Bacigalupi Wins Printz Award

From the Science Fiction Awards watch blog:

• Paolo Bacigalupi has added to his haul of awards, but this one is not for The Windup Girl. The American Library Association has just announced their annual awards, and Paolo’s YA novel, Ship Breaker, has won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award.

Congrats to one of BMU's favorite authors! Way to go Paolo!

Review Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi

Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
Night Shade Books 239 pp/trade paper back 10 stories

I know the first publication of this collection was out in 2008 but this is the paperback from Night Shade Books released in 2010. First off, near as I can tell, there is no difference from the hard cover printing.

Second, I don't think I need to spend a whole lot of time telling the Beam Me Up audience that Paolo is a really good writer and his stories wildly inventive and entertaining. Pump Six follows on in the tracks of the Windup Girl and many of the stories (the rest paying homage) play in the same venue as Windup. A world flooded by global warming and energy starved as petroleum fuels are no longer used while food scources become contaminated with corporate entities becoming "calorie" barons developing resistant food sources to feed and power the world's economy.

I first became aware of Bacigalupi's world with "The Calorie Man" where engines became super strong main-springs, gas stations became "winders" and the economy based on the "calorie". Paolo puts you right into this in between world of mutated animals that generate the power (all the way up to engineered elephants capable of huge amounts of power on few calories) the smell, noise and people lived for me. (if you like the Calorie Man and haven't read The Windup Girl, you really should. ) Then I ran across The People of Sand & Slag which was even more gene modified to a point that I question whether the humans are even that anymore....human. A world so horribly destroyed that it took me a while to reconcile the fact that both stories were from the same author. In the People.... the whole world seems to be a strip mine. When I read the story I wanted so badly to do it on Beam Me Up and Paolo was very gracious. I started reading it on episode 139 and finished reading it on episode 140 & 141. He managed to hammer the world into a cesspool of oil spills and toxic sludge and warped the humanity out of the main characters but somehow still made them human.

Soon after I found "the Yellow Card Man". Many of the "Calorie" stories are placed in an Asian influence land. With Thailand and Malaysia bringing a strong influence. The water influence, nonstop humanity. The feel of the marketplace with food, people and a mishmash of languages will set the stage. When Bacigalupi mixes in a refugee element and then doses it with the calorie and you get something recognizable and at the same time alien. Yellow Card Man lets you travel with someone that is hopelessly trapped in the margins of this world, destined to never be a player.

Then when you think you have a fix on what Paolo is all about with Pump Six, he skins in "the Fluted Girl, is so far removed from the constant press of humanity that Yellow Card Man or Calorie Man seem a distant if other world memory. I don't want to do a spoiler on Fluted Girl, other than to say that it is painfully evident that genetic manipulation is not far away, but so utterly different in scope.

And then one wonders where a story like "Softer" came from. A totally twisted ride into madness that wonders what lies behind the calm exterior of Mr. Bacigalupi.

Praising his writing talents at this point are redundant. Pump Six and other Stories on it's own merits is certainly worthy of a read. As an addition to the Bacigalupi library, well it's a must.

Review: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
359 pp HC
Published by Night Shade Books http://www.nightshadebooks.com/

Those readers who are familiar with Paolo's Hugo Nominated work "The Calorie Man" (which I truly suggest reading before Windup because it will make clear some of the otherwise cryptic references in the book) will instantly recognize the world of "The Windup Girl". The world of the Windup Girl is calorie starved. Plagues have decimated the worlds food supplies and petro-chemical are if not totally depleted are very scarce. In this world the "gene-ripper and calorie-men" are all that keep the world fed and supplied with energy but at great cost. Their power is held not by governments now but huge corporations that control grains for food and the various technologies to make energy. Power now is based around genetically engineered animals and mechanical devices storage devices much like batteries or engines but more in line with a watch's main spring than an internal combustion engine. The world's currency is now the calorie and the joule and the corporations guard them well. Wars are fought over control between different corporation for such control.

Into this mix we are introduced to "New People" or Windups. Genetically engineered from human and animal genes to be the perfect servant for areas where the native populations have declined seriously or the ultimate soldier. Toys for the ultra rich.

Emiko is the windup in our story. Abandoned in future Bangkok. Emiko is forced to hide amongst the very dregs of humanity used as a plaything by anyone that can manage the price set by her "patron".

In Windup Girl we are introduced to the various factions that are tasked with keeping Bangkok dry, fed and energized, plus fighting each other for control. Above it all are the mysterious corporations manipulating and spying for the ultimate prize.....plague free food stuffs that could bring untold wealth.

Paolo has done a great job of expanding on the earlier shorter works. His future Bangkok lives and breathes. You can feel the oppressive heat, smell the stench of animals kept in close quarters. The noise and the strangeness.

Mix in a healthy dose of political intrigue (which to be honest I usually run screaming from) and you have a book that you just can not put down. You feel Emiko's conflict. Her every fiber is designed to serve without question but she is tortured by the conflict to be more than a toy but to be someone in control and to have others like herself, a group to which she can belong. The mysterious Anderson who seems to be very much a dangerous company man but is totally undone by the likes of Emiko. Kanya who serves two masters to her undying shame and other equally realized characters. The milieu alone makes the books worthwhile, but to have real people woven into the tapestry is wonderful. Don't get me wrong, there are cardboard cut-outs, but they are there mostly to set the tone not be the focus.

If you found the Calorie Man or the collection Pump 6 as entertaining as I did then you will find The Windup Girl immensely entertaining.