ABSTRACT
Paolo Bacigalupi has utilised a combination of near future earth setting and crime fiction plot in his two environmentally oriented science fiction novels, The Windup Girl and The Water Knife. Theft is the central plot crisis in each. These environmental cautionary tales do not allow for a happy ending that would suggest environmental crises can be easily resolved. These crimes have already begun in the present day, and the novels extrapolate their current level of environmental degradation into the future. Thus, the environmental dimension has to be addressed today if it is not to remain ongoing in the reader’s future.
