Still largely unknown in our latitudes, Paolo Bacigalupi typed strong across the Atlantic with his first novel, The Girl PLC. Crowned Hugo, Nebula and Locus yet, Damn Vauvert offers today the translation of a book of nearly 600 pages condensing an exciting science fiction which ideas burst forth like missiles towards the clouds disarmed player. No need to beat around the bush, The Girl PLC is nothing less than an excellent book.
By planting its action in Thailand, Bacigalupi takes the risk of losing the reader with foreign terms alourdiraient dangerously his story like the River of Gods by Ian McDonald. But used sparingly and with great intelligence, there is fortunately nothing. Better, the exotic touch brought puts us in a very special atmosphere always increased through the pages by the splendid descriptions of Bangkok city threatened by the rising waters. The meeting between the Thai archaic traditions and rituals and a future ravaged by epidemics creates a wonderful and intoxicating atmosphere. By disseminating its key background between the devastating pandemics, global restructuring and redistribution of energy resources, the author performs a feat rarely seen elsewhere and engulfed his reader in a flood of good ideas.
Among them, the diseases that have devastated crops and men, leading the company to focus on the most basic need, food, and wearing multinational biotech summit. The author imagines a transfigured earth not only by the collapse of fossil fuels but also by a redistribution of world politics based on corporations rather than of nations that are now confined to the supervision of companies and other ministries. It is also building a Thai kingdom in response to its changes and extreme diet based on protectionism that impresses. Imagining a sultry and downright totalitarian society but by necessity, Bacigalupi illustrates the argument "the end justifies the means." Point good, no bad, only stay here different views to get rid of an extreme situation: protectionism or opening? Freedom or censorship? Quarantine and epidemic? The choices are hard for our protagonists.
By taking the advantage of showing foreigners but also Thai, Bacigalupi covers a wide range of opinions and fates. He tells us in detail the atrocities of this new world, massacres Malaysia by religious fools fighting for coal against Vietnam through the explosion of the United States. Far from being there just to serve the background, the different characters are extremely searched, and ultimately endearing great. In this race against time, of course, is this artificial girl, this Japanese ticking, Emiko, affecting the fair. Abandoned sadistic and perverse pleasures of a seedy club where senchaînent degrading sessions for her, Emiko takes the reader to the guts, a prisoner of his genes but a willingness foolproof. A flamboyant tragic figure that only the captain can claim Jaidee achieve in terms of success.
Playing on the themes of profit to the death, the destruction of humanity and of the vilest human instincts (some sequences with Emiko are almost unbearable), Bacigalupi breaststroke everything that makes the essence of science fiction, a guard -fou which warns that shows the dangers and pitfalls of our society and our nature. As many reefs that we advanced a captain impeccable pen. And yet, with great class, Bacigalupi happens to be learned from the hope of this tidal wave of emotions, to rescue these men with hearts of tigers who refuse this future ... and the others, they will disappear. Without fear, because evolution replace carrion yesterday.
Mastered from the first to the last page, populated with fantastic figures, bubbling with ideas and intelligence of every moment, The Girl PLC is nothing short of a slap in reading, those that make you say there are great authors. Paolo Bacigalupi among them.
Just A Word
