Biopunk Worlds of Paolo Bacigalupi
This book explores literary techniques that allow science fiction literature to be a platform for activist interventions. The focus is on the body and food as storyworld existents in selected texts by Paolo Bacigalupi, whose writing is directed towards raising awareness of the environmental crisis. The book opens with a discussion of the position of science fiction as popular literature, genealogical debates, genre conventions of cyberpunk and biopunk, cognitive estrangement, metaphoric strategies and metonymic tactics. Then, it undertakes an analysis of Bacigalupi’s texts (The Windup Girl, «Small Offerings», and «Fluted Girl», among others) in the context of such ecocritical concepts as hyperexuberance, Capitalocene, and the temporal dimension of the environmental catastrophe.
Aleksandra Mochocka, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics at Kazimierz Wielki University, Poland. She teaches and researches science fiction, transmedia narratives, and non-digital games.