A future world I don't want to live in

I can actually say that I thoroughly enjoyed this novel- I found myself confused a lot, it was pretty depressing, and it took a while to reach the climax, but I was still really engaged with the plot. I enjoyed that there really was no protagonist- because essentially everyone was bad. It was an interesting twist.

A book like this one is very different from other post-apocalyptic worlds that authors have written about- most recent in my mind was “The Road,” and this tale was extremely different. I think that the sci-fi part of the novel took away just a little bit of the legitimacy of the novel from a scientific perspective—but most of it also wasn’t too unrealistic. Our world is moving in a direction of gene-ripping and being able to create human beings unnaturally, so the idea of a Windup girl isn’t impossible.

I believe that the novel needed to give context to the environmental disaster that they lived in. We knew about the expansion and the contraction, but giving no context made it difficult to envision the current world that the characters lived in. The lesson of the book from the last two pages was “we need trade and globalization, we can’t survive on our own.” Beside the fact that I thought it was said so blatantly that it just seemed like an easy plug, I wanted to know how this related to the disasters that got these characters to what they were. From analyzing the few clues that the author gave us, my thoughts were the “expansion” was the age of globalization, and like many things that expand, they often burst, which let them into the “contraction,” or isolationism.

I think it was an interesting that the author made technology regressive, not progressive (something we discussed in our group in class). This futuristic world should have technology we don’t see today, however, we can assume from the details in the novel that humans were unable to find an alternative energy source to foster new technology. As previously mentioned, we have no context of what happened before the era that the characters currently live in- so we don’t know if resource shortages caused the problem, human error, etc. The characters lived essentially in a petroleum-free world, something we so heavily depend on today. By taking away our most common energy source, we can see where we end up- even the radios are hand cranked.

The summary of the novel on the back of the book said in this world, calories were currency. This concept wasn’t really developed and I think would have been strongest tool to connect the future with apocalyptic decline and regressive society. However, money was still extremely prevalent as the main currency because bribes were the only way to survive. If calories truly were currency, I believe readers would better understand the urgency to act today to ensure proper food development and security. However, the overriding theme of the book was that the East was still dependent on America for the GMO food such as U-Tex rice. Calories as currency would have taken the reader back to the time where bartering good and services was a means for survival. I actually think this concept encourages readers to act less- Americans see that they are still okay for survival and the rest of the world is dependent on them- in no way does this help today’s society become proactive. Imagine if the book was reversed and it took place in America and we were dependent on the far-East for survival. That role switch could make the difference of a reader imagining themselves in that world or just imagining other people in that world.