The Water Knife

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Off in the distance she thought she heard a new sound, the thud-thwap of helicopters approaching, winding up the river. The echo of rotors slapping against water and canyon, drowning out the chirps and calls of the river.

  A distant sound, but growing now.

  Becoming real.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Water Knife is a work of fiction, with all the attendant confabulations and convenient alterations that come along with that label. That said, the roots of this devastated future drew sustenance from the dedicated research and reporting of a number of science and environment journalists whom I have known and followed over the years. If we want to know what our future will look like, it’s worth following the people who report the details and trends that are rapidly defining our world. Good journalism isn’t just reporting on the present, it’s excavating the shape of our future as well, and I’m grateful for the work of all the writers and reporters that I’ve had a chance to riff off of.

  I’d especially like to thank Michelle Nijhuis, Laura Paskus, Matt Jenkins, Jonathan Thompson, and the newsmagazine High Country News, which provided much early inspiration for this book, long before I knew I would be writing about water scarcity. In particular, I’d like to thank Greg Hanscom for encouraging me to write the short story “The Tamarisk Hunter”—the seed that eventually grew into The Water Knife. Others I’d like to thank because I had a chance to lurk over their shoulders on Twitter include Charles Fishman @cfishman, John Fleck @jfleck, John Orr @CoyoteGulch, Michael E. Campana @WaterWired, and the water news site @circleofblue, not to mention the many other individuals and organizations who drop stories and tidbits into hashtags like #coriver, #drought, and #water.

  Other people to whom I owe a debt of thanks include writer and editor Pepe Rojo, who gave me much-needed guidance with my terrible Spanish; friend and artist John Picacio; C. C. Finlay, who leaned hard on me to commit to this book; Holly Black, plot whisperer extraordinaire, who pointed out that I had all the pieces of the story puzzle, but wasn’t assembling them in the right way; my editor at Knopf, Tim O’Connell, who provided wise counsel on the way to the final draft; and my agent, Russell Galen, who helped me find the best possible home for this book.

  Most important, I would like to thank my wife, Anjula, for her unwavering support over many years.

  As with all my books, if there are errors or omissions, they are solely my own.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Paolo Bacigalupi is a Hugo and Nebula Award winner and a National Book Award finalist. He is also a winner of the Michael L. Printz Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the John W. Campbell Award, and a three-time winner of the Locus Award. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and High Country News. He lives in western Colorado with his wife and son.