The Alliance has been fighting the Syndic for a century-and losing badly. Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is Captain John "Black Jack" Geary-a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized beyond belief. Now, he must live up to his own legend.

What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In "The Windup Girl", award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man"( Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner and Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.

Two months have past since a myriad of alien objects clenched about the Earth, screaming as they burned. The heavens have been silent since--until a derelict space probe hears whispers from a distant comet. Something talks out there: but not to us. Who you do send to meet the alien when the alien doesn't want to meet? You send a linguist with multiple personalities carved surgically into her brain. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultra- sound, so compromised by grafts and splices he no longer feels his own flesh. You send a pacifist warrior whose career-defining moment was an act of treason. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist — an informational topologist with half his mind gone — as an interface between here and there, a conduit through which the Dead Center might hope to understand the Bleeding Edge. You send them all to the edge of interstellar space, praying you can trust such freaks and retrofits with the fate of a world. You fear they may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. But you'd give anything for that to be true, if you only knew what was waiting for them...

达尔贡尼亚，一颗荒凉贫瘠、渺无人迹的星球。在这里，一群年轻的研究者意外地发现了一个传送门，其制造者是一种科技水平远超人类的智能生命。奇异的发现引发了贪婪和狂妄，随之而来的是阴谋和死亡。侥幸生还者落入传送门，不知所终。 太空中一艘孤独的飞船，上面有饱经风霜的船长、乔装改扮的毒品贩子、瘾君子和信使。他们接到来自达尔贡尼亚的求救信号，发现了刚刚发生的屠杀；但是，发送信号的并非受害者。 船长一行人同样落入了传送门。 传送门的另一侧是一颗奇异的星球。在这里，人们将发现遍布宇宙的种种文明的起源。

不久以后的未来，国界、政府、军队都不复存在，人们过着日出而作、日落而息的简单生活。全球唯一的权威机构维和组织宣称，这就是世界大同。 但这是一个令人窒息的世界大同：集中式的科技研发被禁止，人类社会的发展再也不能奔腾向前。维和组织宣称，这是为了人类自身的利益，为了和平。 没有人能对抗维和组织，因为它是唯一一个拥有科技研发权的机构，牢牢掌握着尖端科技。 但人类的求知欲望犹存。在世界的各个角落，活跃着一个个家庭作坊式的科研小组，他们被称为“叮当客”。 “小”并不一定意味着“弱”，在某些领域，叮当客的研发水平远远超出了维和组织。 但是，维和组织手中还掌握着一件终极武器……