FACT SF Reading Group

October 2010

October 4: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

Nine people attended this discussion at the North Village Library. Our topic was The Windup Girl, the first novel by Paolo Bacigalupi. This novel had recently won the Hugo and Nebula awards, and its author had just been announced as the Guest of Honor for ArmadilloCon in 2011. The book is a near-future story set in a world where fossil fuels are running out and calories are the new currency. Biotechnology has enabled the creation of entirely new species including artificial humanoids who are essentially slaves. Four of us had read the author's short fiction before. All of us started The Windup Girl, and five finished it.

One reader felt that the author "knocked it out the the park" with this book. He enjoyed every minute of reading it. He felt all the characters met their appropriate endings. His summary of the book was "splendid." A couple of others used worlds like "remarkable" to describe the book.

We felt that the author had a clean prose style and a vivid imagination. The worldbulding was detailed and well thought out. The future Thailand where the story takes place is conveyed well. Many of us found that the book read quickly. Some people noted that Bacigalupi's short fiction had explored a few of The Windup Girl's speculative biotechnology concepts.

The book's narrative structure caused some of us to have trouble getting into it. The story is told from the points of view of many characters, and it takes a long time to establish the overall story. Even those who loved the book felt the story was diffused at the beginning. One person quit reading because he couldn't discern a linking plot by page 100.

About a third of us simply did not have fun with the book. Those readers didn't enjoy being with most of the viewpoint characters. And the future of this world was so unremittingly depressing that they did not want to learn more about it.

Some people in the group wondered if the author wrote about this grim future in an attempt to prevent it rather than predict it. We also discussed the implications of this book's concept of patenting living things.

Overall this book provided us with a thought-provoking discussion. After the meeting, many of adjourned to a nice dinner at Chili's.

October 19: The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran

Fourteen people met at the Milwood Library to discuss The Long Run by Daniel Keys Moran. This novel is a futuristic adventure story with elements of cyberpunk. It was published in 1989 and has long been out of print, but we were able to read it because the author recently released a free electronic version of the book. Four of us had read Moran before. Eleven of us started the book, and nine of us finished it. Five of us read the original 1989 paperback version of the book, four read it eletronically, and two printed it out and read the hardcopy.

Many of us enjoyed the book as a fast-paced adventure story. Trent, the cocky protagonist, was hard to like at first but he grew more likeable as the story progressed. He's a high tech thief and con man who eventually develops higher goals. He's chased throughout the book (hence the book's title), and it's fun to see how he keeps going. The chase and fight scenes are imaginatively staged. We enjoyed the cyborg army. Several people said the story felt like a movie.

A couple of people in the group did not like the book at all. One person said it had a "terrible prose style" and could not believe a major publisher released it. He also found the story uninteresting. Another felt the author kept interrupting the story to explain things, and said the book would have been improved by the author taking it to a workshop.

Two others in the group felt that they were the ideal audience for The Long Run. The adventure story, vivid writing, and technology speculation provided everything they wanted in a book. They also appreciated the nods to classic sf like Slan and Dominic Flandry.

Another person liked the book but felt that more recent authors (notably Neal Stephenson) are more effective at capturing the fast pace of Internet society.

We thought the technological advances in this future were well thought out. The implant technology was reminiscent of Effinger's When Gravity Fails. The book predicts several technology issues that have arisen since it was published, notably addiction to the Internet. Some of the technology advances Moran predicted are now common in our world, but with remarkably different names. His term for what we call a notebook computer is "Lap Vax," which amused the techies in our group.

This was a fun discussion. Afterward, many of us had dinner at Red Robin.

---A. T. Campbell, III