The Windup Girl

The Windup Girl by Paolo Baciqaupi is set in 23 Century Bangkok, Thailand. In this story global warming has resulted in a dramatic rise in water levels which have flooded sections of the world, such as Florida, New York, and costal countries in Africa. At the time of the story water is being kept out of Bangkok by giant walls that surround the city and only have minimal points of entry reserved mostly for trade ships. Bangkok is called the City of the Divine Beings and is currently ruled over by the rather reclusive Child Queen. The main authorities that control the people are the White Shirts who are sort of like the police who work under the Environment Ministry who can be compared to the Army. One of the common themes I have found so far in the book is that everyone can be bought and every single official I have read about so far is being bribed and no one seems to care. The main problems that this global catastrophe presented was that all carbon fuel sources have been depleted, vicious new plagues now whip out whole generation and harvest leading to massive famines, and the Companies that have risen to power in place of most governments have developed complex bioengineered AI’s, foods, and animals. These bioengineered foods resulted in new kinds of plagues, new kinds of foods with unknown long-term health consequences, and even created markets that resulted in the development of the large companies who now control most of the worlds resources all because they can fill a new demand for calories. The bioengineered animals have eliminated natural species, caused unstable ecosystems in an already stressed ecosystems, and the change in both foods and animals had a effect on the societies in which they exist in. While all of this complex science being used in bioengineering the other factor is that they are using springs (hand-wound coils) produce energy a very old school form of energy production. There are four point of views given in this book, the character Anderson Lake gets his chapter followed by Hong Seng point of view and then Emiko goes next and lastly Captain Jaidee then it starts all over. The two main characters are Anderson Lake and Emiko whole Hong Seng and Captain Jaidee play secondary roles but of equal importance to the overall story line. Anderson Lake is a calorie man for the company AgriGen but is currently pretending to be an entrepreneur who owns a spring factory as his cover for staying and working in Thailand. From what I understand so far, the job of a calorie man is multifaceted and perfect for Anderson as it requires some one intelligent, hard to read, and time efficient all while pretending to be a normal everyday factory owner. Some of his tasks as a Calorie man that I know so far are that he is to go and search out newly developed or discovered foods and investigate their origin and then bring all that information back to the company in hopes they can capitalize on it, another is being apprised of all the companies workers and making sure that they staying in line and not sharing secrets, and lastly he is to investigate anything that could become harmful to the company wither in the immediate future or the distant future. Anderson is described as a white male with blond hair and blue eyes not much is known about his background yet only that he is fiercely loyal to his company. The second character that is introduced is Hong Seng the right-hand man of Anderson at the moment, he is referred to as a “Yellow Card” or a Chinese refuge him personally is the last surviving member of his family that survived a brutal massacre that killed all but 1% of the population of Mayala. He is great with languages and knows the city and who to bribe to get what Anderson needs which is why he has a job because according to the people of Thailand no job should go to a Chinese person that could have gone to a person of Thailand, basically they don’t want the refugees to work at all. He is described as skinny and elderly, he is very intelligent he used to own a entire shipping fleet company, he also is very unsatisfied with where not only he is but his people and is currently trying to change that situation by stealing the blueprints from the safe at Anderson’s spring factory.  The third character that is introduced is Emiko who is a classified as New People specifically a Windup Girl, this means that she was engineered and built in a lab then trained her to follow the commands of her owner without questions, yet they gave her a personality and will. She was originally owned by a Japanese business man who for a yet undiscovered reason abandoned Emiko in Thailand where she was purchased by a strip club owner forces her to work as a sex slave and allows his staff to harshly abuse Emiko just because she is a Windup Girl and therefor in their minds not worthy of even the basic dignities you give an animal. She is described as having perfect black hair, perfect eyesight, super smooth skin that was made with minimal pores which due to the current humid and hot climate she is in causes her to constantly overheat, and she is disease and cancer resistant. While it is clear that her “programing” has left her basically unable to disobey her perceived master from her point of view and her personal interactions I believe that she is very intelligent, observant, and seeks freedom a place where she can truly learn who she is without outside forces changing her personality. When Emiko and Anderson interact for the first time, she gives him information about a new food he has discovered and given him the name of a traitor in his company, in this interaction he is able to figure out where she’s from and she calls him out for being a calorie man. At the very end of their interaction for reasons that even Anderson later admits he is not sure about he tells Emiko about a town of free New People up in the Northern Mountains and in that moment gives her some hope. The last character is Captain Jaidee R. but I will also go in to some detail about is Lieutenant Kanya because she is heavily featured in his section of the book. The Captain is a White Shirt meaning he works for the Queen he his older than Anderson but younger than Hong Seng not much description wise for him yet only that he his kind of constantly smiling. He has a wife and two children one of which is ill. His biggest character traits are that he is rebellious, violent, loved by the people and hated by the other officials who he goes after for money, and mostly that he is very impulsive. Lieutenant Kanya is kind of the opposite of the Captain in that she is very respectful of members at all levels of society wither that high-ranking officials or everyday citizens and never smiles. This is due to her tragic past from when she first lived in the North but her and her family were forced to flee when starvation struck again. Yet, on their way to the city she lost her parents and her siblings.

Quiz and Discussion Questions

1. What are the jobs of Anderson Lake?
2. What is the problem with Emiko’s skin?
3. What happened to the World?
4. Who rules over the city?

·      What do you think that we would use as fuel sources if our carbon sources were depleted?

·      Do you think that because Emiko was engineered that it is okay how she is treated?

·      How would you react if the world began to flood like it did in the story?

·      If you were Emiko would you risk running away?