The Sword and Laser discussion

Just finished (and since I have a long commute, it was the unabridged Audible edition) and have a few thoughts about TWG and the nature of story and character in general.

First off, this book is wonderfully written. Bacigalupi can summon wonderfully poetic passages and has an eye for just the right details to put you vividly in a scene (e.g. the quick description of the falling glasses in Anderson's apartment from Emiko's point of view towards the end of the book is a lovely little touch). To my ear he uses just enough Thai and Chinese language to capture the cultures (and you'll notice that when he uses those words, it's almost always to convey concepts and modes of behavior that are not common to a Euro-centric viewpoint) without going overboard and making it too onerous on the reader. As a piece of writing craft, it's exceptional.

But (and you knew there was a 'but' coming, didn't you?), I'm unsure of how successful it is as a story. Most of the characters were fundamentally flawed enough in distasteful ways to make identifying with their actions and motives difficult. Even Emiko, probably the most sympathetic character in the book and the one with whom we should most readily identify and be pulling for, comes off as a sketch - unrealistically passive. This is not a protagonist who _does_ something, but one to whom stuff simply happens. Even her actions that precipitate the crisis which provides the pivot point of the book are not willful action on her part, but more unconscious reflex - a lashing out at reaching the breaking point. These actions, which should have fundamentally changed the way she sees herself and relates to the rest of the world, don't seem to prod her forward much and she returns to passive acceptance of what life hands her. Any growth in her character comes not from within, but merely from changed circumstance.

So is Emiko truly the protagonist and not simply a symbolic title character? Hard to tell. There's not really another good candidate for protagonist. Most of the others are too flawed - too greedy, too venal, too self-centered, and in some cases too shallowly drawn to see the human within. It may simply be that Bacigalupi's ambitions for the novel overran his storytelling skills (a separate thing from writing skills). Konya, for example, could have made an interesting protagonist, facing the conflict of serving two masters and ending up making a dramatic decision about which one she owes the most. In many ways, it should have been her story, but she's kept too much in the background and too lightly sketched for her conflict and the resolution of it to be more than a convenient plot device. That's a shame, because hewing more closely to Konya's story would have made, for me at least, a more compelling novel.

I do, though, bear in mind that it's a first novel and an ambitious attempt. I'm looking forward to seeing Bacigalupi grow as a writer and will be interested in what he does next. For me, The Windup Girl was an interestingly flawed, but exceptionally well-written book.

I drew many of the same conclusions, however I feel that Kanya could be an adequate protagonist. The rest of the characters really didn't undergo much of a transformation or change. Emiko is a perfect model for what man has done to nature. Through man's synthesis, we have created a natural environment that is no longer in control of itself, but must have things done to it instead of it doing things to others. But at its heart it cannot take orders for all situations so it becomes a dangerous element that can kill unexpectedly. Case in point, would be a genetically modified crop that becomes a deadly invasive to its surrounding environment because it is no longer subject to the natural conditions of its habitat. This is controlled through making it infertile which presents so many issues of its own.

Emiko is trapped in a place where both her genes and her environment have worked to control her. To have another person's will exerted over you through your environment (parents, government, society, etc) is common, but to have another person's will exerted over you through genetics is a whole different story. Imagine if your government decided to modify your genes to make you more passive, or to be subservient, or to be a good worker, etc. What would they miss? Can they do everything through genetic modification?

I loved the book, but did not find an uplifting ending. In a recent interview on a podcast Bacigalupi talked about how much better the world would be without humans, and I think this attitude comes through in the writing.