The Windup Girl -- Paolo Bacigalupi

Published: October 30, 2011
BANGKOK — Shielded by hundreds of thousands of sandbags piled shoulder high along the city’s outskirts, most of Bangkok remained dry on Sunday, allaying fears for the time being that the massive metropolis would be swamped by monsoon floodwaters.

I’m one of the few who read all 359 pages of this diatribe against bio-engineering. I read it even though I wouldn’t call it a Science Fiction novel. There’s a nice travelogue on Siam (remember “The King and I”,) including a brief political history. It’s about what research you’d get from clicking on Wikipedia. The plotline is cute, but too thin for a real Sci-Fi book. The insistence on Thai names for people and places is always difficult for American readers. It takes over a hundred pages just to get into the flow of the author’s style and gain familiarity with the characters.

Now if I just look at the book as a modern, action movie script, then I think the author has done a wonderful job. There’s just enough character development to carry a 120-minute, all-audience film. There are plenty of sympathetic characters to root for: Jaidee (think Obi Wan-Kenobi) and Kanya (Luke); Anderson the American; Hock Seng the loyal but befuddled foreigner; and of course Emiko who will provide plenty of female sisterhood as well as contortionist sex for the 14 year-old male viewer. Evil-doers abound leading off with global mega-corporations versus populist farmers; then politicians (shoot them all, like the lawyers) versus the eco-friendlies.

I’m sure this will be filmed in a 3-D format. There’s plenty of opportunity for computer graphics. All our favorites: war, violence, torture, and sex, all to extremes. It was a hard slog through the repetitious action scenes. I guess this leaves the movie director with multiple options for filming. However, I did finish the book and liked it. Author Bacigalupi is certainly no William Gibson as many of his credits claim, but it’s an enjoyable read that I would and will recommend. I’d certainly point out this book to anyone contemplating travel to Thailand. I can’t wait for the movie.

A Long Way Down -- Nick Hornby

The Breakfast Club – (revisited 20 yrs on)

I’m too old to put up with the angst and yammering of youth’s hard slog up the hill of adulthood. I can take a few hours of this whining, but I would have much preferred a 90-minute Hollywood version.

The Breakfast Club (1985) was successfully targeted on 14-year olds. It quickly became an adolescent classic like my generation’s James Dean flic, “Rebel Without a Cause” 30 years before.

“Way Down” takes a similar four losers from the Breakfast Club; ages them fifteen years; and places them on top of a building, each with a perfectly rational and expedient solution to their dysfunctional lives – jump off.!! Unfortunately, they fail. What could have turned out to be a great population control idea, through a strategy of weeding out the weak, instead turned into a paper wastage machine for the author.

Yes, I think success spoiled Nick Hornby. Then again, maybe he only had the one book in him. He’s certainly been writing the same story over and over again. This idea, of the four on a building, could have been an interesting short story, or a stage play, or a screenplay without the precedent book. However, Hornby seems to be locked on the 300-page novel format. This particular effort was a cheap, gimmicky shortcut – four, otherwise unrelated mini-stories, wrapped into one “novel.”.

Now I grant you that British humour plays a lot on human foibles, mistakes, and downright stupidity; and I do love my “Red Dwarf” and “Absolutely Fabulous”. However, these four idiots would be lucky to average an IQ of 65. Then again, I have to admit how idiotic it is for so many “bright” men to be caught with their pants down so often. Nonetheless, this book didn’t pass test number one of fiction, suspension of disbelief. And without that, who gives two cents about the miserable, depressing lives of a quartet of wankers in England.