Pump Six and Other Stories

#668
Title: Pump Six and Other Stories
Author: Paolo Bacigalupi
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Year: 2008
239 pages
Audiobook

Some of these stories are quite good; others are good enough but frustrate me because the worldbuilding underlying them is more interesting and the story isn't big enough for the background. Many of the stories seem to nod to plots or elements from great science fiction writers--for example, "The Fluted Girl" has more than a little of Farnham's Freehold about it, another story "The Tell Tale Heart," and another "A Boy and His Dog." Bacigalupi doesn't always choose the story that I'd pick as the best use of his variables. For example, in the first story,* why is there no discussion of wiping the boy's memory (which there is) and reprogramming him with the personality in the cube? Or why doesn't the boy, scrabbling for his handhold after an escape, accidentally plunge his hand that holds the cube into the organic building, thus joining the life that has no consciousness with the consciousness that has no life? Two stories take place in the world of Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl; one (about a man murdering his wife) is not science fiction, and is the least successful or interesting of the collection. Bacigalupi doesn't often end these stories positively. The few that hold a glimmer of hope are a relief but promise the characters, and their wasted worlds, long work for small gains.

*(Spoiler follows. Highlight to see text.)