Generipping and Regressive Technology?

While at times this book seemed unnecessarily long, I found the last 100 pages or so to be at least moderately thrilling and able to hold my attention. From a literary standpoint, I enjoyed the set-up of the novel. I felt the chapters divided by different characters and story lines helped to give the overall storyline some context in this futuristic world. I do think, however, that the novel could have been improved with an introduction or some sort of background information on the “expansion,” the system of government in place, or what Des Moines really was.

For me, on of the most interesting elements of “The Windup Girl” was the corruption throughout the novel. While reading, I had the same uncomfortable feeling as I sometimes get when watching “House of Cards;” that feeling you get when a character is about to be ruined and you know it, but they do not see it coming. Corruption ran rampant wherever you looked in this city. Hock Seng’s plan to steal from SpringLife’s safe to rebuild his own empire, Carlyle’s blackmailing of city officials with the rainy season protections, Jaidee’s decision to anger Trade; the list is unending. Ironically, it seems that the only person in this novel with a shred of morality left is the soulless creature, Emiko. 

The book’s ending really made me rethink my perspective on this futuristic world and its protagonists. The old gaijin in the boat’s proposal seems to take generipping to a new level. However, with the amount of genetic modifications to all other living-creatures in this futuristic world, it is surprising to me that generippers had not yet decided to create humans themselves in test tubes. Yes, they do, in a way, to create New People like Emiko, but they do not consider them to be “real” people with souls and free will. Emiko appears to discover her own free will throughout the story, a flaw by her designers. But this gaijin’s proposal makes complete sense in their world: create blister rust and other disease resistant people, rather than resistant foods. With this world’s mixed-up sense of reality and morality, test tube humans do not seem like a far-off possibility for the survival of their species. If they could truly design humans to the specifications necessary, as the gaijin proposed, their world would be better for it.

This leads me to my final point. The technology in this novel is baffling with the mix of futuristic and regressive technologies. These people live in a post-petroleum world, counting carbon credits and living simply. Even the richest people in the novel seem to live simply with little carbon emissions, like Carlyle and Anderson. I do not understand why their army operated off of petroleum and coal (relatively “ancient” technologies in their world) but yet they have the ability to gene rip nearly every species. Their biotechnology seems to be far more advanced than their energy technology. I would say that their society lives the way they do based off of our generation’s destruction (maybe the expansion) but there was simply not enough background information to understand how the destruction was caused.