576 pages
English language
Published April 27, 2020
The Ministry for the Future is a cli-fi novel by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson published in 2020. Set in the near future, the novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's. While they pursue various ambitious projects, the effects of climate change are determined to be the most consequential. The plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the head of the titular Ministry for the Future, and Frank May, an American aid worker traumatized by experiencing a deadly heat wave in India. Many chapters are devoted to other (mostly anonymous) characters' accounts of future events, as well as their ideas about ecology, economics, and other subjects. With its emphasis on scientific accuracy and non-fiction descriptions of history and social science, the novel is classified …
The Ministry for the Future is a cli-fi novel by American science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson published in 2020. Set in the near future, the novel follows a subsidiary body, established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to advocate for the world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's. While they pursue various ambitious projects, the effects of climate change are determined to be the most consequential. The plot primarily follows Mary Murphy, the head of the titular Ministry for the Future, and Frank May, an American aid worker traumatized by experiencing a deadly heat wave in India. Many chapters are devoted to other (mostly anonymous) characters' accounts of future events, as well as their ideas about ecology, economics, and other subjects. With its emphasis on scientific accuracy and non-fiction descriptions of history and social science, the novel is classified as hard science fiction. It is also a part of the growing body of climate fiction. Robinson had previously written other climate fiction novels, such as 2312 and New York 2140. The Ministry for the Future also includes elements of utopian fiction, as it portrays society addressing a problem, and elements of horror fiction, as climate change threatens characters.
Nothing would play out like in this story. Robinson describes the best world imaginable. We are fucked.
(If you want to read a better take on our extinction read "Venomous Lumpsucker", it is funnier, because it is truer)
Das Buch fängt aufrüttelnd an, verliert sich dann aber schnell zwischen Versatzstücken einer Welt in der Klimakatastrophe und einem Reiseführer für Zürich.
Viele Aspekte und Sichtweisen werden kurz aufgegriffen, dann aber einfach wieder fallengelassen. Stattdessen liegt der Fokus auf der endlosen Beschreibung eines Projektes in der Antarktis, unfruchtbaren Besprechungen mit Notenbanken und Beschreibungen der Schweiz.
Inhaltlich hätten es vermutlich auch 250 Seiten oder eine Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten aus einer Welt am Abgrund getan.
Von Barack Obama empfohlen!Indien, 2025. Das Land wird von einer gnadenlosen Hitzewelle heimgesucht, die Temperaturen erreichen mancherorts über 50 Grad. Hunderttausende Menschen sterben, manchmal werden ganze Stadtviertel ausgelöscht. Erschreckend nahe an der Wirklichkeit mit einem gnadenlos realistischen Ausblick auf unsere Zukunft.
This one was hard to score. I have ended up at 4 stars with caveats.
Stan uses the bones of his earlier works (in particular The Mars Trilogy) to speculate how we might get out of the coming climate apocalypse as a species. This is definitely important speculation and I like how he weaves a pile of different things together (finance reform, ubi, collectives, job guarantees, eco-engineering etc) to get there.
However, I found this a difficult read. It starts off strong with a single PoV of someone suffering through a mass death in a heatwave. Then it just loses the thread of human interest. The characterisation is presented in a very flat affect. It's difficult to relate to the characters because of this. As the book goes on the characters just take a back seat to laying out the events.
Further, he has a thing where he is dropping …
This one was hard to score. I have ended up at 4 stars with caveats.
Stan uses the bones of his earlier works (in particular The Mars Trilogy) to speculate how we might get out of the coming climate apocalypse as a species. This is definitely important speculation and I like how he weaves a pile of different things together (finance reform, ubi, collectives, job guarantees, eco-engineering etc) to get there.
However, I found this a difficult read. It starts off strong with a single PoV of someone suffering through a mass death in a heatwave. Then it just loses the thread of human interest. The characterisation is presented in a very flat affect. It's difficult to relate to the characters because of this. As the book goes on the characters just take a back seat to laying out the events.
Further, he has a thing where he is dropping little vignettes in. Some of these are for the purposes of explaining something but some just left me scratching my head. After about halfway I was prone to skimming these.
In summary a recommended strong ideas and speculation book but may be a difficult read due to being light on the character development progress side.
