The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Paolo Bacigalupi is a futurist and a pessimist. In his 2009 debut novel The Windup Girl, he showed us what might happen if we continue to burn fossil fuels to the detriment of the climate, and if we continue to degrade and privatize the biodiversity of the food supply. His 23rd century Bangkok isn’t exactly post-apocalyptic but neither is it a pleasant place to live.
In his latest novel The Water Knife, Bacigalupi once again explores climate change. In the near future, the southwestern United States is in a prolonged and presumably permanent dust bowl-level drought. The contemporary nullification ethos of red state America has taken hold and a feckless Federal authority can do little to check the militias and posses enforcing state and regional borders again water refugees. De facto queen of the Colorado River Catherine Case deploys lawyers, black helicopters, and her cadre of mercenary water knifes to direct water to her privileged arcologies and to take it away from towns and cities not strong enough to defend their rights.
The strength of the story is in the urban grit of a dying Phoenix and in the well-researched artificial biome of the arcologies. The characters are variable. The mains are well enough fleshed out, but some of the secondary characters come across a bit cliché. Local gang boss The Vet is the worst example of this. He comes across as Dinsdale Piranha without the charm. Still, at a time when the state is talking about curtailing senior water rights and some one percenters in the Southland are unabashedly stating that rationing shouldn’t apply to them as long as they are able to pay the fines, this is a very good read about how bad it might all turn out if we don’t change our ways.
In his latest novel The Water Knife, Bacigalupi once again explores climate change. In the near future, the southwestern United States is in a prolonged and presumably permanent dust bowl-level drought. The contemporary nullification ethos of red state America has taken hold and a feckless Federal authority can do little to check the militias and posses enforcing state and regional borders again water refugees. De facto queen of the Colorado River Catherine Case deploys lawyers, black helicopters, and her cadre of mercenary water knifes to direct water to her privileged arcologies and to take it away from towns and cities not strong enough to defend their rights.
The strength of the story is in the urban grit of a dying Phoenix and in the well-researched artificial biome of the arcologies. The characters are variable. The mains are well enough fleshed out, but some of the secondary characters come across a bit cliché. Local gang boss The Vet is the worst example of this. He comes across as Dinsdale Piranha without the charm. Still, at a time when the state is talking about curtailing senior water rights and some one percenters in the Southland are unabashedly stating that rationing shouldn’t apply to them as long as they are able to pay the fines, this is a very good read about how bad it might all turn out if we don’t change our ways.