This is the second story by Bacigalupi I have read; the first was “The People of Sand and Slag“, and together they make abundantly clear that this author is very proficient at painting dystopic futures, specifically those in which humanity has to make great sacrifices in order to cope with catastrophic changes in the environment, which cause a massive drop in variation between and within ecosystems. “The Calorie Man” is also a prequel of sorts to his first novel, “The Windup Girl“, which I have not read – yet.
In this story, combustible power sources have been exhausted, resulting in a massive technological crashdown. The only reliable power source left in the world is the conversion of organic calories (ie., agriculture) into muscle work, which is then stored into molecular spring-loaded “batteries”. As if this was not bleak enough, a wave of pests has made traditional agriculture impossible, and only genetically-enhanced strains, controlled, distributed and taxed by industrial mega-corporations remain viable (and sterile, so farmers have to buy seeds every season). These premises create a kind of low-tech cyberpunk-like setting: a wave of disenfranchised humanity, labouring for, and entirely depended on, a few unethical entities, enormously powerful, untouchable, and possessing their own muscle (here, the so-called “IP men”).
The story follows the meandering upriver the Mississipi of Lalji, an uprooted Indian antiquities dealer, in search of a mysterious man that might just know how to change the world. Lalji is a pretty typical protagonist of dystopian future stories: succesfull enough in his small scale to be interesting, resigned to live his existence in the little niche he has carved for himself within a vastly unfair world order he sees no hope of ever changing, with a deeply positive, romantic nature that he keeps hidden from the world and himself under a veneer of cynic pragmatism. As the story progresses, that veneer loses his opacity, allowing the reader to see through it, until it is finally dissolved by the hope of breaking the calories’ monopoly.
While the plot itself is relatively plain, it’s the combination of the powerful setting and the interesting narrative structure that gives the story its power. The plot is broken up in multiple parallel lines: the narrative present follows Lalji’s trip up the river, giving the reader a very vivid experience of what this world looks like: the green monocultures, the quiet desperation of the masses, the constant supervision imposed by the powerful; simultaneously the reader sees Lalji’s attemtps to cope with this world, while slowly being shown glimpses of his internal train of thought (the veneer losing his opacity). In parallel to this line, a second layer gradually shows the reader the proximal past, displaying the causes of Lalji’s decision to risk his life in this adventure. Finally, a third layer examines the distal past; a double function is achieved in this layer: episodes that were seminal in the shaping of Lalji’s personality are shown to the reader, together with glimpses of the calamities that brought the end of the world-as-we-know-it.
Like most good stories, all these parallel lines are brought together in the end, for better or for worse. Death takes its due, but Lalji and Tazi emerge, alive and in possession of the rarest of things: hope.
There is some interesting symbolism in this story: the world is a bleak and sterile place, and Bacigalupi opts to show it by using overwhelmingly male characters: just like the genetically-engineered plants that sustain the world, males are ultimately incapable of creating further generations by themselves – cultural symbols of fertilty are overwhelming feminine, and there are abundant examples in the animal kingdom of species surviving partially or completely through female-only reproduction (eg. parthenogenesis), a fact of which Bacigalupi is certainly aware.
Tazi then, the girl who is unexpected, unannounced and untied from the present world, comes to represent fertility, not for mankind, but for the world; a modern-era Ceres, come to break the world free of the monopoly of the food companies.
The story does not say whether Lalji and Tazi will succeed in their endeavour, but it does not matter; the very core of the story is Lalji’s regret at being unable to save his childhood friend Gita: his pragmatism, his meekly acceptance of the new world order have prevented him from performing an act of idealism or self-sacrifice that might have saved her. Having witnessed Bowman’s ultimate act of sacrifice – and so close to seeing his life work change the world forever! – Lalji feels he is being given a second chance at making a difference: it has been shown to him that an act of kindness is still a powerful force.
Furthermore, it is here that the full force of the femininity-fertility symbolism is deployed: Tazi holds the rebelliously fertile seeds, while male figures died in order to secure the promise those seeds contain – a striking parallel to the process of fertilization. In this world that their sacrifice has enabled, however (just like in the older one, the one Lalji comes from), their death has not been in vain. And that is enough; Lalji too has been reborn, breaking out of the shell of cynism and pragmatism the world had imposed on him, and on that positive note, the story draws the curtains. The rest is for the reader to imagine, at least until they pick the follow-up novel up… which I at least intend to do!
“The Calorie Man” was originally published in 2005 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I have read it in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois and published in 2006 bt St. Martin’s Press. At the time of this writing, it is available in pdf form as part of the “Windup stories” at nightshadebooks.com
Hamletic Tortoise 