Post petroleum dystopia in Thailand. Genetically modified foods dominate the calorie sources. Animals, or muscle, power normal transportation or everyday machinery. Methane, produced by composting pretty much everything, is for cooking. Diseases, mutating so quickly that they are without cure, wipe out villages and kill thousands if not controlled. This small country must defend itself from foreign giant corporations that seek total colonization.
Those global companies are powerful. They have enough financial and military resources to topple governments. They are sophisticated and manipulative. They want free trading: their GM foods for everything the country can offer. Thailand somehow kept a seedbank of thousands of plants that those giant GM companies felt both as a threat, as alternative and independent food sources, and envious, as raw materials to modify into new products. Oh, those diseases, some man-made, also pretty much wiped out all natural plants in the world by then.
Emiko is a humanoid genetically created for personal services, like an organic robotic doll. She demonstrates how good we are in genetic technology.
Dystopia are political statements in story form. This is what could happen if we don’t choose wisely today. For that, Paolo Gacigalupi chose two themes: the depletion of petroleum energy and the advancement of genetic technologies. Interestingly, he also depicted scientists so brilliant that they invent or manipulate life forms as a hobby. Why can’t those brilliant minds solve the energy problems or cure diseases? How can a world be so advanced in genetic technologies and not in anything else, including weaponry? Those illogical points made this a powerful and well written fiction that is only most entertaining.