Reviewed by Gwenda Bond

One of the quickest ways to set a science fiction reader’s eyes rolling is to single out the predictive acumen of a certain author. Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet, William Gibson did. But the foremost job of fiction isn’t prophecy. Focusing on Nostradamus-style party tricks usually means neglecting more meaningful aspects of any given work. With that caveat, I still find it impossible to fully divorce the experience of reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel for young adults, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown), from the horrifying reality of watching gushing oil–freed by the failure of the surreally-named Deepwater Horizon oil rig–attack the Gulf Coast, its night-black force unstoppable, its scale unfathomable. Ship Breaker is set in these same Gulf Coast waters among downed oil tankers, far enough from now that oil scarcity and climate change have spread the disease of dystopia.

While teenage Nailer Lopez dreams of life aboard the pristine clippers that glide over the waves in the distance, his own horizons are confined to the oil tankers he scavenges copper wire from and Bright Sands Beach where he lives in a shack with his abusive, drug-addict father. Bacigalupi quickly develops a compelling cast of characters on the light crew and the beach, and a mercenary world made all the more frightening because of how many children inhabit it. Luck is akin to magic for the people of Bright Sands Beach, a fact that becomes clear as a tiny girl named Sloth, one of Nailer’s crewmates, leaves him to drown in a room of oil, hoping to claim the find as a “lucky strike.” Nailer manages to escape, earning the nickname “Lucky Boy” and a night of gifts from the beach residents, while Sloth’s breaking of the crew code sentences her to an even worse life than the one she already has. People in this future long for luck, for the goodwill of the Scavenge God, the Rust Saint, the Fates. They rarely get it.

Nailer’s father is as terrible as any Fate, and it’s hard to believe in Nailer’s luck, watching him cower in a killer’s shadow. Then Nailer and his friend and crew boss Pima, one of the toughest and most memorable girls in recent YA, discover a beached clipper ship housing a lone survivor. Nailer and Pima ally with the beautiful teenage girl aboard, Nita, christening her “Lucky Girl” and anointing her as crew. The journey to help her takes Nailer beyond the beach, through the drowned cities along the coast to Orleans. Along the way, Nailer begins to see a possibility never open to him before–a way to escape his life. But, first, he must escape his father.

Dystopias are extremely popular in YA fiction at the moment, but Bacigalupi takes a different approach than most. He focuses not on the high concept but on the small life of Nailer. The larger issues that fuel the world emerge only as Nailer learns about them. And Nailer does not have designs on saving the planet or any chance of doing so. He wants to save himself and his friends. This approach leaves plenty of uncovered ground for the coming sequel to explore, throwing out such rich seeds as genetically engineered “half-men” created using dog and human DNA who may or may not have to obey their masters and the complex political landscape that swirls around Nita’s powerful family business.

The nature of trust, family, fate and luck form the thematic underpinnings of Ship Breaker’s heady adventures. Because for all its bleakness and brutal decisions–in even the most dystopian YA it’s rare to find a scene where a character we like a great deal is willing to kill an innocent person–this is an adventure story in the swashbuckling tradition. Nailer’s adventures are given weight not just by the hard decisions faced by him and the other characters, but by the threat of this future and its endless parallels with our own reality.

While teens can revel guiltlessly in the dark future Nailer navigates, it’s impossible to imagine adults not feeling a twinge that this is one possible future we’re helping create. Ship Breaker insinuates that what’s happening on the Gulf Coast now doesn’t even count as destruction, that it’s merely the beginning of a long transfiguration, ending in a world where oil always equals someone’s blood. Still, perhaps there’s hope. Maybe we just need a little luck to help us escape the dystopia.