Occupation Writer Role Fiction writer Name Paolo Bacigalupi | Period 1999–present Nationality American | |
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Notable works The Windup GirlShip Breaker Influenced by Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Robert A. Heinlein Books The Windup Girl, Ship Breaker, Pump Six and Other Stories, The Doubt Factory, The Drowned Cities Similar People China Mieville, William Gibson, Ursula K Le Guin, Joshua Swanson, Ian McDonald Profiles |
Paolo bacigalupi talks at google
Paolo Tadini Bacigalupi (born August 6, 1972) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer.
Contents
- Paolo bacigalupi talks at google
- Paolo bacigalupi interview looking at morality through science fiction
- Themes
- Awards and nominations
- References

He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Compton Crook, Theodore Sturgeon, and Michael L. Printz awards, and was nominated for the National Book Award. His fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, and the environmental journal High Country News. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated in newspapers including the Idaho Statesman, the Albuquerque Journal, and the Salt Lake Tribune. He was a webmaster for High Country News starting in 2003.

His short fiction has been collected in Pump Six and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2008). His debut novel The Windup Girl, published by Night Shade Books in September 2009, won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards in 2010. The Windup Girl was also named by Time as one of the Top 10 Books of 2009. Ship Breaker, published by Little, Brown in 2010, was awarded the Michael L. Printz Award for best young adult novel and was nominated for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Paolo bacigalupi interview looking at morality through science fiction
Themes
The Windup Girl, along with many of his short stories, explores the effects of bioengineering and a world in which fossil fuels are no longer viable. Bioengineering has ravaged the world with food-borne plagues, produced tailored organisms as mimics to both cats and humans, and replaced today's fossil-fuel reliant engines with megodonts (an elephant-like beast), which convert food energy into work. Energy storage is accomplished through the use of high-capacity springs, as well as simply transporting food to feed either megodonts or human labourers. His writing deals with the ethics and possible ramifications of genetic engineering and western dominance, as well as the nature of humanity and a world in which, despite drastic changes, people remain essentially the same. Similar themes run through his book The Water Knife, where a future American Southwest is reduced to a dystopian Dust Bowl where water is a guarded commodity for the wealthy and powerful interests.