Paulo Bacigalupi and The Windup Girl

Corporate espionage, the far-reaching consequences of genetic tinkering on food and animals, political intrigue and bloody revolution -- these are all touched on in Paulo Bacigalupi's novel The Windup Girl, but the subject that is the most fascinating for me is the one the book is named for: the windup girl, Emiko.

She is the product of genetic tinkering done in the name of service. She, like so many concepts and creations of sf, was made to be an object of utility. Her initial role is one of absolute obeisance and servitude. She is secretary, lover, servant, designed with a compulsion to always obey a master, to require a master, and given physical chains to further reinforce her role in the form of a "stutter-stop motion" that betrays her nature, and pores so small that her body overheats quickly, making escape seem impossible. Emiko is abandoned by her Japanese owner, discarded on the streets of Bangkok where her nature and training require her to find a new master. She is found by one, a character called Raleigh, who forces her nightly to take the stage and be violated, again and again, by those whose fascination lies in watching the debasement of a "New Person," a more-than-human, "soulless" subhuman creature of genetic scientists.

Revolution is stirring in the City of Divine Beings, and the major players prime themselves for the moment when their machinations can come to fruition, but it is Emiko, a character with no investment in or awareness of the turbulent political climate she lives within, who creates that perfect moment. Up until this point in the text, Emiko's hope for a new life, one without a master where she can live freely among other New People, has been a small, but persistent flame. The catalyst for change, however, is born from moment of despair. A new client comes into the club where she is forced to work, and that night the degradation and humiliation she is made to suffer reaches an unbearable height. It leaves her feeling broken, emptied out, and without hope.

This is a pivotal moment. The final chapter in a cycle of despair always leaves its sufferer with two choices: die, and end the pain at last, or live, and change everything with the knowledge of the absolute freedom that comes when you have nothing left to lose. Emiko chooses life, and wreaks glorious and bloody vengeance on those who were the source of her suffering. The carnage she leaves in her wake and the misinterpretation of the intent behind such an act of violence, begins a revolution. The city goes up in flames as those major players capitalize on the consequences of her actions, and then the city is drowned by those who would preserve its integrity and its people.

Emiko survives this purging, and the novel closes with her living freely in the nearly empty, mostly submerged city. It is here that she meets the aged scientist Gibson and his companion, a young hermaphrodite named Kip. The novel revolves around discussions of genetic manipulation, and reveals many consequences of this sort of tinkering, from plagues and persistent and ever-mutating disease, to genetic monopolies, to New People and the feral, chameleon-like cats called Cheshires. This meeting between Emiko and the scientist, Gibson, posits a new development in the discussion of genetics, one with very different implications.

He cannot alter Emiko to free her from the tells that mark her as a New Person, or the weaknesses that make her physically vulnerable, but he offers her a future that will make her part of a genetic continuum. New People are engineered for sterility, and although they are virtually immune to disease, heal very quickly, and live much longer lifespans than other human beings, there is no genetic remnant left of them when they die save what is preserved in a laboratory.

It is crucial to note that while Emiko cannot be altered and therefore freed, she wishes to be "a part of the natural world" in some capacity, implying that being a part of the natural world entails the ability to produce life. So much of the novel is about an urgent need to maintain human life, and the barriers against survival created by inventions born from a desire for profit. It is this need that shifts the balance of power in the text, but the changes Gibson offers are not for profit. Whatever his own reasons, he says that he will do it for Emiko. A strand of her hair is all he needs, and while her physical being will remain unchanged, she will be part of a continuum that will alter the course of the genetic future of the human race.

Continuation of this nature, however, is not without its surprises. Emiko was created to serve, and yet she found the will to challenge her masters and become her own mistress. Genetic tinkering does not remove the possibility of mutation, aberration, or evolution -- the plagues on gengineered crops in the text demonstrate that very clearly -- and the future Gibson will create through Emiko will likely be rife will changes and consequences that cannot be predicted or fully controlled. Continuation of life will occur regardless, and it will not be for profit or political agenda. What Bacigalupi demonstrates in The Windup Girl is that in a world guided by genetic engineering, a place in the genetic continuum will be the gift of a contrary 'god' to a worthy supplicant, for no better reason than the perpetuation of life in whatever form life can be dreamed.