Ministry for the Future - Outside of a Dog

moving to outside.ofa.dog reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Gets a lot right, but with some painful blind spots

3 stars

Content warning Spoilers for the whole book; references to disturbing content

I read this over a few months with an in-person book club, and it was a great choice for that because it has a lot to discuss. It opens with an incredibly harrowing description of the sort of heat wave disaster that the world hasn't seen yet but I think is plausible not far in the future. And from there it basically follows three interwoven threads: * The UN establishes a climate change super-org that gets dubbed the "Ministry for the Future" because its official name is far too unwieldy government-speak * India decides after the heatwave that it can't afford to wait for the world to get its shit together, and starts going it alone on geoengineering, to global consternation but also spurring some more serious action from other parties * The character from whose point of view we saw the disaster is very deeply scarred by the experience and devotes the rest of his life to climate action by any means necessary

In true KSR style, the book is very long on research and loving descriptions of places (mostly Switzerland this time; he's made me want to visit Zurich), and relatively short on three-dimensional characters. I think this one does a better job with the characters than Red Mars, because he picked a couple (Frank and Mary) to focus on and managed to bring those to life somewhat, while letting others just be functions in the story. But it's definitely still his weak point as a writer.

The book goes through a grim ride, in which there's a lot more loss, and it takes a huge amount of work and delay to get to meaningful global action. All of which seems sadly realistic to me. I think KSR's also right that in the end the levers will be social and financial system changes, not some amazing new technology. But his proposal for those changes feels weirdly credulous about Bitcoin, and thin on details about how it would actually achieve its social objectives - which would be fine for a straight work of fiction, but is jarring compared to how much deep research there clearly is in the climate system and technology parts of the story.

It eventually leads to a sort of optimistic conclusion, a somewhat believable scenario of humanity living within its means at last, and some aspects of that vision being genuinely appealing. But that end state has two glaring omissions which ultimately detracted a lot from the book for me.

One is that there's been a triumph of this "half Earth" movement about physically limiting human habitation to half of the land surface, to rewild the rest. But... everywhere habitable is someone's ancestral land. What happened to those people? Were they consulted, compensated, persuaded, or moved along yet again? And most of those ecosystems' stable pre-industrial states were ones of dynamic equilibrium actively maintained by humans - simply withdrawing wouldn't do what this book seems to assume it will.

The other is that there's this lovely vision of long haul travel being done by boat and airship, which in turn is practical because people get to work on their laptops. Which would be great for me! But what's a plumber supposed to do? I can only be so happy about a future in which migrants' ability to see our families is contingent on us having remote work compatible jobs. And the way that's not discussed left me feeling like KSR had only really thought about this future for himself.

Tania reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Good ideas, poorly executed

3 stars

After a strong start in the first few chapters I was struggling to get through the rest. The writing was plain and disjointed, the plot and characters thin, and it often read more like journalism, some climate change manifesto or a physics lecture, rather than fiction.

Matt Lehrer reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Very good premise, lacking substance

3 stars

I wanted more action, less blockchain.

Library Liberty Zed reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Basically no plot, but a panoply of ideas

3 stars

Actually, the book has no real plot. On the basis of two persons, the book presents psychological trauma caused by climate change and how a high bureaucrat tries to convince other executives to act. Interspersed are short essays. Admittedly, I skipped about a third of the book due to repetition. I would have liked more plot. In the end, there is hope that somehow it will work out, but many sacrifices must be made along the way. What is problematic about the book is that while societies or masses are subjects, they are somehow very manipulated, reactive, history is written by the elite, which takes away a lot agency.

Paul reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Strong ideas, weak execution

3 stars

There are a lot of ideas in this novel that do bear thinking about but the narrative, heavily reliant on a series of vignettes from the future, feels disjointed to the point that it keeps stumbling over itself. I do like the eventual optimism of the novel, but did find it a bit too reliant on hand-waving and buzzwords for me to really buy into it.

As a novel, The Ministry for the Future felt a lot like an exercise in wasted potential.

Robert Fromont reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Somehow both harrowingly realistic and implausibly optimistic

4 stars

The Ministry for the Future follows the history of the eponymous ministry created by the UN in 2025 to represent the interests of future people when addressing #ClimateChange; given that the solutions to climate change will take effect over hundreds of years, so don't immediately benefit the current generations, the ministry would speak for future generations in order to ensure long-term thinking is applied.

The novel has three main characters: Frank, who we meet in the first traumatising chapter, is an American relief worker, and the only survivor of an Indian town struck by a devastating heatwave that wipes out millions. Frank suffers the rest of his ruined life with acute PTSD, which drives him ever more desperately find ways to avoid such a catastrophe from repeating. Early in the novel, it spurs him to actions that introducing us to the second main character:

Mary, an Irish lifetime diplomat, is …

The Ministry for the Future follows the history of the eponymous ministry created by the UN in 2025 to represent the interests of future people when addressing #ClimateChange; given that the solutions to climate change will take effect over hundreds of years, so don't immediately benefit the current generations, the ministry would speak for future generations in order to ensure long-term thinking is applied.

The novel has three main characters: Frank, who we meet in the first traumatising chapter, is an American relief worker, and the only survivor of an Indian town struck by a devastating heatwave that wipes out millions. Frank suffers the rest of his ruined life with acute PTSD, which drives him ever more desperately find ways to avoid such a catastrophe from repeating. Early in the novel, it spurs him to actions that introducing us to the second main character:

Mary, an Irish lifetime diplomat, is the Minister for the Future, a role that make her a target for activists from both sides of the climate struggle, and requires her to assemble and coordinate a team to establish legal standing for future generations, and promote solutions that protect them.

The novel interleaves short chapters between Frank and Mary and the third main character: The Situation Itself. This unusual character's chapters are either extremely short whom-am-I riddles that impart a set of disparate but germane concepts, or they are vignettes told from the perspective of unnamed witnesses to some aspect of climate change's effects or solutions.

Appreciating that the story is global, vast, and epic helps to understand that this apparently scattershot narration style is a cleverly devised mechanism (and maybe the only way) to ensure that the novel includes everything needed to grasp the problem and its solutions. Indeed, in parts it's so saturated that it reads like a draft of a #CliFi novel, with long lists and shorthand notes, that was rushed to print before some of the chapters were fleshed out, and maybe before some of the events played out in reality!

The novel is somehow both harrowingly realistic and implausibly optimistic, in that some of the manifold solutions involve changes that just seem impossible to achieve. But Robinson already understands my pessimism and dread:

"... the order of your time feels unjust and unsustainable and yet massively entrenched, but also falling apart before your eyes. The obvious contradictions in this list might yet still describe the feeling of your time quite accurately…"

On reflection, although it may be naive, it's also possible the exact formula we need in order to confront inexorable, nonfictional climate change that is definitely already arriving.

Peter Murray reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

A view of a future that could happen

5 stars

This isn’t a dystopian story, nor is it a utopian story. It is a reality-based guess of what could happen. In this possible reality, the world struggles to put a cost on the effect that climate damage will have on new generations. The world’s governments are forced to deal with citizen uprisings to address those costs. With a combination of capitalism (including…ugh…a blockchain currency) and climate activism, the levels of carbon in the atmosphere crest and decrease. But that is just the start of untangling the human population’s Gordian knot; it is not (yet?) the utopian future.

This was a 10%-per-day book for me: each day I’d read 10% plus the remainder of the chapter. The book is written in a dense style with a constantly shifting viewpoint, and it takes a while to digest the author’s meaning.

chadkoh reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Review of 'The Ministry for the Future' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

4.5. I have a lot more to say about this book but I need to digest. Needless to say, this just sucked me in. I loved the polyvocality.

Tenured Radical reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Review of 'Ministry for the Future' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Ambitious and well-informed, but politically and emotionally implausible in key respects. That, of course would hardly be a criticism in much speculative sci-fi (hell, it defines the genre!) but good world-building invites us to embrace certain implausible (or outright ridiculous) foundations, by drawing us into a compelling story or novel vision, hopefully both. Here, alas, the vision far exceeds the power of the underlying stories to draw the reader in, and so the limits of character development and political-institutional simplicities become increasingly grating. Still, things could be (marginally) worse: he could have written Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock instead! :/

Gerrit Niezen reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Too much blockchain and geoengineering

3 stars

I thought I would enjoy this book a lot more, and it ended up being a bit of a slog towards the end. A lot of the writing is very "stream of consciousness", and there's not much of a plot to speak of.

In terms of finding ideas for addressing climate change, there's too much focus on blockchain and geoengineering. Not really solarpunk.

Aneel reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Review of 'The Ministry for the Future' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Surprisingly dull. Everything happens off screen. Minus one star for blockchain fanboy attitudes.

ingrid@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

KSR trying to answer "how to write about/actually respond to climate change"

4 stars

So his answers for both, basically: maximalism. The point he's sort of making is that making the planet safely inhabitable is going to take every tactic and every ideology not necessarily working together but working on some piece of the thing. No one actor gets to be the hero (though I do enjoy that KSR's favorite kind of protagonist remains the middle-aged competent lady technocrat–guy's got a type) and while he's sort of indicating that capitalism as we know it has to die, he's not saying that happens through inevitable worker uprising. Some of it's coercion of central banks and some of it's straight-up guerrilla terrorism. Geoengineering happens at varying scales for better and for worse. Massive economic collapses occur. Millions die. And the point I think from KSR is that's the outcome in his most optimistic take. In general with KSR I don't know if I ever fully agree, …

So his answers for both, basically: maximalism. The point he's sort of making is that making the planet safely inhabitable is going to take every tactic and every ideology not necessarily working together but working on some piece of the thing. No one actor gets to be the hero (though I do enjoy that KSR's favorite kind of protagonist remains the middle-aged competent lady technocrat–guy's got a type) and while he's sort of indicating that capitalism as we know it has to die, he's not saying that happens through inevitable worker uprising. Some of it's coercion of central banks and some of it's straight-up guerrilla terrorism. Geoengineering happens at varying scales for better and for worse. Massive economic collapses occur. Millions die. And the point I think from KSR is that's the outcome in his most optimistic take. In general with KSR I don't know if I ever fully agree, but I always feel fully engaged.

This is also probably the most not-novel-y of his novels in that there's a couple of recurring characters running through the book but a ton of it's just first-person unnamed narration of events happening around the world. Someone describing a drought, a refugee describing a camp, a miner describing the nationalization of his mine. One very weird and fun chapter from the point of view of actual carbon.

reconbot

rated it

Jan. 5, 2023