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A review by kitsuneheart
Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi
There's this certain idea bemoaned by the "intelligentsia" that educated people wait to have children and only have one or two while the uneducated people have kids early and often. Which is a really, really screwed up thing to say, but "Pump Six" takes that idea and makes it true.
Set in a near future, this story features a society almost entirely populated by "trogs," humans who are one step removed from being beasts. They rut in the street, can barely talk (if they can at all), and there are more every day. One man working in the water sanitation facility finds that one of their machines has broken down, and he must find someone in the city who is still capable of understanding and fixing things, before everything breaks and the city's water is contaminated beyond recovery.
It's crude, but with purpose. Without the crudities, the society Bacigalupi has constructed wouldn't seem to be in nearly such dire straits. By the time you get to the end, you'll maybe be reconsidering your own reproductive options. Or maybe you'll just switch back to bottled water.
Set in a near future, this story features a society almost entirely populated by "trogs," humans who are one step removed from being beasts. They rut in the street, can barely talk (if they can at all), and there are more every day. One man working in the water sanitation facility finds that one of their machines has broken down, and he must find someone in the city who is still capable of understanding and fixing things, before everything breaks and the city's water is contaminated beyond recovery.
It's crude, but with purpose. Without the crudities, the society Bacigalupi has constructed wouldn't seem to be in nearly such dire straits. By the time you get to the end, you'll maybe be reconsidering your own reproductive options. Or maybe you'll just switch back to bottled water.