Helpful Score: 2
This was a nifty collection of Bacigalupis early short story work, allowing the reader to watch the tests he made of different post-collapse futures, prior to authoring his award-winning novel, The Windup Girl.
Short reviews of each story:
Pocketful of Dharma: The story of a desperately poor man who manages to come into possession of a interesting data cube with a particular stored consciousness. Its the environment that feels most fascinating here: a growing super skyscraper, essentially a genetically engineered tree that hollows itself out for people.The plot itself was little more than a gimmick. 3 stars.
The Fluted Girl: The ultimate in bonded servitude in a highly structured class society, the main character is a girl whose body has been transformed by her owner to become a musical instrument. The kind of story that knocks you back and makes you grapple with the implications before moving on. 4 stars.
The People of Sand and Slag: After the world is devastated, the ones who live are genetically engineered to exist on mining tailings and waste-water. Oh, and regrow their damaged bodies in just a few hours. Very post-human. So what do they do when they find a stray dog? Slice off their arms to see if its hungry. Yeah. Its that strange. 4 stars.
The Pasho: A story, essentially, of the difference between cultures of violence and cultures of knowledge and how they meet in a very post-collapse world. This was good, and had a little twist, but it was not nearly as edgy or thought-provoking as his other stories. 3 stars.
The Calorie Man: One of the two stories set in the same world as The Windup Girl, this one really introduces a world where power comes exclusively from muscles burning calories, and energy storage is some kind of molecular spring which winds and unwinds. In that world is set global Food Conglomerates who have somehow cornered the market for calories by engineering pandemic plant pathogens and their own sterile crops which resist them. Its a frightening world, where faceless corporations have crushed the poor by stripping them of food creation power. 4 stars.
The Tamarisk Hunter: The end of water wars, when California gets it all, and the only people left in the drought state of Arizona are the ones who hunt the Tamarisk, a tree which has the nerve of siphoning off river water. And interesting story, and a future I hope never to meet. (Im already a Northern Californian, who thinks that Southern California taking all our water is just wrong...) 3 stars.
Pop Squad: When you have people able to live forever, what happens to child rearing? This is a tale of how to do it utterly wrong, and where the composting of unwanted children causes the enforcers to lose their own marbles. Bacigalupi was really pushing the edge of what modern readers can take, I think, though he never gives the impression that he actually approves of what he depicts. 3 stars.
Yellow Card Man: The other Windup Girl story, this time about the hopelessness of job-seeking in an overcrowded place, and the fall from a world of plenty to a world of scarcity. Its a thought-provoking tale, and one that I hope well never see in the real world. 4 stars.
Softer: This one was extremely edgy. A man kills his wife in a fit of ill-thought frustration, and then gets away with it. Left me feeling dirty. 3 stars.
Pump Six: Heres an interesting one: what happens when environmental poisons make people more and more unintelligent with each passing generation? Stuff starts to fail. Even well made stuff has a hard time meeting the demands of centuries of use. 4 stars.
Short reviews of each story:
Pocketful of Dharma: The story of a desperately poor man who manages to come into possession of a interesting data cube with a particular stored consciousness. Its the environment that feels most fascinating here: a growing super skyscraper, essentially a genetically engineered tree that hollows itself out for people.The plot itself was little more than a gimmick. 3 stars.
The Fluted Girl: The ultimate in bonded servitude in a highly structured class society, the main character is a girl whose body has been transformed by her owner to become a musical instrument. The kind of story that knocks you back and makes you grapple with the implications before moving on. 4 stars.
The People of Sand and Slag: After the world is devastated, the ones who live are genetically engineered to exist on mining tailings and waste-water. Oh, and regrow their damaged bodies in just a few hours. Very post-human. So what do they do when they find a stray dog? Slice off their arms to see if its hungry. Yeah. Its that strange. 4 stars.
The Pasho: A story, essentially, of the difference between cultures of violence and cultures of knowledge and how they meet in a very post-collapse world. This was good, and had a little twist, but it was not nearly as edgy or thought-provoking as his other stories. 3 stars.
The Calorie Man: One of the two stories set in the same world as The Windup Girl, this one really introduces a world where power comes exclusively from muscles burning calories, and energy storage is some kind of molecular spring which winds and unwinds. In that world is set global Food Conglomerates who have somehow cornered the market for calories by engineering pandemic plant pathogens and their own sterile crops which resist them. Its a frightening world, where faceless corporations have crushed the poor by stripping them of food creation power. 4 stars.
The Tamarisk Hunter: The end of water wars, when California gets it all, and the only people left in the drought state of Arizona are the ones who hunt the Tamarisk, a tree which has the nerve of siphoning off river water. And interesting story, and a future I hope never to meet. (Im already a Northern Californian, who thinks that Southern California taking all our water is just wrong...) 3 stars.
Pop Squad: When you have people able to live forever, what happens to child rearing? This is a tale of how to do it utterly wrong, and where the composting of unwanted children causes the enforcers to lose their own marbles. Bacigalupi was really pushing the edge of what modern readers can take, I think, though he never gives the impression that he actually approves of what he depicts. 3 stars.
Yellow Card Man: The other Windup Girl story, this time about the hopelessness of job-seeking in an overcrowded place, and the fall from a world of plenty to a world of scarcity. Its a thought-provoking tale, and one that I hope well never see in the real world. 4 stars.
Softer: This one was extremely edgy. A man kills his wife in a fit of ill-thought frustration, and then gets away with it. Left me feeling dirty. 3 stars.
Pump Six: Heres an interesting one: what happens when environmental poisons make people more and more unintelligent with each passing generation? Stuff starts to fail. Even well made stuff has a hard time meeting the demands of centuries of use. 4 stars.
Helpful Score: 1
I read 'The Windup Girl' and enjoyed it very much - but this collection of short stories confirms Bacigalupi as one of my very favorite authors. The stories themselves are cautionary, often heartbreaking - but the fact that they exist is something that truly makes me happy. I guess I've felt that many of my favorite current authors have passed away fairly recently, and others are inevitably reaching the end of their careers... it's good to see someone this competent taking on the mantle of thoughtful but utterly humanist sf.
