Because of SARS, all the flight attendants and many of the passengers were wearing paper surgical masks, and so when the flight attendant came around, her eyes were the main feature you focused on. I remember she had these amazing freckles, delicate sprays of dots at the corners of her eyes. They were so symmetric that they seemed like they had to be either makeup or tattoos, but they looked so natural that you couldn’t be sure. On top of that, she moved in a slightly jerky, almost robotic way that reminded me forcefully of cosplay. She was strange and fascinating, and everyone seemed to take her for normal, and that, too, felt odd. Later, I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
I became intrigued by the idea of a woman who was both surreally different and also perfect. I tried to write short stories about her a couple of different times, but couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say, or how I might approach the image that was stuck in my head. She was probably the beginning of a much longer process to build out the novel, but for a long time, she languished because I didn’t know what kind of story I needed to write about her.
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE BANGKOK AS THE SETTING FOR THE NOVEL? WAS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT THE CULTURE OR POLITICS OF PRESENT DAY THAILAND THAT MADE IT SEEM LIKE, FOLLOWING THE EVENTS IN THE WINDUP GIRL, THAT COUNTRY IN PARTICULAR MIGHT LOGICALLY PROGRESS INTO THE CITY AND POLITICAL CLIMATE DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK?
After sweltering through the hot season in Thailand, with my pustulant skin, my heat exhaustion, and my increasing concerns about SARS, I think the place sort of ended up burned into my brain. From a structural perspective, though, I was also interested in the idea of a new commercial imperialism, and how global corporations force their profit agendas on countries around the world. Thailand, it turns out, is the only country in SE Asia that resisted the historical imperialism of Britain and France, and later, Japan. While Laos, Burma, Malaysia, and Vietnam all fell under colonial powers, Thailand retained its independence. Even China had to give up territorial concessions. That history of indepence and resistance was useful as I was constructing a story of fighting for genetic and food sovereignty in the future.
WHAT WAS THE RESEARCH PROCESS LIKE BEHIND THE BOOK? DID YOU CONSULT WITH OUTSIDE SOURCES IN REGARDS TO SOME OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL OR CULTURAL CREATIONS? CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORLD-BUILDING PROCESS?
It’s always daunting to try to write stories that are outside the boundaries of your personal experience. You can research, sure, but on some level it will never be enough. At one point, I tried to move the entire novel and set it in China, because I speak Chinese and had lived and worked there, so I felt more qualified to write in that setting. The only problem was that the book just didn’t work in that setting. For whatever reason it didn’t feel real to me there, so I had to move it back to Thailand.
Once I knew that I was going to set the book in Bangkok, I ended up doing a lot of reading, going through political histories, Thai literature in translation, cultural studies, flora and fauna books, Buddhist parables, business books, all kinds of things. After that, I went back and spent five weeks in Thailand, with a small detour into Laos. By that time I had a lot of scenes conceived, and some characters fleshed out, but that trip turned out to be critical. It gave me details I didn’t know I needed. The ngaw came from that trip. I liked its appearance so much that I created whole scenes so I could have an excuse to spend time with that fruit in the novel. I’ve always valued on-the-ground research for that. You don’t know exactly what you’ll run into when you travel, but you can be sure that because you’ve left your comfort zone that you’ll see more, pay attention more, listen more, and ask more questions. And it always seems that somehow, you also run into chaos. While I was in Laos, a friend of mine had his business partner kidnapped. It was horrifying to see someone with a wife and children simply be disappeared like that, and it made me realize that the book I was writing was childish and naïve. The Windup Girl became much more serious after that trip. Jaidee’s arc ended up being completely rewritten.
In terms of a world-building—I think of myself as someone who tends to work in iterations and layers. Maybe clays, or heavy oil paints? I’ll write a version of the story, or a scene involving character, and then then as I keep researching, I’ll find some new detail, like the ngaw, or someone like the Thai environmental martyr Seub Nakhasathien and I’ll try to find ways to layer those details into the story. Or maybe it’s like weaving? If you read a corporate report from a company like Monsanto or Cargill, you suddenly get all these amazing interesting details and ways of looking at the world. So you keep trying to thread more and more details in, and as you do that, and as those details show up again and again throughout the story, the world you’re writing about takes on an illusion of consistent reality.
MANY OF THE CHARACTERS ARE LOOKING TO REBUILD THE PAST—TO GO BACK TO A TIME WHEN THEY THINK THEIR LIVES WERE BETTER. BUT THE END OF THE NOVEL INSTEAD LOOKS TO THE FUTURE, AND ANY OPTIMISM REGARDING THE FATE OF HUMANITY IS LEFT IN THE HANDS OF SOMEONE WHO IS LESS THAN FULLY HUMAN. DO YOU THINK HUMANS ARE TOO STUCK IN THEIR WAYS? DO THE SOLUTIONS TO THE ISSUES THAT PLAGUE THE HUMAN RACE IN THE WINDUP GIRL COME FROM SIGNIFICANT TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS?
I think our problems come from our absolute inability to anticipate the unexpected, or to take it seriously. Atomic theory, becomes nuclear weapons, becomes the threat of rogue nukes, becomes Fukushima, becomes…. We’re very good at solving immediate problems. We’re terrible at anticipating future consequences. In almost all cases, our worst disasters seem to be spawned by confluences of unfortunate events, where we’re all left, after the fact, scratching our heads and saying, “Gosh. Wish we’d seen that one coming!”
Technology is not the problem. Our lack of wisdom and foresight about how we use technology is the problem. As we begin to crack into the building blocks of life, I’m sure we’ll run into some surprises. Things that we think are clever, and have unexpected ramifications. In The Windup Girl, things like the cheshires embody that “Oops” factor for me.
IT WOULD BE HARD TO CATEGORIZE ANY OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BOOK AS ENTIRELY HEROIC OR ENTIRELY VILLAINOUS. WHAT ABOUT THE MORAL AMBIGUITY OF THESE CHARACTERS DID YOU SO FIND SO IMPORTANT TO THIS STORY?
I think people are morally ambiguous. We have ideal versions of ourselves, and then there are all the instances where we fail ourselves. I don’t think of myself as a villain, but I fly on airplanes for booktours, adding to the already awful carbon burden of the planet. I’m fairly certain that history will judge us harshly, but none of us in our moment feel like we’re engaged in evil. In any case, I think we all make justifications for our moral choices, justifications that ensure our survival, our comfort, our sense of security, etc. We do that all the time, even when the stakes aren’t as high as they are for the characters in the novel. We’re fairly flawed, even when we aren’t under duress.
Mostly, I have a great deal of compassion for my characters. Some people have said they find them repugnant, but when I write about Kanya, or Tan Hock Seng, I just see people who are doing the best they can, under pressures we can’t really imagine.
WHAT WOULD YOU CONSIDER THE MAIN INFLUENCES, BOTH IN FICTION AND PERHAPS ALSO IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING, ON THE WINDUP GIRL ARE AND IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU THINK EACH WORK OR WRITER AFFECTED THE NOVEL?
My own influences include everyone from writers like Ursula LeGuin, who showed me that I could write about political ideas and still tell a story, to people like William Gibson, who writes with such style and specificity. I think it’s hard to tease out all the different influences. My time working at the environmental magazine High Country News certainly made me think more about stories that are hidden, but matter greatly to our general well-being. James Clavell’s King Rat made a huge influence on me in terms of writing about people under duress. The tropes of Buddy-cop movies played a part in Jaidee and Kanya’s relationship. Recently I reread Dune, and was surprised to discover that apparently Frank Herbert really burrowed into my brain and influenced a lot of my writing. It’s all in
pieces and parts. A lot of what ends up on the page, you just end up staring at it and thinking, “Wow. That’s really interesting. Where did that burp up from?”
DO YOU THINK THERE’S ANY KIND OF A CONNECTING THREAD RUNNING THROUGHOUT YOUR WORK? DO YOU THINK THAT THE WORLD OF THE WINDUP GIRL HAS ANYTHING IN COMMON WITH THE WORLD OF SHIP BREAKER, OR WITH THE WATER KNIFE? ARE THERE THEMATIC SIMILARITIES?
Obviously, I’m apparently obsessed with resource scarcities, but I think maybe the biggest thing that I’m interested in is large systems that appear resilient, and yet turn out to be fragile. There’s a lot of story potential there. Our hubris. Our lack of foresight. Our inability to engage with data that’s right in front of our faces. When you see something like the economic meltdown of 2008, it’s fascinating because you see how a story of mortgages turns out to be a dominant narrative driver for years to come. Nobody saw it, but when it popped up, boy did we all notice.
I’m always looking for elements and narratives that have that potential.
IN THE PAST, YOU’VE BEEN HESITANT TO LABEL THE WINDUP GIRL AS DYSTOPIAN FICTION, AND YOU’VE LONG TALKED ABOUT THE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF CATEGORIZING YOUR WORK AS SCIENCE FICTION. HOW WOULD YOU PREFER THE WINDUP GIRL BE CATEGORIZED (AND, IF APPLICABLE, THE REST OF YOUR WORK), AND HAVE YOUR OPINIONS CHANGED NOW FROM WHEN YOU WERE WRITING THE NOVEL?
When I wrote The Windup Girl, I thought of it as science fiction. I sold it to a science fiction publisher. It is, absolutely, science fiction. But we all know how those words also conjure up images of everything from rocket ships to Barberella. I think Margaret Atwood dodges this question by saying that she writes “anticipations.” I’ve used the word “extrapolations” before, because at root, that’s pretty much what I do. I look at a trend or an event and ask, “If this goes on, what will the world look like?” So, maybe I write extrapolative fiction?
To be honest, I don’t really care what people call it. It can be bio-punk, or dystopian, or environmental, or science fiction, or anything else, as long as people read it (or don’t) for reasons specific to the book, and not simply lumping it into some erroneous assumption about what a genre is or represents.
HAVE YOU REVISITED YOUR BOOK RECENTLY? IF SO, WHICH ASPECT OF THE WINDUP GIRL DO YOU FEEL YOU BEST ACCOMPLISHED?
I still love the characters. All of them. They’re like old friends at this point.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Without a number of supporters, The Windup Girl would have been a poorer effort. A heartfelt thanks goes out to the following people: Kelly Buehler and Daniel Spector, for hosting, tour guiding, and crash space in Chiang Mai while I was doing research; Richard Foss, for flywheels; Ian Chai, for kindly interceding and fixing glaring problems with Tan Hock Seng; James Fahn, author of A Land on Fire, for his expertise and insights into Thailand’s environmental challenges; the gang at Blue Heaven—particularly my first readers Tobias Buckell and Bill Shunn—but also Paul Melko, Greg van Eekhout, Sarah Prineas, Sandra McDonald, Heather Shaw, Holly McDowell, Ian Tregillis, Rae Carson, and Charlie Finlay. I doubt I would have found my way to the book’s conclusion without their wisdom. I’d also like to thank my editor Juliet Ulman, who helped identify and solve critical problems with the story when I was completely stymied. Bill Tuffin deserves a special note of thanks. I was lucky enough to get to know him when this book was still in its infancy, and he has proven to be both a rich source of cultural information in Southeast Asia and a good friend. And finally, I want to thank my wife, Anjula, for her unflagging support over many many years. Her patience and faith are unmatched. Of course, while all these people helped bring out the best in this book, I am solely responsible for its errors, omissions and transgressions.
On a separate note, I would like to mention that while this book is set in a future version of Thailand, it should not be construed as representative of present-day Thailand or the Thai people. I enthusiastically recommend authors such as Chart Korbjitti, S. P. Somtow, Phra Peter Pannapadipo, Botan, Father Joe Maier, Kukrit Pramoj, Saneh Sangsuk and Kampoon Boontawee for far better windows into the Thai Kingdom and its many aspects.
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