Paperback
Dutch language
Published by Starfish.
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
"One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is …
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
"One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination."―New York Review of Books
"If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late." ―Polygon (Best of the Year)
"Masterly." —New Yorker
"[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year." —Locus
"Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom." ―Bloomberg Green
Source: Publisher
This is speculative fiction rather than hard science fiction. The opening section is one of the most extraordinary I have ever read. It answers the question "what must be done" with both imagination and pragmatic strategies. Excellent!
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.
I really did love this book. The first is so incredibly well written and has left a mark on me that will likely still be felt for years to come. I thoroughly loved the level of detail that Robinson gave to explaining some of the key concepts in the book, although unfortunately there was a heavy emphasis on economics that seemed to really drag on. It became a lot of "here's the thing that needs to happen, here is someone saying it needs to happen, here is the thing happening, here is the thing being finished, and here is life afterwards". Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't as repetitive.
Overall though, it was wonderful to see a realistic look at the fight against climate change that still ended hopefully and optimistic. It shows the world as it one day could be, and inspires you to want to fight …
I really did love this book. The first is so incredibly well written and has left a mark on me that will likely still be felt for years to come. I thoroughly loved the level of detail that Robinson gave to explaining some of the key concepts in the book, although unfortunately there was a heavy emphasis on economics that seemed to really drag on. It became a lot of "here's the thing that needs to happen, here is someone saying it needs to happen, here is the thing happening, here is the thing being finished, and here is life afterwards". Which wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't as repetitive.
Overall though, it was wonderful to see a realistic look at the fight against climate change that still ended hopefully and optimistic. It shows the world as it one day could be, and inspires you to want to fight for it.
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.
Terrifyingly, largely nonfiction. After a very strong, almost shocking opening, it lacks a strong story arc that pulls you through the book, the kaleidoscopic storytelling feeling a bit artificial. But full of interesting, sometimes essential ideas and insights about climate breakdown, the wider socio-economic system and possible solutions. After only two years already somewhat dated, which makes it even more terrifying.
J’ai bien aimé.
Le changement climatique devient une évidence… alors qu’est-ce que le monde peut faire ?
Cela m’a semblé plutôt réaliste, avec la prise en compte qu’il ne faut pas que de la technologie mais des changements sociaux profonds pour s’en sortir.
Un livre peut-être trop optimiste, mais parfois cela fait du bien.
C’est une sorte de guide sur ce que nous pourrions faire pour nous en sortir.
Cet épisode longnow.org/seminars/02022/mar/02/climate-futures-beyond-02022/ du podcast "Long Now: Seminars About Long-term Thinking" avec Kim Stanley Robinson parle du livre.
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 …
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.
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.
Humanity's manifesto for tomorrow, a sober assessment of the threats we face in the coming century and what it will take for us to overcome them.
You can’t just say “blockchain” and expect it to magically solve things.
So I am rating this 4 stars because I totally got into it by the midpoint and had characters I was rooting for and was following the climate currency thing with fascination, etc. But I can also totally see the flip side, which is people complaining that this is a bunch of tediously and tenuously connected at best. I think it's all down to if you buy into his characters enough to find it enjoyable or not. And that's anyone's guess.
(I will say that regardless the ideas in it are fascinating!)
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! :/
Auf der einen Seite beschreibt das Buch die beginnende Klimakatastrophe und Möglichkeiten dagegen entwas zu tun ganz gut, auf der anderen Seite sind die Lösungsvorschläge, die in dem Roman präsentiert werden fast alle technokratisch und auf eine andere Art und Weise auch wieder nicht akzeptabel. Z.B. wird die Kryptowährung "Carbon Coin" weltweit eingeführt und ständig die Vorteile einer Währung mit totaler Transparenz in der Blockchain betont. Antikapitalistische Perspektiven kommen kaum vor, außer das Beispiel Mondragón. Wirkliche antikapitalistische und antistaatliche Alternativen, wie Rojava oder die Zapitistas fehlen. Schlimmer noch: An einer Stelle wird sogar ein kurdischer Nationalstaat ausgerufen, was zeigt, dass der Autor keine Ahnung von der kurdischen Freiheitsbewegung hat. Ebenfalls schade ist, dass die "Children of Kali", die "grüne Terrororganisation", immer nur am Rande vorkommt und nicht weiter ausgeführt wird. Da hätte ich mir mehr von erhofft.
This was at the same time grim, hopeful and somewhat depressing because it feels like a very optimistic scenario. The narration took me a while to get used to, and I missed characters that would feel less abstract.
But I absolutely loved the scenes in Zurich and in Switzerland - they felt absolutely spot on and it filled me with glee to see my experience of the city depicted that well :) I also loved the considerations around travelling too.
Choppy, clumsy, preachy. Narrated in multiple voices and styles, all of which felt discordant: sometimes third-person, sometimes first (including a few weird short chapters told from the POV of a photon or carbon atom, often in the form of riddles). Platonic dialogs; lectures on economics; utopian manifestos; historical-ish chronicles; all of them totally failing at exposition and context. Today—the day I finished the book—happens to be 11 September 2022, so an analogy seems apt: his chronicling feels as if someone in 2022 were to write “The world of 2001 was different. Everyone was going about their business, then one day three or four airplanes got hijacked and deliberately flown into civilian targets. That really shook people up.” Nobody writes that way: you don’t interject universally-known background. I know it’s hard to bring a reader up to speed, but this isn’t how you do it: as a reader, I want to …
Choppy, clumsy, preachy. Narrated in multiple voices and styles, all of which felt discordant: sometimes third-person, sometimes first (including a few weird short chapters told from the POV of a photon or carbon atom, often in the form of riddles). Platonic dialogs; lectures on economics; utopian manifestos; historical-ish chronicles; all of them totally failing at exposition and context. Today—the day I finished the book—happens to be 11 September 2022, so an analogy seems apt: his chronicling feels as if someone in 2022 were to write “The world of 2001 was different. Everyone was going about their business, then one day three or four airplanes got hijacked and deliberately flown into civilian targets. That really shook people up.” Nobody writes that way: you don’t interject universally-known background. I know it’s hard to bring a reader up to speed, but this isn’t how you do it: as a reader, I want to be treated as a participant in a journey, not speeched at like a visitor on a McFactory tour. Most of the book was like that, and it always jarred me out of the story.
I think the world of Robinson. In interviews he comes off as a remarkable human. I love what he tried to do here, love many of his ideas (technological, geoengineering, geopolitical, cultural, economic). I would love to imagine the world of 2040 as he describes it, with only tens of millions of climate deaths, with societies coming together and working toward minimizing the damage. Maybe this book will reach a few young people who will then make that happen? I can hope. But I also hedge my bets, and remain infinitely thankful that my children will never have to suffer through the coming years.
