The Water Knife

Global warming and over use of water have left the American Southwest a no man’s land of cities abandoned to desert wildlife. National Guard units prevent refugees from Texas and Arizona from crossing into states where water is still plentiful. Trapped in the dieing landscape, people huddle close to tanks where they can buy a day’s worth of water, before returning to their gutted suburban McMansions. Meanwhile, private corporations, states, and even drug lords wage war over the remains of the Colorado river.

In Phoenix, a murder has been committed. Actually, in Phoenix, they gamble on how many bodies will be found in a 24 hour period. But this murder is different. A fiver, a person living the increasingly rare lifestyle of the rich, has been tortured, murdered and discarded in the sand in front of the Hilton 6, as though he was just another throw away refugee. The scandal becomes a vortex sucking in an orphaned Texan, an independent reporter and a corporate owned spy/hitman.

The Water Knife’s cynical characters and dessicated setting channel the noir feel of a futuristic "Chinatown." Unlike his last few YA offerings, this novel is quite definitely an adult read with graphic violence and explicit sexuality. The book has adult language, in English and in Spanish, and possibly in Mandarin (I can’t be sure.) That gritty texture, however, contributes to a lightening fast thrill ride that kept me up late several nights in a row.

I also purchased the audible version of this book. The narration was beautifully read and the realistic Latin accents added a definite Southwestern flavor to the dialogue. Great voice and skillfully read.

"The Water Knife" by the reliable Paolo Bacigalupi is a story of a near-future America suffering through the destruction of the American Southwest due to water shortages. The draining of the aquifers, combined with the lack of snow-melt from the Rockies, leaves California, Nevada, Arizona, and displaced Texans all struggling in a world where rivers are covered to prevent excess evaporation. Water rights become life or death matters for cities Las Vegas, LA, and Phoenix, AZ—where most of the action takes place.

The ‘water knife’ is a euphemism for an enforcer of water rights and a hunter of anyone trying to access water without legal authority. Angel is one of the best, in the employ of the sharp female administrator of Las Vegas’s Water Authority, Catherine Case. He becomes involved with a hunt for a water-rights treaty granted to Native Americans—a priceless document so old that it would take precedence over all existing agreements—and in the process, becomes involved with a female reporter who’s gone from being an observer to being in the thick of the life and death struggle of everyone in Phoenix as the water runs out and the dangers only grow more unbeatable.

However, the most frightening thing about this novel is its basis in fact—much of the disastrous environment described has been warned of in a non-fiction book, "Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water" by Marc Reisner. That book was published in 1987, and much of what he warned about is starting to manifest itself—such as the present severe drought conditions in California.

Like most doomsday-scenario stories, “The Water Knife” describes people on the edge, people in trouble, and twisted people who take advantage of chaos to create their own little fiefdoms of violence and tyranny. I never read such stories purely for the goth-like rush of people being cruel and dark—but in cases where I feel the story will give insight into something real, I put up with it—especially from a writer as good as Bacigalupi. And this is an exciting, engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, and ‘history as a hammer’, for all its darkness.

After reading The Windup Girl and Pump Six and Other Stories, I was really looking forward to reading the next Paolo Bacigalupi book on my list. I am pleased to report that The Water Knife definitely lived up to my expectations.

The Water Knife is set in an all-too-believable dystopian future where global warming and overconsumption of water have lead to widespread water shortages in the American Southwest. “Widespread water shortages” is an understatement. The entire region is practically in a state of civil war. California, Nevada, and Arizona are fighting in the courts and sometimes in the streets to secure access to what little water remains. Politicians, businesspeople, organized crime networks, refugees, and other everyday citizens are all struggling in their own interrelated ways to survive and get ahead in the often violent and cruel circumstances of what’s left of human civilization.

This novel works on many levels — and works on all of those levels quite successfully.

The basic elements that I would expect of almost any good narrative are all strong here. The plot, characters, and setting are all complex and compelling. I often do my reading in fairly short bursts, and I found myself wanting to extend my reading time for as long as possible. Some narratives — even some really good narratives — rely heavily on one or two of these elements to carry the story. But the plot, characters, and setting all work together brilliantly, like complex parts of a well-oiled machine driving the narrative forward to its conclusion.

Bacigalupi is especially good at getting inside of each viewpoint character’s head, bringing the reader into their inner world, and using their perspective to reveal some very vivid and intense imagery. Anyone can tell the reader what the character is experiencing, but few authors can describe it so well that the reader feels like they’re right there along with the character, experiencing all of the joys and horrors (let’s be honest — mostly horrors in this case) that the character experiences. When I read the Water Knife, I feel like I’ve been transported into a very real apocalyptic future — a feeling that is terrifying on some level, but eminently rewarding as a reader.

The precise apocalyptic nature of the Water Knife is actually somewhat uncommon. This is what I’ve come to think of as a “mid-apocalyptic” or simply “apocalyptic” narrative rather than a “post-apocalyptic” one. In post-apocalyptic narratives, human society has collapsed entirely, leaving behind small to mid-sized bands of desperate individuals struggling to survive in the aftermath. Post-apocalyptic narratives are popular nowadays, and most stories I’ve come across lately are either post-apocalyptic or non-apocalyptic.

Water Knife is something in between. It offers a glimpse of an American society that is well on its way to complete collapse, but still not fully gone. To an extent, there is still a society similar to what exists today — a civil government with various government agencies, a market economy dominated various large corporations, information and communication technologies, etc. People in power are still trying to maintain the appearance that society has not, in fact, collapsed. But in a very real sense, it’s all either broken or falling apart. For large groups of people, it has already failed, leaving them in fringe situations that we would normally associate with a post-apocalyptic setting. This middle ground between today’s society and a future post-apocalyptic society is a very rich space for exploring the problems of today and the direction in which they may be taking us.

What I find most rewarding about this novel is the importance of its central themes of water scarcity and global warming. Bacigalupi doesn’t seem to be pushing any single solution or course of action here in the present day. However, presenting the potential horrors of where we’re headed in graphic detail is enough to inspire anyone with half a brain and half a heart to give some serious thought to what we can do in the here and now to avoid water wars and climate catastrophe. Bacigalupi takes some very important concerns facing the world today and turns them into a compelling narrative that will entertain (and perhaps even inspire) many people who otherwise might not give much thought to these concerns. Good fiction doesn’t always need a deep message about today’s society — but it doesn’t hurt, and those are some of my favorite narratives. Bacigalupi’s approach to the task of writing such narratives is among the best I’ve seen. I definitely recommend the Water Knife to other readers and look forward to reading more of his work!

Usually, I find Paolo Bacigalupi's adult genre novels to be five-star events. For this reviewer, that was not the case. In some ways, this is a brilliant vision of a dystopian future for the world, focused in the southwest areas of the United States. As several reviewers say on the book's page on Amazon, the book does bring to mind the movie "Chinatown." That's a pretty hefty comparison. And, for the most part, the comparison is apt as the book lives up to the expectations brought to mind by that comparison. This is, without question, a genre bending event. It is dystopian, noir, speculative (science) fiction. The noir aspect is most prominent including the almost thoughtless violence. I felt that there was just a bit too much of that graphic violence, and that is why I docked the book one star. Make no mistake, this is a superb, well thought out speculation as to a very possible dystopian society evolving from the one that can be found now in the U.S. The reader is asked to accept a world in which water is more valuable than gold, and that means that whomever holds the water rights to any body of water, be it river, lake, pond, etc., is in possession of great wealth. Just as in the past of this part of the country, it was land that was fought over for grazing rights, farming rights and so forth, so it is with water rights in PB's dark vision of the not-too-distant future. His main characters are all well developed, with only the character of the "baddie in chief", Catherine Vegas, coming close to being stereotyped. The title, "The Water Knife", refers to the character Angel Velasquez, who is an enforcer for Catherine Vegas, "the Queen of Colorado," in this case referring more to river than the state. Water knives are brutal, almost sociopathic former military or cartel type thugs who are responsible for securing and protecting water rights held by their employers. Angel is thought to be the toughest of them all. The plot centers around the battle between Las Vegas and Phoenix for survival and involves a rumor that documentation exists that is so old that if found and valid, would save Phoenix and put a huge dent in Ms Vegas' empire. Bacigalupi's skill at putting the reader right in the middle of extremely desolate scenery inhabited by equally extremely desperate civilians living in those places, is unmatched. His descriptions of the despair and violence are terrifying, made more so by their credibility. A side plot involves the hatred of Texans who have migrated further west out of desperation. They are so hated because they put an even greater strain on the supplies of what water is available. As always is the case with PB's writing, it is his well-developed, disparate and believable characters and their various relationships that really carry this book and make it such a great read. He shows how certain relationships can transform despair into hope, and survival at a distance type relationships into relationships featuring various forms of love, be it agapé or romantic or merely utilitarian. It is the transformative effect that makes possible the surprising and unexpectedly gratifying ending to the novel. If you can stand the graphic violence, this is a great read. Potential readers with weaker stomachs may want to take a pass. Overall, very highly recommended.

"Some people had to bleed so other people could drink. Simple as that."

"The Water Knife" continues Bacigalupi's ecological collapse stories, this time in an American Southwest running chronically short on water. California, Nevada, and Arizona are at each others throats for what remains of the Colorado River. Texas is already gone, 'Merry Perry' refugees trying to filter north and west while they pray for rain to bring their lives back. The Feds don't care, as long as the violence stays below a plausible level of deniability, but that level of deniability is pretty high. Legal action can deny a whole city water, well over a hundred people are murdered in an average week in Phoenix, and the book opens with the Nevada National Guard carrying out a helicopter assault on an Arizona pumping station (cue ride of the Valkeries).

The plot follows the interlocking stories of three people caught up a fatal game over some very very valuable water rights. Angel is the top water knife for Nevada's Catherine Case; a cold-blooded Mexican ex-gangster willing to cut anybody out so Las Vegas can keep drinking. Luck Monroe is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist riding #PhoenixDowntheTubes, knowing that Phoenix will kill her but unable to let go of the story. Maria is a teenage Texan refugee just trying to survive.

The setting is top-notch. The rich live in Chinese arcologies with perfect recycling and guarded and sealed entrances; the poor cluster around Red Cross wells in decaying suburbs. Apocalyptic dust storms roll across the sky, burying solar farms in drifts of Inland Empire topsoil. Bacigalupi nails the carnival-of-death atmosphere of a longterm refugee camp, the idea that the apocalypse might happen so slowly that we won't notice, until it all happens to fast to stop. There's a tension between Old Eyes and New Eyes, between seeing the world as it used to be (the United States of America, green lawns, law and order) and how it has become (drone strikes in cities, dust storms, plata o plomo for whole cities.)

This is some of the best, and most compelling near future ecological fiction being written. My main problem is that the character beats track too closely Bacigalupi's own "The Windup Girl": Here's the corporate hatchet man with his last scruple of humanity; here's the idealist who should run but can't; here's the innocent whore; this is when they fall in love despite themselves; this is when Murphy's Law proves supreme and social tension breaks; and fin. And unlike his last novel, in this one Bacigalupi goes with the Old Eyes. Who cares which side of a line in the desert you're from, or what Arizona promised some Indians 150 years ago. This is the now, and what matters is where your next sip of water is coming from, and who has to get cut so you can get it.

In The Water Knife (Vintage Books, 2015), Paolo Bacigalupi imagines for us an American Southwest that is blisteringly hot, overcrowded, authoritarian, and desperately short of water. The year is not disclosed, but it’s only a few years in the future, just enough that we know it is the near future, but it is eerily familiar. The setting is mostly in Phoenix, Arizona and other places in the American Southwest.

Bacigalupi’s work is a dystopian, speculative, noir thriller. It’s an excellent one. The underlying message is that climate change and irresponsible development have resulted in and will result in catastrophic changes that are foreseen, preventable, but almost inevitable if nothing is done to prevent it.

Several stories converge in Bacigalupi’s novel. Angel Velasquez is a “water knife.” He is a scarred combination detective, spy, and assassin for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. The man is as hard and noir as they get. Initially, he does not appear to have an ounce of empathy or compassion. He is on a mission in Phoenix for his employer to find and take the original nineteenth century documentation of the most senior of water rights in Arizona.

Lucy Munroe is a hardened Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who reports on serious news issues (as opposed to many other “iournos” who report only on the piles of murdered bodies). She is writing a story on the same water rights issue that brings Angel to Phoenix.

Maria Villarosa is a teenage Texas immigrant who dreams of escaping to Las Vegas, one of the few places that has prepared adequately for the perpetual drought. She gets by selling pours of water from old bottles she fills at Red Cross taps and illustrates the impact of the lack of water on average residents. The three characters come together at times and then again toward the end of the story.

Consider, for a moment, the reality that the amount of water in the American West is limited. It is governed by the insignificant amount of rainfall and snowfall received annually in the mountains, and the precipitously declining amount of water in underground aquifers. Add to this the perennial drought seen in the American West and the hordes of people who continue to move west of the Mississippi. To make matters worse, geological conditions add mineral salts to much of the water making it saline and unusable in places.

For decades, climate scientists, geologists, hydrologists, and environmentalists, have been raising alarms over the scarcity of water in the American West. They have focused on many things, but, in particular, the irresponsible amount of land development given the limited amount of available water, and the huge influx of residents to areas that cannot sustain this significant population growth without a supply of cheap water.

Looming large in The Water Knife is the landmark nonfiction book, Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner (Viking 1986). In Reisner’s book, the author, perhaps better than anyone, describes the history and possible tragic outcomes arising from the failure to deal adequately with the American West’s pressing water issue. He describes the vast amount of tax dollars that have been spent damming up rivers, channelizing water for hundreds of miles, and pumping water from the ground. The payment from water users for this governmental largess has been pennies to the tax dollars spent. It has been the kind of tax boondoggle that generations of conservative Western politicians would have loudly decried as wasted government extravagance—if they weren’t nearly all parties to the taxpayer-funded gravy train. Consider The Water Knife to be a fictionalized version of what might happen as documented in Cadillac Desert.

Figuring into the story is that the American West has unique and odd water allocations schemes involving prior water rights and a Byzantine legal system that divides water among landowners in precise amounts. Generally, water allocations law is the subject of musty law textbooks and hundreds of court cases, many dating to the nineteenth century. It’s the stuff of convoluted original jurisdiction litigation before the United States Supreme Court. The problem is international in scope, too, as Colorado River water ultimately arrives, or is supposed to arrive, in Mexico. Mexico expects to receive a certain amount of water that is not too saline, but gets only a limited supply. Thus, it is also the subject of international treaties and disputes. This is the reality. Fortunately, for the reader, Bacigalupi tells us about this, without going into great detail.

So, what happens when the demand for water outstrips the available supply? This is not mere conjecture. There already are places in the Southwest that have no water. In Bacigalupi’s imagined world, states and water authorities literally fight over their water rights. His imagined American Southwest is not a place where anyone would want to live, but millions of people are stuck in place because restrictive internal immigrations laws, border walls, militias, national guards, and a receptive US Supreme Court prevent residents of one state from leaving and moving to another. Could this happen? What really will happen when the American West runs out of water? This is the imagined world of The Water Knife.

Bacigalupi’s Water Knife world is a desperate, bleak and terrible place. Bacigalupi provides almost no hope in this work. Nevertheless, his book is quite important because it illustrates one scenario which is awful to consider. The author does an excellent job of presenting it to us. His message, of course, is that we cannot allow this to happen.

A word about my main problem with this book. A number of the criminals found in this story have no compunction about using torture to extract the information they need from unfortunates or to punish people who have crossed them. Bacigalupi revels in describing the torture. As an author myself, it is a delicate balance to decide what you depict directly and what happens “offstage.” I could have done without these explicit and troubling descriptions of mayhem. The book would have been no less important without it. Also, these scenes detract from the important message contained in this work and will turn off some readers. While I highly recommend this book, if you cannot tolerate descriptions of torture, I suggest you skip those pages and move on to the next chapter.

That aside, the book has everything you would want in a classic American noir thriller. On top of that, Bacigalupi presents a serious look at the outcome of a pressing problem that is too often considered water under the bridge.

This combination of narco, noir, and mid-apocalyptic SF does include the obligatory near-future touches: a combination of climate change, overpopulation, and careless water use creating a devastating drought, huge dust storms, and a refugee crisis across the Southwestern US; veterans of unexplained but alluded-to wars all over the world turned private contractors equipped with military “glass” augmented-reality HUDs; evil, semi-governmental private corporations deploying armies of goons and Hellfire missiles to grab water for their sponsoring regions at all costs; pervasive network access and extremely efficient solar panels cheap enough for just about anyone to buy; housing blocks built as self-contained, super-efficient ecologies; medical treatments so advanced that they can cure organ damage, broken bones, and horrific blood loss--but so widely available that Red Cross emergency aid stations lavish them on the anonymous victim of a shootout between hard-pressed, gun-toting Texas refugees and the vicious Phoenix-based gang of “cholobis” that terrorize them…. And right there things stop being SF and head off into pretty standard thriller territory--all about the action, less about exploring the ramifications of the “water is everything” premise.

The plot revolves around machinations over the rights to the ever-decreasing supplies of water, (echoes of Raymond Chandler, without the poetry). California, Nevada and Phoenix (not so much Arizona as a whole) have deployed lawyers, security contractors, and “water knives” to do each other out of. The main characters, Angel (the eponymous water knife, working for Nevada), Lucy (the Pulizter-prize-winning journalist covering the collapse of Phoenix), and Maria (the hardscrabble Texas refugee teenager) all get involved in the dog-eat-dog--or rather, hyena-eat-everybody--search for the antique contract that grants the holder (?) unassailable ownership of the Colorado River (or something close to that). Betrayals, shootouts, sex scenes, and torture (of the female protagonists, of course) ensue. And the plot really moves along, from murders to morgues to squatter camps to upscale bars, scattering bullets and bodies along the way. Very cinematic, and entertaining if you have a high tolerance for typically R-rated everything--and don’t think about implications too much.

For example: Nevada, California, and Phoenix are all willing to kill and destroy anybody to secure legal water rights--but the courts don’t hold them accountable for the damage and casualties? States have closed their borders due to hordes of drought-stricken refugees from Texas, with National Guard troops and independent militias willing to shoot (and worse) anybody who tries to run or swim across, but the US as a whole is still functioning enough for courts to matter at all? (There is a thrown-off mention of the US Army still being a thing that Washington could send in if the infighting gets too nasty, but that seems more like the author hand-waving the question.) Where’s New Mexico in all this? For Texan refugees to be inundating Arizona, they’d have to have come through New Mexico first, but there’s no mention of what happened there--and apparently Albuquerque isn’t in as dire straits as Phoenix (or the author just really hates Phoenix). Also, Utah and Colorado are both positioned far upstream from any of the direct competitors in the story--so if the situation is so dire, why haven’t they already claimed all the water coming out of the Rockies and dammed it up for themselves? The Mormons are too nice, and the Denverites are too high to effectively fight the water war?

The inconsistency that makes me smile slightly and cynically is that by the end, Angel and Maria, the two most pragmatic, look-out-for-number-one, “clear eyed” characters (meaning that they realize the world has changed, and aren’t “blind” to the new, mercenary-or-meat reality) literally owe their lives to others’ being blind and deluded enough to help them out of altruism (plus guilt, which also indicates a conscience). Maybe banding together to solve the problems and outsmart the bad guys isn’t such a dead-end idea after all?

By the way, the end of the book includes a set of discussion questions. Since I can’t imagine any high-school or even university English course including this book in a class syllabus, I assume it’s intended for book club members. Huh. Guess book clubs have really expanded their body counts from the Oprah days. :)

I grew up in a suburb of San Diego. Water wasn’t always something you drink. It became a lifestyle. My Dad who was in the military at the time, spent part of the year at sea with the U.S. Navy. We became intimately acquainted with water.

When he was home we discussed a myriad of topics. Ranging from politics, medicine, the Vietnam war, and the news of the day. One day in particular, the subject changed to water. My Dad, a seasoned veteran, said: The next war won’t be fought over oil or oil rights. It will be fought over drinkable water. I didn’t pay attention to the wisdom my father imparted some 60 years ago, but I always remember the conversation. What did he know? Was he able to foretell the future? Someday, I truly wonder.

Drought

I am reminded of the story of Elijah in 1 Kings 17:4–7

4 You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.” 5 So he went and did according to the word of the Lord. He went and lived by the brook Cherith that is east of the Jordan. 6 And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. 7 And after a while the brook dried up, because there was no rain in the land. ESV

The brook dried up. We are now in year 23 of an exceptional drought in the Colorado River Basin that serves the upper basin states of: Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. And the lower basin states of: Arizona, California and Nevada.

I was taking a Humanities Seminar class from the University of Arizona on the Colorado River. Past. Present, and Future given by Emeritus Professor Karl Flessa. This is where I was introduced to the book.

What does life look like after the brook (Colorado River) dries up? That becomes the backdrop of The Water Knife.

For those without water, life is bleak. Imagine water so scarce it is selling for $6/litre. Rarely bathing. Never washing clothes. Public toilets because there isn’t enough water to run sewage treatment plants. Drinking recycled urine. The outlook is bleak. The prediction my Father made, had been realized.

It is important to understand the climatology of the lower basin states. San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Tucson are all in arid desert regions made lush and habitable by the transformative power of water. Water is life. Life is water.

The story revolves around three central characters. Angel Velasquez is the water knife. He is the assassin, spy, executioner and one of the most trusted henchman destroying the water resources of the rival states in California and Arizona.

Lucy Monroe is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist who lives and Phoenix, and writes about the water wars.

Maria Villarosa is a Texan in the water stricken basin just trying to survive another day. The Joe-average citizen trying to save money so she can escape the doldrums of life.

The stark reality of life without water is acutely becoming a reality in the basin states. The book does not address the central issue of politics, although politics does play a role in the story. It focuses on the politics of water. Who has priority rights, and who doesn’t. Who gets water, and who doesn’t. It paints a palpable contrast between the have and have nots. A life of luxury and ease, versus a scrabble existence where even the water you drink is more valuable than gold.

The Good

The book is well researched. The author wrote from a perspective of having a clear grasp of the subject. You will learn new terms like: arcology, clearsacs, fivers, zoners, etc. Though never clearly defined, you will be able to figure some of these terms by their contextual use. Be prepared to have reference material at hand, as some of the terms may not be understandable to the average (me) reader.

The Bad

Phrases used in the book are in: English, Spanish and Chinese. This slowed down the reading as I had to look up the meaning of the terms and phrases. Sorry. My foreign language experience is relegated to ordering food from a menu.

The Ugly

While looking up some of those foreign phrases I discovered many of them were, expletive insults in Spanish or Chinese. I don’t care to read novels that are liberally sprinkled with 4 letter (or derivatives) expletives. This doesn’t not enhance the story, or make it real. Instead it shows complete disregard and lack of respect for the reader.

Because of the overly abusive language, I can’t in good conscience, recommend this book.

Bacigalupi gets a B+ for the story. Because of the style of writing , language, and the unnecessary use of expletives, He garners a C-/D+.

For Further Study

An excellent YouTube video by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Vanishing River: USA’s Mega Drought

You may be asking why did Australia do a video on the Colorado River? Many of the problems faced by the Colorado River basin, are applicable to Australia’s Murray-Darling basin.