Book cover: Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi

Ship Breaker

Paolo Bacigalupi

In a world past cheap oil, children crawl through wrecked tankers for scrap copper, and one of them finds a survivor.

Bacigalupi’s young-adult novel is set on a drowned Gulf Coast after cheap oil, where crews of children strip wrecked tankers for copper wiring. Nailer works light crew, small enough to crawl through ducts, until he finds a clipper ship washed up with a survivor aboard and has to decide whether she is salvage. The scarcity economics are worked out with unusual care, and the labour is the point.

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Adam Minter

Journalist and Author

It also brings up resource scarcity. These ships are being extracted of raw materials for unseen corporations with big names who need them.

Interview · February 2014

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