If the long-term effects of water policy sound like a less-than-sexy subject for summer reading, you’re clearly not familiar with Paolo Bacigalupi.
The best-selling, Hugo-award-winning author has carved a niche with novels that explore human impact on the environment through page-turning drama.
“I’m constantly looking over my shoulder because it seems so glaringly obvious that someone else would be writing about this exact same thing,” said Bacigalupi, 42, a Paonia native who lives in and writes from his hometown following stints overseas and in Denver. “But it seems I have a lot of this territory to myself.”
Bacigalupi’s latest novel, “The Water Knife” (published by Knopf) departs from his recent young-adult books like “Ship Breaker” and “The Drowned Cities” in presenting an adult take on the near future in which the Southwest is dramatically remade by clashes over water resources.
We talked to the author, who has worked at Paonia’s nonprofit High Country News, over a double espresso at the Hotel Teatro on the eve of a national book tour last month. It brings him back to Crested Butte’s Rumors Coffee and Tea House on June 18 for a reading and signing.
Q: You’re passionate about water rights, having grown up in a community in which no one takes them for granted. But with “The Water Knife,” are you at all concerned about turning off readers with a potentially activist tone?
A: As an author, you’re really grateful for the people who are supporting you, but on some other level that can be a dangerous echo chamber. What’s interesting is the really dedicated fans who are like, “Whatever, you and your climate change obsession.” That’s somewhat of a surprise because I think, “Wow, we see the world completely differently and yet you still like my writing? Well, thanks.” But when you write fiction and do these really big, long projects that you’re spending a year or two in, you mostly have to be satisfying yourself. People who are turned off by the fact that you have climate change as a subject tend to fit inside a much wider range of people who disapprove of the way you use violence, or the fact that you’re writing YA or middle-grade novels.
Q: Water is such an immediate issue, with the drought in California and other stories, but the subjects you’re writing about don’t seem quite as picked-over in the world of science fiction.
A: I think competition on those subjects would lead us toward a better world. It’s like, “Come on in and join the party!” There are 10 million stories about how computing is going to change our lives. I think we can have a few more about climate change, drought, water rights, the loss of biodiversity and how we adapt to a changing environment.
Q: Beyond growing up in a rural, agricultural community, what drives to write about these subjects?
A: The sources and research I use for my inspiration aren’t your typical sci-fi subjects, but it’s really driven by obsession and personal anxiety more than trying to take up the sword and do what’s right. Writing is cathartic for me and a way to identify the demons and put them to rest in some ways. I’m probably the one sci-fi writer who wants to be wrong about my (predictions).
Q: Young adult fiction has become more respectable and profitable in recent years, so why — after having found success there — is your latest novel a shift away from that?
A: It’s weird because I see these things as all cohesive pieces of my personalty, my obsession and my art. Sometimes I want to write something like “Zombie Baseball Beatdown” (Bacigalupi’s 2013 middle-grade book, and a National Book Award finalist) or a caper or some slapstick. Other times I want to bounce around, so I’ve been terribly unstrategic in that sense.
Q: Does it weigh on you in terms of affecting book sales? Are you worried that fans of “Ship Breaker” will abandon you?
A: The world of genre (fiction) is littered with authors who had one series that succeeded and then nothing else, and there are warnings everywhere about not sinking your career. I know people who have gone into career death spins, and that’s something you’re always aware of as a writer. So it’s definitely an experiment.
Q: That said, you successfully cover a lot of serious topics in your YA and middle-grade fiction, however surreal or crazy they might be.
A: Right, “Zombie Baseball Beatdown” is about meatpacking plants and food safety and immigration and race — and kids beating zombies up with baseball bats. Books like that are really close to my heart, in part because my wife’s a schoolteacher. As a writer, you should care about reluctant readers. You want these kids to feel like books are amazing and cool and that they’re an escape. But books are the only entertainment media we expect to suck. A TV series, even if it’s doing it badly, is trying desperately to hook you and hold you. Same with video games and movies. And yet, in schools we expect that a certain number of books are going to be boring for kids, and that that’s OK because it’s “good for them.” This is not the message that gets young people reading.
Q: In trying to balance weighty and entertaining, accessible and deep, what kind of approach do you take?
A: I don’t think it’s a lose-lose thing, where you’re either a pandering sell-out or a loser that no one reads. I feel like your job as an artist is actually to figure out how to be true to what you believe in, and then find people and suck them in, too. That’s a win-win. You’re supposed to be clever, and you’re looking for that clever win where we all get what we want. That’s what I’m interested in.
John Wenzel: 303-954-1642, jwenzel@denverpost.com or twitter.com/johnwenzel