Environmental apocalypse looms large in Bacigalupi’s futuristic science fiction. His most recent work and first young adult title is Ship Breaker. The Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated author delivers a fast-paced dystopian adventure that is sure to appeal to fans of Little Brother and The Hunger Games.
With the world’s focus on the current environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker is eerily too close for comfort. Here a futuristic and polluted Gulf Coast is littered with beached and rusting oil tankers which are scavenged by teen work crews for the scrap metal. Seventeen year old Nailer works in unbearable conditions to extract copper wire to sell. After a hurricane hits the area, a wrecked but luxurious clipper ship and a dying girl offer Nailer the chance to escape his grim life.
Bacigalupi's earlier works of adult science fiction, Pump Six and Other Stories and The Windup Girl are also available in the library’s collection.
Check out Paolo Bacigalupi's site, windupstories.com.
Update: Ship Breaker has won the 2011 Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature.
