Wound Up With Conclusions

The Wind Up Girl, a review
   Recommended to me by lookfar when we were discussing post apocalyptic books, this book takes place in a future where the global economy has been wrecked by petroleum having run out, and then "calorie companies" competitively destroyed rival crops with engineered crop diseases until much of the world was starving and dependent on buying food or sterile seeds from one of the small number of surviving campanies, all based far away in the US midwest. The story takes place in Bangkok, which has surprisingly survived all this, thanks in part to a seed bank they've managed to maintain in isolation. The author, Paolo Bachigalupi, has managed to fill his world with so many interesting details its a marvel to me. But what I think I like most is the complexity of his characters. You don't know which of the several main characters the book follows to really root for: one is a secret agent for the calorie companies who is written is a very sympathetic way such that its easy to feel like he's the good guy you're rooting for until you think about how the end goals he represents are pretty evil; one works for the very conservative, brutal and corrupt "Environmental Bureau" but you find yourself sympathisizing with their goals of protecting the country from the dangerous outside influences; one is a Chinese immigrant stuck beween all these larger forces who at times seems selfish but he's also just desperate to survive; and of course the titular characer, the wind-up girl, is a genetically modified person who faces a very great deal of mistreatment (big trigger warning if you're sensitive to these things, she suffers a LOT of abuse by people who consider her a less-than-human toy) but as one can guess from the title, ends up having an important role. Altogether I loved the book for the complexities of the characters and the detailed, vivid, thought-provoking world that Bachigalupi created. I strongly recommend if this sounds like your kind of book at all.


   I'd like to continue reading all the Bachigalupi I can get my hands on but before I drift too far from traditional apocalypse I'm starting on the 1957 novel On The Beach by Nevil Shute. Should be a good comparison with Alas Babylon which I just read, which was published in 1959. I've only just begun On the Beach but I'm a bit excited that it actually takes place in Melbourne, near me (Though the protagonist lives in a fictional suburb called Falmouth which I just googled and learned is based on Frankston, across the bay from me).




Trying To Find The Best Conclusion
   Still tinkering with the conclusion of my Nicaragua article. First I tried rewriting it entirely several times only loosely using my favorite words from previous iterations. As that didn't seem to solve my problems I decided to actually try writing it in verse, not as sometihng that would go in to the final product but to maybe shake some better turns of phrase out and/or exercise my sense of pacing since the pacing of it seemed off.

( Several variations on a conclusion )