Recently anointed with his field's highest honor, the Nebula Award, science-fiction writer Paolo Bacigalupi asks you to consider the humble iPad.

"If you look at the iPad and extrapolate, we say the future is shiny. It looks pretty nifty, actually," says the rising science-fiction superstar from tiny Paonia.

That's more or less the perspective of Bacigalupi critics, who say his future visions are too dark and pessimistic.

"If that is your dominant data point, then all the stuff I'm writing is bull," Bacigalupi says cheerily.

The stuff he's writing? Well, yeah, it's pretty grim. In his 2009 debut novel, "The Windup Girl," a future Bangkok huddles in a post- oil world hammered by global warming, heartless corporations and pollution. But that's nothing compared with his story "The People of Sand and Slag," in which humans bioengineered to survive a blasted Earth — i.e., they can eat sand — come to accept their fading humanity.

His work features no exciting frontiers in space, no magical sources of nonpolluting energy. But, Bacigalupi says, to write otherwise would be dishonest.

Again, take the iPad.

"Where did you get the materials for the batteries? What people were hurt in the manufacturing and shipping process? When you ask about using oil that's running out. . . . If those are your data points, the iPad is just window dressing on something very ugly," he says.

Bacigalupi (pronounced BATCH-uh-guh-LOO-pee), born in 1973 in Colorado Springs, grew up reading classic science fiction by Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and others. He forgives SF writers of the '50s and '60s, "who came by their optimism honestly," but isn't impressed by contemporaries who offer shiny, happy futures.

"They are actively ignoring the (messed)-up (stuff) that's going down," he says.

Bacigalupi won't cite "influences." But he does cop to "internalizing" lessons from past masters — intensity from William Gibson, storytelling from Heinlein, environmentally compromised futures from John Brunner, and from Ursula K. Le Guin the notion that "you can actually say something with your story, and it's OK."

Like any sane science-fiction writer, he doesn't claim to predict the future. But, he says, his worlds sprout organically, like mushrooms from manure, out of current trends.

"Every time you read the news and look at the data, they don't lead anywhere good," he says. "None of it says this is going to be better, there will be more energy and more species. . . . I'm not going to write something to console the reader and say everything's all right. . . . We aren't doing anything that's even remotely sustainable."

Today's adults, he says, are waging "generational warfare" through resource depletion, global warming and pollution.

"We're enjoying all the benefits of our highly industrialized society and passing all the costs along to our children. It's a giant extended middle finger to the next generation," says the married father of a 6-year-old boy.

Bacigalupi, who rides a bike to work and frets over the size of his 1,500-square-foot home, says he lies awake at night worrying about the world his son will live in. That's one reason he decided to write his new novel, "Ship Breaker," for a young-adult audience.

"Adult readers nod their heads like a Chihuahua (bobble head) on a dashboard and say, 'Wow, that's really deep.' Then they get in their car and drive to work again," he says. "But with young people, they actually still have a chance to make better decisions than we made."

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has, sadly, provided some real-world publicity for the new novel, which takes place along the Gulf Coast and "definitely leads to the kind of world I've created," he says.

But Bacigalupi also sees the new novel as less grim than his other work. Taking his cue from "Citizen of the Galaxy" and other Heinlein juveniles, he says he was trying to write a "ripping good yarn" that would attract younger readers, especially boys.

But "Ship Breaker" isn't exactly cheery. It features teenage protagonists living in a brutal, socially stratified future where they perform dangerous ship salvage for a pittance, violence is a part of daily life, and bioengineered animal-human hybrids serve as muscle for distant, rapacious corporations. Pollution has despoiled land and water. Nailer, the protagonist, is constantly on the run from his drug-addled, savage father.

Yet it's a fast-paced, absorbing story that offers a somewhat hopeful message: You can choose your "family," and those who stand by you put blood ties to shame.

And the novel is "age-appropriate" for adults.

"Too much of young-adult writing is precious, and there are a number of very odd strictures," he says, noting that adult "gatekeepers" of young- adult literature — parents, librarians, teachers — like to pretend kids don't curse or have sex. Bacigalupi was asked to remove curse words that are used daily by many teens (well, specifically one word, which begins with "f"), but "they didn't blink when I said I'm going to grind up (a character) in gears."

He hopes the sheer adventure of the story, coupled with exciting technology (such as his future sailing ships, which travel up to 50 knots using high-altitude sails) will awaken a sense of wonder in readers. And just maybe, he says, he'll inspire some kid playing video games in a bland, soul-sucking, suburb to engage with his world.

"I'm delivering a short, sharp shock," he says.