The Ministry for the Future

Title: Review - "The Ministry of the Future"

Kim Stanley Robinson's, "The Ministry of the Future", is undeniably an ambitious novel. Esteemed for his brilliantly envisioned science fiction, Robinson seeks to offer a fresh lens to view climate change - and perhaps therein lies the book's greatest strength and its most glaring weakness.

The book takes us on a riveting journey that begins in 2025 with the establishment of an organization, ironically named the Ministry for the Future. Its mandate is simple yet profound; advocate for future beings and protect all life forms, present and forthcoming. A story recounting the trials of this new ministry, fraught with complications and challenges, unfurls into an engaging narrative that holds your attention from the start.

Robinson’s story shines in the careful crafting of climate change’s apparent reality. It's not a far-off apocalypse but a brewing storm just over the horizon that we might still have the chance to overcome. The story, experienced through fictional eye-witness accounts, adds an immersive depth, painting a desperate yet hopeful picture of our planet's climate-challenged potential future.

However, the strength of this narrative is somewhat dulled as the book progresses. Each problem this ‘Ministry’ faces is introduced, meticulously examined, and subsequently solved. This template reiteration raises stakes that are too swiftly quelled, leaving the latter part of the book struggling to fill the void. The urgency of a planet on the edge is lost, along with the pressing need for the reader to cling on to the narrative.

As the book meanders into its final quarter, searching for new problems to solve, the narrative unfortunately starts to feel stretched thin. The exhilarating tension and urgency that once drove the story gradually get diluted, turning pages feels more hard work than inspired curiosity.

In conclusion, "The Ministry of the Future" is testament to Robinson's unparalleled imagination. The novel is immediate, impactful, and original yet struggles with its pacing, particularly towards the end. Despite its occasional narrative stumbles, it undeniably stands as one of the most powerful and distinctive books on climate change.

What would a worldwide, lasting revolution look like? What would be the obstacles and what tactics would be needed to overcome them? How are we going to survive climate change? These are the themes Kim Stanley Robinson tackles in his 570-page cli-fi novel THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE.

The narrative is disjointed, with epistolary chapters placed throughout. If you roll with it, it works well. You get a well-researched, fairly well-rounded picture across class, power, and geography. The format makes for a clever way to introduce details that otherwise might not fit into a traditional narrative. I also appreciate the global perspective of this book. The U.S. is not at the center at all, and is critiqued heavily and fairly.

THE MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE envisions a world that includes the Half-Earth concept as one of its solutions to combat climate change. Half of the planet would be reserved exclusively for nature; the other half for humans, centered in sustainable cities. It sounds plausible in the novel, but I had this nagging, bad feeling about it. I kept thinking, you're never going to get 100% compliance on that, no matter how many incentives you offer. And we have a terrible history of forcing Indigenous peoples off their land. Nowhere in the book is that addressed and, so far, what I'm reading about Half-Earth doesn't assuage my concerns.

So, I'm feeling meh about this novel. When I was able to believe it, its hopefulness felt inspiring and relieved some of my fears. When cynicism (reality?) got the best of me, I had to set it aside for a bit, which is why it took me so long to finish it. Plus, I have major problems with a top-down approach that is just repackaged state power claiming to be a solution. (Obama loving this book should have been a red flag for me.) But this is science fiction. It doesn't have to actually solve anything. There were plenty of moments where the book imagines creative ways to forge ahead, and for that, I'm glad I read it, even if I'm probably not going to pick up another Kim Stanley Robinson book in the future.

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.