The Windup Girl Chapters 5 - 6

Chapter 5:
Anderson sits in his apartment and looks at pictures of fruit.


Chapter 6All right, all right. He comes across an old photo of a couple of men standing next to a roadside fruit stand upon which sits a pile of ngaws. However, there's no caption to tell him what the fruits were originally called. Anderson sits there, naked, in the heat, on his apartment's balcony and silently rages at the "fat, self-contented fools" (read: us, now) because they dare to look happy and have plenty. The outrage! How dare they not be clairvoyant! How dare they be content and pleased with their lives. Anderson wishes he could drag the men out of the image so he can yell at them, out of jealousy, and then murder them. Which is apparently what he did to Yates, the last guy to run the cover factory, though admittedly Yates drew first.
He figures that Gi Bu Sen is actually Gibbons, a former agricultural company generipper who supposedly died in a fire.

Okay, here's what I've gleaned. Our time is known as the Expansion. We were all horrible, self-centered individuals who behaved extravagantly. Then the oil supply ran out and the Contraction happened. The book takes place in the 22nd century. I think. Clippers and dirigibles are used for travel, Megadonts and "kink springs" for power. Crop diseases (released by Western companies) have wiped out a lot of the food supply and somehow global trade has collapsed. Which seems silly as even before steam there was global trade, it was just slower. For all this talk of lack of food, there's no sign of it. Show, don't tell, Paulie.


Also, I was right about not liking Anderson.


Chapter 6:
Hock Seng waxes philosophical about slums and banks while raiding his cash stash and we fade into a flashback of his escape from Malaya. All his family died and his workers turned on him out of fear for their own safety. The "Green Handbands" took over Malaya and blamed the Chinese and Buddhists for their trouble? Possibly? And the emerald headwear are Muslims? Or something.


Hock Seng takes his money for a meeting with "Dog Fucker" (Literal or metaphorical? A mystery for another chapter), underling of the "Dung Lord", who immediately places himself as a bad guy by claiming to have fucked Hock Seng's messenger to death. Thanks for that Paulie. We're not going for subtlety, are we? Also, Hock's sorrow at his past troubles seems to be more about the destruction of his trade empire and less at the massacre of his family. Paolo isn't very good at emotional content.