Validity of The Windup Girl

I hate that I couldn't make it to class this week. I started reading this book over the summer, and I'm glad I started early. Like I've said before, I am very much a fan of the short story format and more whimsical plots so this story took me a good long while.

The reason I couldn't make it to class is because I am attending the Society of Women Engineers national conference in Houston, TX. Essentially, it's 3 days full of sessions that cover topics like personal and professional development, section management, and (my favorite) new technologies in a range of fields. There's also a huge career fair that's a ton of fun!

I didn't forget about you all in class though! In fact, I have been thinking a lot about The Windup Girl today. Unfortunately, I didn't care so much for the story as I did the premise and bio-punk setting. I was glad I started so early because the characters were tough to keep up with at times and the use of what I'm assuming is Thai language kept throwing me off. For some reason I kept confusing Hok Seng and Anderson the first 1/4 of the book! Once I got the hang of it, I found that Emiko was the only character I had any real feelings toward and everyone else was just a pawn in some larger game that never quite worked out for the best.

The main reason the story has been on my mind concerns the bio-punk semi-post apocalyptic world setting. Agriculture has always been a fascination of mine from growing up on a farm and I have some strong opinions on the American food system and global food supply. In fact, I don't eat any animal products. It is my hope that by doing my small part I can lessen the environmental strain being caused by large factory farms and by eating less meat, more land can be used for vegetation that can feed more people and produce more energy. Obviously my contribution doesn't do much, so when I tell people I always encourage them to try going without meat for just one day :) Anyway, all of that is to say that I can very much imagine this universe in which (from the back of the book) "... calories become currency... when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits..." I was actually in a meeting today with a large pharmaceutical company at the conference when they mentioned that a large part of their business is based in animal science. They develop new strains of bacteria, medicine, and food for animals so that they become more disease resistant and develop more nutrition, for our consumption, per animal. It amazed me that corporations already think this way and are attempting to alter nature instead of learning to work with it. It seems to me that gene-hacks and U-Tex are in the near future!