Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl presents a vision of a world criticized by binary systems: global corporations versus national governments; natural biology versus genetic enrichment; and progress versus fundamentalism. The Windup Girl, which won both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award in 2010 for best novel, is set in a vision of Thailand in the 23rd century. Thailand is simultaneously the trading base and war ground for a range of international forces such as Thai, Japanese, Pakistani and American figures representing companies, governments and traders who intersect throughout Bangkok at all levels of power. But as universal as it may be, the Thai kingdom is not symbolic of the mythology of 20th- and 21st-century globalization: a narrative of growth, travel and expansion. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Two hundred years later, Bacigalupi predicts the world in a state of contraction. Large agricultural corporations call Agrigen and wage war over the production of a dwindling global food supply. Bio-modified foods have almost entirely displaced organic food supplies, and crop diseases have destroyed many of these engineered crops as well. Global warming has tripled ocean swell and Bangkok now sits below sea level, protected by a series of locks and embankments built around the city. Thailand has a natural seed bank, kept hidden from the giant calorie-producing companies desperate to mine its stock and open up Thailand's limiting trade tariffs to Western companies. Crop failures and corporate misconduct inspire the story. Bacigalupi was certainly aware of these protests and shortages, and has said in interviews that the Deep Water Horizon (BP) spill in the Gulf of Mexico has become an important way of thinking about corporate influence on a globalized world, as The Windup wrote Girl: “When you look at something like BP, it's a storyline that shouldn't have existed. They failed to see that the step-by-step actions would spill over into something much bigger than themselves. I think this really applies to almost all of our environmental problems. I get on a plane and fly here to Boston: this has bigger and more complex consequences than I can understand. The BP thing - in the hypothesized plot, we'll go deeper, get some oil and everyone will make some money - suddenly becomes something else, the plot veers completely. And that moment when the story takes a turn and you realize that we don't actually understand our story, that's what's fascinating. Fear of corporate power is an expression of anxiety about the realization that describes not knowing our history. In these recent corporate dystopias, production and consumption are encouraged at a rapid rate, trampling the natural world and climate as everything expands until entire human populations are forced to contract as resources are depleted. As Bacigalupi said in a separate interview: "There seems to be something in the zeitgeist and because of that, the themes of The Windup Girl resonate with people [...] global warming and [genetically modified] foods apparently resonate strongly, as well as, I think, a certain unease about where we are going in terms of wealth and prosperity.” The story is told from multiple points of view, though most often in the voice of Anderson Lake, apparently the manager of a giant factory.” of kink-spring, but actually a corporate spy forAgriGen trying to locate seed bank. Everywhere Anderson looks, he sees the world shrinking: “The world is really shrinking again. A few rides in an airship and clipper ship and Anderson is hurtling through the dark streets on the other side of the planet. It's amazing. In his grandparents' day, commuting between an old Expansion suburb and the city center was also impossible. His grandparents told stories of exploring the abandoned suburbs, looking for wreckage and remnants of entire sprawling neighborhoods that were destroyed by the oil contraction." (Bacigalupi 114-115) An important distinction must be made here. Many writers describe the process of globalization as a shrinking of the world, a bringing together of different places through travel and technology. Maxwell Garnett, secretary of the League of Nations, famously said that in 1924 New York was actually closer to London than Scotland had been a hundred years earlier. That is, that travel technology had made the world a smaller place. And there is some of this sentiment in the quote above; but when Bacigalupi writes of “Contraction” he does not simply mean “the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” to use Roland Robertson's famous phrase. Instead, he is describing a world ravaged by overconsumption and overuse of its resources and people. The world is shrinking in this novel because it can no longer support the lives of its inhabitants. The binaries that Haraway sees in the world are immediately evident in The Windup Girl, as a set of oppositional powers assert control over the Thai kingdom and its remaining territories. natural resources. Teaming up with Anderson and the agricultural businesses is Trade Minister Akkarat, who wishes to sell the seed bank and open the kingdom to heavy Western trade. On the other hand, General Pracha heads the Ministry of Environment and enforces the kingdom's strict environmental laws and tariffs with the help of Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, captain of the Ministry of Environment's armed militia. Finally, since Thailand is still ostensibly a monarchy, the Somdet Chaopraya is the regent of the child queen and the most powerful person in Bangkok. These men represent the historical forces eagerly working to secure their control over the post-expansion globe. Anderson represents corporate supremacy and the predation of the world's resources. It is not surprising that everyone in the Thai kingdom, even partners like Akkarat, Views Anderson, PurCal and AgriGen are not titans of industry, but bioterrorists and capitalist overlords: they are the future robber barons, excessively reaping the world. And as they seek to present themselves as progressive agents of a globalized world, Anderson describes numerous cases in which corporate-based agriculture and food engineering have led to food famines and mass riots: Meanwhile, General Pracha and Jaidee leans heavily on the mythology of Bangkok as a holy city and the monarchy as a sacred institution. They see themselves as fighting against a wave of corporate hegemony, even if it's a losing battle: “But it hurts. They hunt and beg for scraps of knowledge from abroad, scavenge like the Cheshires to survive. So much knowledge resides in the Midwestern Compact. When a promising genetic thinker emerges somewhere in the world, he is intimidated, bullied, and bribed to work with the other best and brightest in Des Moines or Changsha. It takes a strong researcher to resist PurCal or AgriGen or RedStar [...But] we are alive. We are alive when entire kingdoms and countries are gone. When Malaysia is a quagmire of murder. When Kowloon is underwater. When China is divided and the Vietnamese are destroyed and Burma will be nothing buthunger". (Bacigalupi 214) Anderson, AgriGen, and PurCal argue throughout the novel that the Kingdom of Thailand is old-fashioned: it ardently defends its identity as a protectionist nation while the rest of the world has opened up to some cosmopolitan ideal of culture and commerce. GeetaKapur theorizes that: “From where I speak there is still ground for the nation-state debate. For all the slander it has earned, it may be the only political structure capable of protecting the peoples of the third world from the totalitarian system established by oligopolies – ironically, through the massive state power of advanced nations” (193). Pracha, Jaidee and others see Bangkok as the last refuge from corporate oligopoly. As The Windup Girl progresses, these binary forces create a divide in the Thai kingdom. The relationship between advanced and original – between engineered calorie substitutes and a natural seed bank; between the forces of global capital and tribal extremists; between monarchy and multinationals; between a dying human race and the cyborgs it builds – it is the vortex that grows ever wider. The gap between the forces of expansion and contraction devours the center. Bacigalupi dramatizes the destabilization of the systems of power he describes by focusing on places that might typically be overlooked or isolated from historical seats of power: Fly-over America, a smaller nation on the Indochina Peninsula, the rusty slums of Bangkok. Yet the most aggressive destabilizer in the entire novel is, ironically, a cyborg who spends much of the plot being subjected to violent abuse and control. Emiko is a Japanese "Windup", a genetically modified humanoid used as a slave and programmed to obey her owner. The Windups, who call themselves New People, are illegal in Thailand and Emiko is forced to work for a sex club owner (Raleigh) who bribes the police to ignore her presence. Emiko's pores are modified to make her skin especially smooth and cool to the touch, which means she overheats easily and has to stay indoors during the day to avoid Thailand's sweltering climate. For most of the book, her humiliation and abuse are acute, as she is forced to perform degrading performances in the club and sleep with whomever Raleigh directs her to. At the same time, as the star attraction of Bangkok's most famous sex club, she meets a series of powerful people looking for tactful sex, including Somdet Chaopraya and Anderson, who becomes obsessed with Emiko and tells her about a secret hideaway in the north of Thailand where the Windups live free. Raleigh promises Emiko that he can work to buy her freedom and go to the shelter, but it quickly becomes obvious that he never intends to free her. This realization, combined with her continued degradation in the club, culminates in a dramatic scene in which Emiko ignores her programming and kills Somdet and his men in the club: “His first is very fast. Raleigh-san's throat is soft. […] When Raleigh hits the ground, Emiko is already crossing the room, towards the VIP door and the man who hurt her the most [Chaopraya]. The man who sits and laughs with his friends and thinks nothing of the pain he feels. inflicts. He bangs on the door. The men look up in surprise. Heads turn, mouths open to scream. The bodyguards are reaching for their spring loaded weapons, but they are all moving too slowly. None of them are New People." (Bacigalupi 279) The massacre in the Raleigh club sets the final third of the plot in motion. Akkarat assumes that Anderson smuggled a military-grade Windup into Thailand to start a revolution. General Pracha believes that Akkarat killed the Somdets with the proposal to conquer the country and open it to Western trade..