The Windup Girl

WORKING

'''Bacigalupi, Paolo. The Windup Girl.''' New York: Night Shade Books, 2009 (Night Shade is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing).

Usefully described as "biopunk," relevant here for the nature of the title character and the technology of its post-petroleum post-disaster (dystopian) world. Emiko, the title "wind-up girl," is explicitly called "clockwork," as well as a denigrating term with the same idea, and moves at normal speed with a jerky motion. The mechanization imposed upon her, however, is biological: she is an android with DNA - probably canine, possibly Labrador - that move her to obedience and make her easy to train in greater obedience and a desire to please. In the world of the story, literal power to do work comes from mammalian muscles, augmented by wind, methane, coal, and, for military purposes, petroleum-like coal products. More metaphorical political power comes from control of another form of energy, that of food, measured, as in our world, in calories. Intriguing (and award-winning) examination of a world in which computers can be powered by treadles, and a highly significant breakthrough would be the storage of immense energy in a new kind of tightly-wound spring.