12 Supplemental Strand B Reading: Earning the Future: a Q & A with Paolo Bacigal
12 Supplemental Strand B Reading: Earning the Future: a Q & A with Paolo Bacigalupi
About This Reading
June 4, 2010 Shareable interview by Jeremy Adam Smith.
“My father gambled on Thoreau,” writes Paolo Bacigalupi. “I am my father’s son.”
Bacigalupi is referring to Henry David Thoreau, and he is speaking in the voice of Ong, the quiet, humble protagonist of his science-fiction story “The Gambler,” which we have republished on Shareable.net as part of our Shareable Futures series.
You might not expect to hear a reference to Thoreau in a science-fiction story. But to understand Bacigalupi’s fiction, you should first know that he is an environmentalist and alternative journalist who served as online editor of High Country News, the award-winning, Colorado-based newsmagazine that covers public lands, natural resources, wildlife, and other issues facing the American West. Not surprisingly, his fiction tends to be preoccupied with the effects of today’s irresponsible behavior on tomorrow’s world.
The other thing to know is that Bacigalupi (pronounced BAH-cha-ga-loo-py, according to a profile in Denver’s newsweekly) has spent long stretches of time traveling throughout Southeast Asia, living in China, and learning Chinese, a perspective that permeates his stories. Throughout his travels, Bacigalupi wrote hundreds of thousands of words that were never published—four entire novels. Starting in 1999, he managed to publish a trickle of highly praised short stories—including “The Gambler,” which was nominated for numerous awards and appeared in his 2008 collection Pump Six and Other Stories.
“The Gambler” is not a grim story—it is, in fact, rather inspiring—though its particular future grows out of some of today’s grimmest environmental and journalistic trends. The story succeeds because its protagonist Ong is so beautifully drawn and the dilemmas he faces are so dramatically compelling. As with all the best science fiction, Ong’s life allows us to envision the effects of technological change on human feelings and behavior—and Ong’s choice at the end of the story suggests how we might ethically, even heroically, face the challenges of the future.
Last year, Bacigalupi finally published his first novel, The Windup Girl, to immense commercial and critical acclaim. Time magazine rated it as one of the “Top Ten Fiction Books of 2009,” calling Bacigalupi “a worthy successor to William Gibson.” Last month, The Windup Girl won both the Nebula and Compton awards for best novel—just as Bacigalupi’s second (young adult) novel, Ship Breaker, appeared to similarly great reviews.
In the following Q&A, Bacigalupi and I explore the questions that drive much of his fiction (and, not coincidentally, recall the preoccupations of Henry David Thoreau): What is an individual’s responsibility in the face of ecological catastrophe? How is the decline of journalism related to the decline of the environment? How are today’s choices shaping the future—and how can we prevent our worst