Paolo Bacigalupi: A Man From Simple Roots

Paolo Bacigalupi was born in Paoina, Colorado in 1972. Along with his self-identified "hippie parents", he was raised in Western Colorado on a 15 acre farm of apple orchards, juniper trees, and hay fields. Bacigalupi decided to attend college at Oberline College in Oberlin, Ohio. It was here that Paolo decided to major in Chinese because he felt that "an educated person should speak more than one language". After his time at Oberlin, Paolo traveled for several years on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, spending most of his time in China. 

As a writer, Paolo is generally associated with being a science-fiction/dystopian novelist. But according to Paolo, that is not necessarily the case. For him, being labeled as a science fiction writer creates a wall between him and the reader since his writing does not fall under traditional science fiction. In terms of being a dystopian writer, Paolo prefers to be known as a writer of broken futures.By doing this, the characters in his stories agree that they are in a terrible place, and nobody intended for it to be this way. The characters are forced to live with the consequences of humanity's decisions. They are living inside the broken future that was created for them. These doomed futures are often created by the unexpected and dismissed dangers that have large consequences.