What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man"( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.
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Speculative fiction exploring ecological breakdown, resource scarcity, and climate collapse has redefined contemporary science fiction through deeply grounded worldbuilding. Paolo Bacigalupi established a prominent presence in environmental science fiction with acclaimed works that confront the consequences of environmental degradation and unchecked corporate power. His award-winning novel The Windup Girl brought widespread recognition to biopunk and climate fiction, illustrating a post-calorie-crisis future shaped by bioengineering and corporate monopolies.
Born on August 6, 1972, in Paonia, Colorado, Bacigalupi majored in East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, graduating in 1994, and subsequently worked as a consultant in China. He began publishing short genre fiction in 1999 with 'Pocketful of Dharma' in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His early short fiction was gathered in the 2008 collection Pump Six and Other Stories, which received a Locus Award. Bacigalupi's debut novel The Windup Girl (2009) won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, John W. Campbell Memorial, Locus, and Compton Crook Awards, and was named one of the top ten books of 2009 by Time magazine. He expanded into young adult literature with Ship Breaker, which won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature and became a finalist for the National Book Award. His other major novels include the drought thriller The Water Knife (2015), as well as The Drowned Cities, Zombie Baseball Beatdown, The Doubt Factory, Plump Six and Other Stories, and The Tangled Lands (co-authored with Tobias S. Buckell). In 2024, Bacigalupi published NAVOLA, an epic fantasy novel inspired by the history and politics of the Italian Renaissance.
Bacigalupi's fiction centers on sustainability, environmental ethics, and the socio-economic impacts of climate change. His narratives frequently detail futures marred by severe drought, bioengineered plagues, rising sea levels, and fierce competition for basic resources like water and calories. Stylistically, his work combines rigorous worldbuilding with noir and biopunk tropes, examining how human greed, corporate dominance, and political corruption interact with ecological decline. In addition to his adult and young adult novels, Bacigalupi's short fiction and articles have appeared in publications such as WIRED, High Country News, Salon, OnEarth Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The Windup Universe
