Helpful Score: 3
I read The Water Knife while seated in my swimming pool in Phoenix, Arizona. We've been playing Russian roulette with water here in the Valley of the Sun, actually believing that this stretch of desert can support over five million people forever and ever, amen. The hammer is about to fall on that last, loaded, cylinder, and Paolo Bacigalupi has painted an all-too-believable portrait of the End of Days for the city I love.
It's not a pretty portrait. It's a brutal one. Life is cheap. Water is what has value. Neighborhood after neighborhood is dead because there is no water to fill the pipes running beneath the streets and up into the houses. China has arrived to build "arcologies"-- tall skyscrapers that are marvels of recycling-- where the rich can live in the luxury of waterfalls, thick tropical foliage, showers, baths, pitchers filled with cool water.... The rest of the city has to fight to get enough to drink, and you can forget about being clean. That's a thing of the past.
Bacigalupi places three main characters into this gritty, filthy, parched world: Angel, the Water Knife; Maria, the teenage Texas refugee; and Lucy, an investigative journalist who came to Phoenix and now calls it home. The one thing that they all must recognize is that it all boils down to water rights. Catherine Case knows this, and she's been successful in obtaining water rights for her city. However, Case is small potatoes to the real powerhouse in the fight for water: California. What are three of the "little people" going to do in this deadly fight? What chance do they have of survival?
The Water Knife is cold-blooded and violent in its vision of the future, and the future is bleak indeed for anyone with old eyes. It's a story that made me feel guilty and uncomfortable and thirsty and in need of a shower. It's a story that I won't forget... even as I enjoy my swimming pool each and every day.
It's not a pretty portrait. It's a brutal one. Life is cheap. Water is what has value. Neighborhood after neighborhood is dead because there is no water to fill the pipes running beneath the streets and up into the houses. China has arrived to build "arcologies"-- tall skyscrapers that are marvels of recycling-- where the rich can live in the luxury of waterfalls, thick tropical foliage, showers, baths, pitchers filled with cool water.... The rest of the city has to fight to get enough to drink, and you can forget about being clean. That's a thing of the past.
Bacigalupi places three main characters into this gritty, filthy, parched world: Angel, the Water Knife; Maria, the teenage Texas refugee; and Lucy, an investigative journalist who came to Phoenix and now calls it home. The one thing that they all must recognize is that it all boils down to water rights. Catherine Case knows this, and she's been successful in obtaining water rights for her city. However, Case is small potatoes to the real powerhouse in the fight for water: California. What are three of the "little people" going to do in this deadly fight? What chance do they have of survival?
The Water Knife is cold-blooded and violent in its vision of the future, and the future is bleak indeed for anyone with old eyes. It's a story that made me feel guilty and uncomfortable and thirsty and in need of a shower. It's a story that I won't forget... even as I enjoy my swimming pool each and every day.
