The Windup Girl

Overall: Disappointing that this should have won the Hugo/Nebula. For a number of reasons.

THE GOOD

Bacigalupi's worldbuilding is great: he imagines a far future Kingdom of Thailand, where risen sea levels + GMO mayhem have managed to destroy the planet. This biopunk dystopia feels desperate, immediate and urgent, and, on a meta level, it's a scathing commentary on (fair) trade, ag subsidies in the US/Europe, the American food industry and people (such as myself) burning up the atmo in environmentally-unsound jet planes. In Bacigalupi's future history, we arrogant, over-happy, over-traveled 21st century citizens are living during the brief “Expansion” era - soon to be followed by a violent and unpleasant “Contraction” where no one will travel any further than where their feet can carry them. Bacigalupi's future Thailand is just after the Contraction, now poised on the edge of a possible second “Expansion”, using resurrected woolly mammoth (OK, megodonts - but wtf is a megodont) strength and methane composting to fuel industry.

THE BAD

Bacigalupi may be an inventive worldbuilder, but he is not an inventive writer - nor even a particularly good one. He violates the sacrosanct Law of Good (or at least Decent) Writing, which is “show us, don't tell us” - often bluntly introducing characters as “terrifying” or “charming”. Um, why not save some word count and just say, “The villain entered.” Another tiresome authorial tic was repetition: if I saw Emiko the Cyborg Lady described one more time as exhibiting “telltale stutter-stop herky-jerky” movements or a character described by their (often “pale” or “icy” or “watery” blue) eyes... oh my God. Oh. My. God.

THE UGLY

This was the dealbreaker. I forced myself to finish this book, as I have a spiritual obligation to all Hugo/Nebula joint winners, but wtf is up with this thinly-veiled retrograde Orientalist male chauvinist fantasy? To whit: Chapter 1 introduces Anderson Lake, the blond/blue-eyed American male hero who will guide us through this exotic (EXOTIC) foreign land of small, shy, deferential, and pitiably incompetent Asians. Chapter 2 introduces Anderson's Chinese sidekick, Hock Seng, a survivor of an Islamic fundamentalist genocide against ethnic Chinese in Malaysia. Hock Seng is embittered, often described as scheming or cowering or untrustworthy, and he spends the entire book lamenting his victim state and attempting (but always failing) to make a better life for himself. Just in case it's not clear: Hock Seng has no agency. Chapter 3 introduces the titular “windup girl”, Emiko, a Japanese sex slave robot woman who is repeatedly raped (described in - DARE I SAY IT - loving (!?) detail), works in a stereotypical Miss Saigon-style brothel, and dreams of a better future where New People (i.e. windups) live free and unmolested. She has also been programmed to serve (one geneticist character speculating she has Labrador DNA in her!) and is repeatedly described as a “dog”.

Unsurprisingly, when Anderson isn't planning to overthrow this “little country” in order to make room for American profiteering GMO interests (from the Midwest! the Heartland!), he falls hard in love with the poor, bruised, whimpering, helpless Emiko. Various scenes of rescue and damsel-in-distress ensue.

OK, I'm assuming Bacigalupi has never been exposed to post-colonialism/Orientalism/feminism, because this entire premise just reeks of unreconstructed American/white/male hegemonic views. Not only is it alarming and disappointing that this type of story still has any sort of currency at all (but then, alas, my beloved scifi genre is one of the most unreconstructed in this regard...), but it's also incredibly tedious, unnecessary and unrealistic. I'm a scifi writer and fan, and a lady, and all I can hope for is to read about other future-ladies being... victims, objectified and sexualized? (Even Mai, Hock Seng's sidekick, is a little girl who does little more than cry out in alarm as plot twists promise ruin.) The only woman who enjoys any sort of agency in this story is Kanya, a Ministry of Environment official who is described as an unsmiling hardass (also, wait for it, a victim! her village was destroyed by evil men!) and, surprise, a lesbian.

Bacigalupi excuses himself from any potential attacks re: his portrayal of the Other by noting that this is THE FUTURE and thus not really Thailand at all. He then recommends a number of ethnically Thai authors. Um, I have no problem with writers of one ethnicity writing about other ethnicities, as long as they're respectful and informed and not idiotically exoticizing about it. I even don't have too much of a problem of white/male authors writing about non-white/non-male issues - fraught as that may seem, given the world we live in - because I'm sure it can be done well. What I CANNOT STAND is lazy narratives of romanticized victimization and macho Orientalist fantasies. And for that, I hated this book and am disappointed that it was so lauded by the arbiters of good sf.