Books by Paolo Bacigalupi
“This is a book I encountered when it was doing the rounds the first time, and yes, it did extraordinarily well, and deservingly so. It is set in a near-ish future, post an energy and climate collapse. It’s set in Thailand. The windup girl of the title is, to be blunt, essentially a sex-bot who is wandering around feral through a lot of the story. It’s not really about her – or it – that’s just an extra interesting thing that Bacigalupi is looking at. There is a dystopian regime running Thailand, and the whole world is in a fairly poor situation. This book gives you the cold equations of what happens if you’re trying to run a state after the collapse of globalism: what it comes down to is calories. You don’t have fossil fuels – what fossil fuels you do have are very carefully hoarded – so all of your physical power is coming out of animal and human labour.” Read more...
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Novelist
“I like the book not only for being a thriller, but also because of the descriptions of how dangerous this work is, while someone else is getting rich off it.” Read more...
The best books on The Trash Trade
Adam Minter, Foreign Correspondent
Interviews where books by Paolo Bacigalupi were recommended
The best books on The Trash Trade, recommended by Adam Minter
Recycling is more than just a blue and green bin in your pantry, says journalist Adam Minter – it’s a global trade with centuries of history that stretches from American scrapyards to Chinese e-waste recycling villages
Dystopian Sci Fi Books, recommended by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Sci fi dystopias are often, paradoxically, hopeful: they show oppressive systems, but they also show resistance. Award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky picks out five titles that deserve more readers, ranging from near-futures to space operas, but all featuring complex humans responding to dire circumstances.
