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Why it matters
Its unsettling biopunk future links ecological collapse, corporate power, and the exploitation of designed life.
A celebrated work
The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi2009 selection · Science fiction & fantasy
The Windup Girl
In a climate-ravaged Bangkok, calorie companies control food genetics while engineered organisms and crop diseases reshape political power. Emiko, an artificial person abandoned by her owner, becomes entangled with corporate espionage and Thailand's struggle for autonomy.
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Read this if…
You appreciate dense dystopian world-building and morally difficult environmental fiction.
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Ideas inside
Climate changeBiotechnologyExploitationCorporate power
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