THE WINDUP GIRL
Paolo Bacigalupi
Hachette, $27.99, pbk
While some authors use alien worlds and marvellous technology as an exotic backdrop for an old-fashioned adventure story, there is a long tradition of science fiction being used to comment on contemporary issues and the way they may shape our future.
Paolo Bacigalupi falls into the second camp.
His novel The Windup Girl is set in a near-future world of rising seas, bio-engineered plagues, collapsing nations, energy scarcity and starvation.
With entire genera driven to extinction by global warming and rapidly mutating plant pathogens, most of the world's food supply is in the control of Western "calorie companies".
These powerful cartels sell genetically engineered rice and other staples resistant to the viruses that (it is implied) they themselves designed to guarantee a market for their products.
Genetic modification has also extended into the animal kingdom, creating such creatures as megadonts (massive elephants used for transportation or harnessed to drive assembly lines and engines) and cheshires (cats with a chameleon-like ability to blend into their surroundings).
The Japanese have even bred humans with enhanced immune systems, delayed ageing, and the instinctive need to serve: Ten-hands for factory work, Warriors for military use, and Geisha for sexual and personal duties.
Lest they be accidentally mistaken for "real" people, they are also engineered with a characteristic stop-start motion that leads to their more common label, "Windups".
Unlike many countries, Thailand has managed to maintain a degree of political and social stability by maintaining a policy of strict isolation.
Bangkok survives behind massive dykes that hold back the encroaching ocean, protected by the White Shirts, soldiers from the Environment Ministry who control the entry of foreign goods and contain outbreaks of plant and human disease.
Respect for the ministry has waned over the years, however.
Endemic corruption and the sometimes brutal quarantine measures meted out by the White Shirts have alienated the public, and the power of the Trade Ministry (assisted by foreign business interests) is in the ascendant.
The novel focuses on four characters caught in the midst of this flux, individual representatives of the political and racial factions of the drowning city.
Anderson Lake is a covert AgriGen representative trying to discover how foodstuffs once thought extinct have started to appear in local markets.
His secretary, Hock Seng, is an elderly Malay Chinese refugee, haunted by the memories of the genocide that drove him from his home, and determined to regain the status and wealth he once possessed.
Newly elevated to White Shirt commander, Captain Kanya is a woman caught between professional and personal loyalties, constantly having to choose which side to betray.
And then there is Emiko, the ultimate outsider; a Windup abandoned by her Japanese "patron" to a life of pain and humiliation in a backstreet brothel.
Although she dreams of escape from her physical, psychological and genetic constraints, it is not until she meets Lake that she realises that such freedom is a real possibility.
Her actions precipitate the final confrontation between Environment and Trade, throwing the city into chaos.
Although clearly concerned about the potential consequences of our current use and misuse of resources and technology, Bacigalupi manages to avoid the didacticism that afflicts some dystopic fiction.
His characters are complex, and troubled, trying to balance personal responsibility and "kamma" with the instinctive impulse to survive at any cost.
Some reviewers have described them as unlikeable, but to me they were all too heartbreakingly human.
Similarly, the filthy, sweltering streets of this future Bangkok are both exotic and frighteningly, evocatively real.
The Windup Girl was a deserving winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 2010 and marks the arrival of a potential Grand Master of the genre.
THE FALLEN BLADE
Jon Courtenay
Grimwood
Hachette, $36.99, pbk
In contrast to this hard-edged future, The Fallen Blade is pure fantasy adventure, replete with vampires, werewolves and magic.
Set in 15th-century Venice, the novel opens on a teenage boy, Tycho, silver-shackled in an earth-strewn cell aboard a Turkish galley.
Although he has no memory of who he is or where he comes from, a deeply rooted survival instinct drives him to flee the Venetian soldiers who discover him, and he eventually washes up on the banks of the Grand Canal.
Venice at this time is an international city, one of the richest and most powerful in all of Europe.
Despite this, Tycho's silver hair, milk-white skin and inability to tolerate sunlight, mean he stands out even in such metropolitan surroundings.
As memory slowly returns, it is accompanied by a strange hunger that becomes increasingly difficult to resist, further distancing him from the people around him.
His unnatural speed and fighting ability eventually bring him to the attention of Atilo il Mauros, the head of the Assassini, who captures and trains him as a potential successor, a role Tycho has no desire to fill.
Atilo's hope turns to enmity, however, when Tycho refuses to kill the leader of the kreighund, whose followers menace Venetian streets and have all but destroyed the assassins' guild.
This is exacerbated when his betrothed, Desdaio, intervenes on Tycho's behalf (Atilo is a Moor, and the resemblance of names with Shakespeare's characters is probably not coincidental).
Both Atilo and Tycho are pawns in a wider power struggle, however; the current Duke is "feeble-minded", ruler in name only, with his uncle and his mother vying for control of the city.
As long as both remain useful in this battle, neither can exact revenge.
My initial expectations for the book were fairly low, since vampires have been figuratively (and possibly literally) done to death in recent years.
I also found Grimwood's style frustrating at times, particularly his insistence on using full stops in place of commas so that the writing abounds with partial sentences.
The similarity of setting to The Windup Girl (encroaching waters and squalid slums abound) didn't help. Grimwood's Venice lacked the tangibility and physicality of Bacigalupi's Bangkok, and I didn't feel as drawn into the novelistic world.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised when the story diverged from the standard vampire-versus-werewolf trope to focus on the political intrigues that drive the plot.
By the end of the book Tycho has learned the truth about both his nature and his reason for being, paving the way for the inevitable sequel (it is subtitled "Act One of The Assassini").
Despite its flaws, I am interested to see where the series goes.
• Dr McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
