumps. The three most powerful men in Thailand are the Somdet Chaopraya (regent
Regent
A regent, from the Latin regens "one who reigns", is a person selected to act as head of state because the ruler is a minor, not present, or debilitated. Currently there are only two ruling Regencies in the world, sovereign Liechtenstein and the Malaysian constitutive state of Terengganu...
for the child queen), the chief of the Environment Ministry General Pracha, and the chief of the Trade Ministry Akkarat.
Plot
Anderson Lake is an economic hitman and the AgriGen Representative in Thailand. He owns a kink-spring factory trying to mass produce a revolutionary new model that will store gigajoules of energy. The factory is a cover for his real mission: discovering the location of the Thai seedbankSeedbank
A seedbank stores seeds as a source for planting in case seed reserves elsewhere are destroyed. It is a type of gene bank. The seeds stored may be food crops, or those of rare species to protect biodiversity. The reasons for storing seeds may be varied...
. He leaves the running of the factory to his Chinese manager, Hock Seng, a refugee from the Malaysian purge of the ethnic Chinese. A businessman in his former life, he is plotting to regain his former glory even as he lives from day to day. He waits patiently for an opportunity to steal the kink-spring designs kept in Anderson's safe, and embezzles copiously.
Emiko is a Japanese-designed windup girl (a humanoid GM organism, used as a slave, and programmed to seek a master and obey him; windups call themselves "New People") abandoned by her Japanese master. As such, she is illegal in Thailand. Raleigh, a sex club owner, gives her some measure of safety by bribing the police to let her live, but at the price of forcing her to work in his club, where she is routinely abused and sexually humiliated. Among other genetic modifications, Emiko has a genetically altered pore structure, which makes her skin extremely smooth but prone to overheating—a life-threatening problem in the hot climate of Thailand. One of her customers tells her of the secret seedbank and a mysterious man named Gibbons. Anderson gleans this information from her and, in return, tells her about a refuge in the north of Thailand where people of Emiko's kind live together. This becomes fixated in her mind, and from then on she sets her mind on paying off Raleigh and escaping to this refuge.
Anderson's factory is destroyed by a rogue megodont (a GM elephant used to run the power train). Also destroyed are algae baths, which are critical to the manufacturing process, and whose spares are costly and must be smuggled into Thailand via dirigible. Anderson orders Hock Seng to fix up the factory as soon as possible, threatening him with the loss of his job if he doesn't do so. Hock Seng's job is made difficult by the fact that he has failed to bribe the customs officials, as he had embezzled the bribe money. Knowing that his time has come, he makes a money-for-plans deal with the Dung Lord, a gangster.
Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, an upright and courageous captain of the White Shirts (the enforcement wing of the Environment Ministry), intercepts the dirigible containing, among other things, Anderson's much needed spare tanks, and destroys the contraband. This raises the hackles of the white, foreign trading community in Thailand and they pressure Akkarat to make Jaidee back off. To 'persuade' Jaidee, known as the Tiger of Bangkok for his muay thai
Muay Thai
Muay Thai is a combat sport from Thailand that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques. It is similar to other Indochinese kickboxing systems, namely pradal serey from Cambodia, tomoi from Malaysia, lethwei from Myanmar and muay Lao from Laos...
skills and courage, and an icon among the white shirts, they kidnap his wife.
Jaidee submits and makes a public apology. False charges are made against him and he is condemned to monkhood for 9 years. Unknown to Jaidee, his wife has already been murdered. A triumphant Anderson and his main collaborator, Richard Carlyle, negotiate with Akkarat for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. Akkarat refuses, saying there are limits to his greed.
Jaidee, determined to track his wife's murderers, escapes from the monastery and infiltrates the Trade Ministry. He is caught, killed, and his mutilated body is deposited in front of the Environment Ministry. As the white shirts revere him as a hero, they declare him a martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
, and rise up against the Trade Ministry.
General Pracha appoints Lieutenant Kanya, Jaidee's protege, as the new Captain and unleashes a reign of terror on Bangkok. Meanwhile, Mai, a child labourer in Anderson's factory, has discovered that her fellow workers are falling to a new plague that had previously made the algae tanks malfunction. She reports this to Hock Seng, who arranges to have the bodies disposed of surreptitiously. As the white shirts take control of Bangkok, he steals all of Anderson's petty cash, takes Mai with him and tries to escape. Meanwhile, Anderson has become close to Emiko.
Anderson discovers Hock Seng's flight and goes into hiding with Richard Carlyle. Kanya, who is Akkarat's mole
Mole (espionage)
A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...
, discovers the new plague and sets about trying to contain it. (We learn that years earlier Kanya had been rescued as a young girl by Akkarat when her own home village was destroyed in the course of containing a genehacked plague.) She reluctantly seeks help from Gibbons, who is revealed to be a renegade AgriGen scientist. Gibbons is a brilliant geneticist and the last hope for the Thai defense against the plagues. He easily identifies the new plague and gives clues to Kanya.
Anderson and Carlyle meet with Akkarat and the Somdet Chaopraya, who is the regent to the young Thai Queen and the most powerful person in all of Thailand. Anderson offers to supply a new strain of GM rice and a private army to repel the white shirts in exchange for access to the seedbank and lowering of the trade barriers. He also introduces the Somdet Chaopraya to Emiko. When the Somdet Chaopraya's acts prove too humiliating, Emiko snaps and kills the Somdet Chaopraya, Raleigh and eight other men. Then she seeks refuge with Anderson.
Because she has killed such a powerful man and all of his bodyguards, Akkarat assumes Emiko to be a military windup and accuses General Pracha of assassinating the Somdet Chaopraya. He also proceeds to arrest Anderson and Carlyle as suspects in the assassination conspiracy. Emiko escapes in the nick of time.
Kanya traces the origin of one of the plague victims to a village near Bangkok, and from information she gets there is able to identify Anderson's kink-spring factory as a possible source. She sterilizes the village with lye. Hock Seng fails to steal the kink-spring designs, so he decides to capture Emiko for ransom. He takes Mai with him.
Kanya is informed of the suspected assassination plot by her handler. Recognizing the harm the incident could cause, she visits the Japanese company that designed Emiko, learns of the true facts, and tries to explain it to Akkarat. But Akkarat has already decided to blame General Pracha for the assassination as a pretext for regime change
Regime change
"Regime change" is the replacement of one regime with another. Use of the term dates to at least 1925.Regime change can occur through conquest by a foreign power, revolution, coup d'état or reconstruction following the failure of a state...
and mobilizes his reserves to destroy Pracha and the white shirts. Anderson is released and discovers that he may have contracted the new plague.
Hock Seng encounters Emiko in Anderson's apartment and holds her at gunpoint. Anderson and Carlyle arrive at the same time. They make a deal: Hock Seng would be patronized by AgriGen and Emiko would remain with Anderson.
Eventually, Pracha and most of the top Environment Ministry men are killed. Akkarat, now all-powerful, appoints his spy Kanya as the chief of the Environment Ministry. He also opens up Thailand to the world, and grants AgriGen access to the seedbank. Kanya, who acts subdued at first, reneges and executes the AgriGen team in the seedbank. She then proceeds to move the seedbank to a safer place with the help of the monks. With the hidden arsenal in the seedbank, she orchestrates an uprising and coup d'état. She destroys the levees, flooding Bangkok. Bangkok's people and the capital relocate to the site of Ayutthaya
Ayutthaya (city)
Ayutthaya city is the capital of Ayutthaya province in Thailand. Located in the valley of the Chao Phraya River. The city was founded in 1350 by King U Thong, who went there to escape a smallpox outbreak in Lop Buri and proclaimed it the capital of his kingdom, often referred to as the Ayutthaya...
, a previous Thai capital. There is now a new Tiger, a grim, unsmiling woman (Kanya), and it is implied that the Child Queen now reigns without a regent.
Hock Seng is allowed by Kanya to leave Thailand with Mai to start a new life. The plague slowly kills Anderson as Emiko nurses him through the agony. She is alone in the flooded city when Gibbons arrives with his androgynous (kathoey
Kathoey
Kathoey or katoey is a male-to-female transgender person or an effeminate gay male in Thailand. Related phrases include sao praphet song , or phet thi sam . The word kathoey is thought to be of Khmer origin...
or "ladyboy") companion. He promises Emiko that he will use her DNA to engineer a new race of fertile New People, thus fulfilling her dream of living with her own kind.
Awards and honors
In September 2010, the novel won the 2010 Hugo Award for Best NovelHugo Award for Best Novel
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
category, tying with China Miéville
China Miéville
China Tom Miéville is an award-winning English fantasy fiction writer. He is fond of describing his work as "weird fiction" , and belongs to a loose group of writers sometimes called New Weird. He is also active in left-wing politics as a member of the Socialist Workers Party...
's The City & the City
The City & the City
The City & the City is a fantasy/weird fiction novel by British author China Miéville. It was published by Macmillan on 15 May 2009. In the US it was published by Del Rey Books on 26 May 2009. Also in 2009, a signed, limited edition of 500 numbered and 26 lettered copies was published in the US by...
. In May 2010, the novel won the Nebula Award
Nebula Award
The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
for Best Novel
Nebula Award for Best Novel
Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The stated year is that of publication; awards are given in the following year.- Winners and other nominees :...
. In 2010, the novel won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.
Reception
Adam Roberts reviewed the book for The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
and concludes "when it hits its sweet-spot, The Windup Girl embodies what SF does best of all: it remakes reality in compelling, absorbing and thought-provoking ways, and it lives on vividly in the mind."