Pump Six and Other Stories

Besides brilliant, inventive and superb, the best way to describe Paolo Bacigulupi s collection of short fiction is G R I M Do not go into PB s work looking for gumdrops and teddy bears, because his stories will bludgeon your mood until your happy is a bruised, battered mess Still, this is one emotional spanking you will love, because Bacigalupi s prose contains some of the most colorful, intensely unique imagery being produced in SF.The stories in Pump Six, almost without exception, concern env [...]

Bleak Overwhelmingly bleak To the point where it sucks out all the happiness out of you, leaving you hollow and unsettled.Memorable To the point where it feels as if it s crawling under your skin to stay with you for a very long time.If you have read The Windup Girl, the worlds that Bacigalupi creates in this collection of short stories the themes, the mood, the settings will be quite familiar to you Two of the stories here, actually, are set in the same world as that novel, and one of them is a [...]

It took me a loooong time to get through this book, and not because it wasn t good, but because I was bloody scared of it I would finish one story looking like this and then put the book aside for a while to get some courage to read another one.Bacigalupi is the author who doesn t do safe and comforting His visions of our future are brutal, unforgiving and totally too believable Let s take The Fluited Girl for me the scariest story in this anthology The idea Bacigalupi extrapolates here is what [...]

This collection of short stories paints a very bleak picture of the future that I found quite disturbing This is without doubt the darkest book I ve ever read At first I was finding these stories so depressing and uncomfortable that I tried to take a break from them I found that I couldn t Perhaps they suit my current mood, but I felt that once I had a taste of this depth I couldn t stay away I didn t love every story in equal measure, but each one sent a shock up my spine and gave an insight in [...]

A complete slog Why Because Paolo writes about the inglorious in humanity with clear eyes and precise language I m reminded of a line he ll show you your own heart in such a way that you would rip it out.The Fluted Girls disturbing view of a dystopia disturbing view of sexuality.The People of Sand and Slag silicon based people might have lost a little of humanity, but they feel it echo after they find a dog.

This volume makes me remember how much I love short stories I love how they sneak up and punch you right in the eye, then leave abruptly without even explaining themselves They don t have much time, so they have to be blunt I can really appreciate that.I won t summarize all of the stories, but they are all intense They are all set in not so distant futures, but are all chillingly related to present day events The calamities taking place in these stories are exaggerated a bit , but what s univers [...]

Paolo Bacigalupi s collection of short stories deals primarily with environmental and bioethics issues the politics of food The Calorie Man water management The Tamarisk Hunter waste management Pump Six de evolution also Pump Six and the manipulation of bodies, whether for entertainment or for longevity The Fluted Girl, The Pop Squad, and The People of Sand and Slag All but Softer, a meditative story of a man who kills his wife and the way he deals with it, are near future dystopias Some are tol [...]

This is a collection of short sci fi stories with most of them set in near future dystopia The stories are very good, but depressing I mean, 1984 type depressing What really got me when I read this book is that none of the future possibilities described are not unlikely to happen, just like 1984 which I already mentioned In fact, I would recommend reading this book to people just to see the possible directions we are happily going in I also found last several stories to be very disturbing in add [...]

Paolo Bacigalupi burst onto the scene in a big way with his excellent SF novel The Windup Girl, which rightfully won both glowing reviews and major awards, and followed it up with a great YA novel, Ship Breaker Both books are set in near future dystopian settings in which the ruined environment plays a big role Given all of this, it shouldn t come as a big surprise that Paolo Bacigalupi s first collection of short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories, is 1 also excellent and 2 continues the thema [...]

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.In Pump Six and Other Stories, which won the Locus Award for Best Collection, Paolo Bacigalupi treats us to these ten excellently written biopunk stories Pocketful of Dharma 1999 a young street urchin finds a digital storage device which contains some startling data This is Bacigalupi s first short story and it s impressive I love the premise of this story and its ambiguous ending It would be fun to see Bacigalupi extend this one into a novel The Fluted Gi [...]

A fantastic collection of stories but heavy on the dark and gloomy Simular to the theme you ll find in The Windup Girl Makes most dystopian stories seem like a picnic in the park with crumpets and ladyfingers by comparison Be that as it may, it s outstanding.

If you re not a fan of the well thought out dystopia, this book is not for you These stories are grim Set in worlds where the oil has run out, chemical buildup causes massive birth defects, and worse, these are the cautionary tales that give environmentalists nightmares At the same time, they re lyrical, rewarding, and for all that they play with world shaking cataclysms, focus on the best of stubborn, resilient humanity.For fans of The Windup Girl, there are two stories here from that universe [...]

None of the stories in this collection were bad, and some I would rate 4 or even 4.5 stars individually, but nothing really impressed me like the The Windup Girl did I think my greatest disappointment was the similarity of all the themes Bacigalupi writes dystopian stories about humanity s greed and selfishness and environmental devastation, and that s all he writes about Two of the stories in Pump Six are from the same world as The Windup Girl, and most of the others easily could be He s a good [...]

This collection of stories is a harbinger, I think, of the direction science fiction will continue to take in the 21st century, and Bacigalupi will likely be remembered as one of its guiding forces Call it biopunk, or environmental science fiction, or maybe it already has a name either way, it is literature that deals directly with humanity s current methods of organizing itself, and what effect those methods will have on the planet and on itself But it s not just that Bacigalupi is also a glori [...]

Bacigalupi je pesimista Ovih deset pri a ustvari devet, jedna je padobranac i pri a o ubistvu ene iz prvog lica njenog mu a govori o budu nosti ove anstv I ta budu nost nije lepa Problemi sa kojima emo se suo avati su nedostatak vode, prenaseljenost, nedostatak resursa generalno, a ose aj je da se sve pri e de avaju u vrlo sli nom univerzumu bliske budu nosti.Neke pri e su veoma uznemiruju e Kao na primer ona ispri ana iz prvog lica o ekipi koja tra i decu i zadu ena je za njihovu eliminaciju Ra [...]

No conecto con Bacigalupi Le reconozco imaginaci n en la creaci n del entorno, con la capacidad para bosquejar una disto p a veros mil en pocas p ginas Le reconozco capacidad para sumergirte en un entorno sucio donde la vida se ha convertido en supervivencia No le falta habilidad para darte un retrato seco con econom a de palabras y llevar el relato.Pero creo que se deshincha en historias que no est n a la altura de su entorno, en el que se difuminan En cierto sentido es como hacer una historia [...]

Specfic collection, with a tilt towards smart, scary near future dystopias People keep comparing him to Ted Chiang It s accurate in that they re both really good short storyists, but Bacigalupi is doing fundamentally different things than Chiang does These stories stress test individual pieces of what we think of as our normal infrastructure safe drinking water, reproduction, renewable food sources A few selections, with links to the stories where available online I recommend the whole collectio [...]

Dark, perverted, imaginative and acutely descriptive of our darker nature Every story caught and kept me until it s twisted ending He definitely is a talented writer And a great story teller But a bit psycho and probably not a particularly nice person Which makes for perfectly willing suspension if belive Guest stars include the 15th Dalai Lama, a priesthood that keeps us from developing disastrous tech too quickly, a sociopathic husband making Peace with his wife s murder Debauchery is a big th [...]

I ve avoided short story collections for quite a while My general glib answer is that by the time I m invested in the characters, the story is over.After reading a few really quality short story collections lately, I ve reevaluated that stance My real problem is distrust.You have to trust that the editor, or in this case the writer, have good taste and vision when they pick what s placed within the collection When it s a single writer s stories this becomes much easier.Investment comes quickly i [...]

After pawing through the first story in Pump Six, I imagined it would constitute serial penalty kicks for the grim master Having just completed the final, titular story, I found Bacigalupi less than Lampard but still able to fill the net Maybe I m a poor keeper Shoving aside my aversions to both stories and matters that involve outer space, I was certainly moved by the philosophy of the collection as a whole We perceive these threats in our trends our habits, our waste We don t dare ponder an in [...]

Wow, talk about dark this was bleak and, at times, disturbing read, but Mr Bacigalupi s originality and genius cannot be denied Although I didn t like all of the stories in the collection, some are really uncomfortable to read, each one of them presents something worth thinking about My favourites were The fluted girl and The Pasho While I acknowledge it s not suited to everyone s tastes, this collection it s not an easy read but makes you think Recommended to lovers of very dark fiction.

The I think about this book after finishing it, the it keeps growing on me.One of the real strengths of Pump Six and Other Stories is the ability Paolo Bacigalupi has to make me squirmy and uncomfortable and to create a collection of disturbing images that just keep lingering.Some of this is from the darkly creative worlds that he has created here that are so familiar, but at the same time so distorted and wrong, and from his ability to deftly blend what seems normal with what is morally unple [...]

Normally short stories leave me rather cold I guess it s because they always seem to have these dead end endings You know what I m talking about, where the author doesn t seem to understand that just because it s a short, it doesn t deserve a proper conclusion Bacigalupi s writing style is different, his stories have a way of leaving you feeling satisfied and disturbingly creeped out at the same time This anthology is a collection of apocalyptic nightmares, except for two We are shown future sce [...]

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Stunning, distressing, sublime, depressing All these words fail to describe the impact of the debut collection from Paolo Bacigalupi, Pump Six and Other Stories had on me Each of the eleven stories in the collection could stand proud on its own, but together they make a hell of a collection.Normally I would be taking this time to tell everyone the standout in the book, but all of these stories were equally wonderful, with this one caveat Although an interesting and well written story, Softer jus [...]

Suroviny doch zej a star civilizace, kter ila z dostatku fosiln ch paliv a miner l , je nen vratn minulost Dvan ct pov dek v s p enese do barvit ho ale i krut ho sv ta, pln ho nemilosrdn konkurence O vrchol science fiction to v ak nepova uji.

This is a collection of some ten stories of varied quality mostly high but softer was terrible and should have been left out My two personal favorites were The Pop Squad, set in a world in which people are immortal via a youth treatment known as rejoo and therefore population must be strictly controlled The narrator protagonist is a member of the pop squad, a sort of police officer, whose job it is to enforce population control, i.e kill children My second favorite was The Pasho about a priest w [...]

I ve wanted to read Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi since I read the titular story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 2008 I finally found a copy via Link and got it read over the holidays.The book has ten stories, two of which are in the same world as The Wind Up Girl, a book I bought over the holidays and plan to read this year Those two stories are The Calorie Man and Yellow Card Man Although not all of the stories are set in the same universe or timeline, they w [...]

This author doesn t seem to understand anything about human motives At no point in any of the stories in this book did I come close to identifying, empathizing, or feel like I shared a genetic heritage with any character in any story.The settings were almost well constructed, but again, they were predicated on choices by society which couldn t ever remotely occur Beyond that, the science was bad well, mostly non existent, but the science which existed had all the nuance of depicting hacking on a [...]

Wow Harlan Ellison meets Edgar Allan Poe Don t read this if you re having a tough month.Don t read this if you re squeamish Do read it if you enjoy finishing a short story, saying Wow, and finding you can t start the next one till the wheels stop spinning from the previous one You won t forget this book And yes, it stands apart from his others There is overlap, but nothing is lost if you haven t read his other work As I read these stories of dystopian futures, I thought of course he goes too far [...]