A decade ago, Paonia author Paolo Bacigalupi applied a science fiction lens to the Colorado River crisis.

“The Water Knife” portrays an American Southwest where paramilitary battles break out over a river that is a fraction of its former self. The fortunate characters live in self-contained towers that insulate them from extreme heat and drought.

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Observers of the West have called the book prescient for the future it imagined, but in a conversation with Colorado Matters Senior Host Ryan Warner on the novel’s 10th anniversary, Bacigalupi said he undersold the incompetence of political leaders.

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Bacigalupi: ...
And this is where you get to the idea of the Mad King, where it's like, “Oh, we're being managed by caprice. There's no longer an idea of management even.” I think you can write that story now. I think that when I was writing “The Water Knife” before, the idea that people would be operating simply by caprice, that extrapolation would have seemed a little too far-fetched.

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