Flohmarkt @ Mauerpark

I have finally figured out what all the people in Berlin do on Sunday's, when most of the stores are closed (they're not in the foreign-tourist-dominated museums, that much I know since earlier):
After a long brunch, they go to the flea market! E-v-e-r-y one of them, it felt like at around four in the afternoon when the sun was beating down on us and I almost drowned in a sea of people inspecting handcrafted nicknacks, old glassware, pop-art printed t-shirts and other neccessities of life.

It was fun, despite the heat, and I found two little banana-leaf boxes to put stuff in (pencils and post-its in one, online-ID thingys and USB-sticks in the other), lavendel honey and a super-cheap soap plate. Almost forgot that I needed the last, until I stood around smelling some fancy (but overly pricy) handmade soaps!

Also bought fresh-pressed orange juice again (it's so cheap here! And I love it soooo much) and heroically avoided all ice-creams, ice-lattes, sweet stuffs and cupcakes tempting me from different stands. I only sampled three sorts of honey-milk breakfast spread >_>

And now I've cut my hair and am gonna watch Doctor Who while it dries.

[SF] Windup Girl

So, I just finished Paolo Bacigalupi's Windup Girl which Wiki describes as a biopunk novel. Good description as any

Set in the 23rd century and taking place in the Thai monarchy, it's about Anderson, a "calorie man" who has come to Thailand to find their seedbank (and steal it, basically); Emiko, a manufactured human abandoned by her Japanese owner and now an illegal immigrant forced into sex work; Hock Seng, Anderson's local factory chief and a refugee, and Jaidee and Kanya, the captain of the Enviromental Ministry's ground troops the "White Shirt" and his second-in-command. While the plot starts out in Anderson's corner, it moves more and more to focus on the other characters, with some of them growing quite surprisingly in importance and depth of personality.

Except for Jaidee and, in a way, Emiko they're all a pretty unpleasant, toughened bunch (that's what makes this book biopunk as opposed to just enviromental sf, I guess) but it's still hard not to feel sympathy for them. Because the world in is completely rotten: a constant lack of food - it's a "calorie culture" and if the concept doesn't make you shiver yet, reading this book will change that. Most of the plant and animal life has been extinguished, with calorie companies holding the majority of the world in food-dependant slavery with sterile GMO crops, there are tons of (originally bio-engineered (?)) plagues sweeping through the population, they've got severe travel and democracy deficits as we would see it, and basically the world has gone to hell and humanity still hasn't learned anything.

The plot is full of political intrigue, betrayal, self-discovery, discussions about trade vs. isolationism and more. It chugs along at a nice pace, without ever becoming too messy to follow and the characters are also distinct.

What Windup Girl is really about, though, is the future society and the enviromental issues. And here, I must admit, that I found it failing a leeetle bit. Yes, the calorie corps and the proprietary, sterile GMO seeds is scary as are the biological weapons that have been let loose and now ravage the world. But, in stifling hot Bangkok, under constant threat from the risen sea levels, people sit around burning methan gas and (if they're really rich) coal. There's also the kinetic forces: GMO elephants and pure human labour having made great returns into everyday life, as well as "spring-kinks", super-wound springs which store kinetic energy. But cooking seems to happen mostly on gas and cooling the houses is either by building them self-ventilating or having a hand-cranked fan, if you're a bit more wealthy.

Where is the solar power in all this? Wind? Even if rare metals are almost impossible to find and much knowledge was lost in the first shock of the post-oil world (they call it the "Contraction"), you can make simpler solar powered devices that, while they can't drive high-energy machines work exceptionally well when you want to cool down a building. Windmills are pre-steel and electricity technology, and of course there are things like wave-power and other as-of-yet mostly experimental green sources. I find the lack of these things weird, not just from a science fiction-y POV, but also from the whole stratified social texture of the novel. If solar panels are rare, would using them not be even more fancy than a personal servant? If coal is such a scarse product, how can the government allow the pumps critical to Bangkok's survival to run solely on them? Especially when we know that there have been even more isolationist governments before the novel.
And of course, who wouldn't want some kind of air-conditioning that doesn't include bribing every White Shirt who passes by so they don't shut off your illegal gas...

This part, alas, doesn't really make sense to me, which unfortunately drags the book down. It's still a very good reading experience, but I get less out of the message when I'm distracted by the logical holes. Good ride, not much left after.

Also a word of warning: There is sexual violence in this book. For instance a rape scene that I found highly unpleasant, and I tend to have a strong stomach for disgusting fictional scenes.

Windup Girl reminds me in tone of Zoo City that I read a while ago, though I think I prefered that one. Zoo City, however, has a bit of magic in it, which might not be for everyone.