Het ministerie voor de toekomst

Started out pretty good and then became a 30,000-foot view of what-ifs and could-happens. Definitely not the "climate thriller" some have described it as.

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.

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.

The Ministry for the Future is a decent book exploring a relatively optimistic future where we as a species are able to adapt to climate change without significantly disrupting modern civilisation. It explores a scenario where the UN, in symbiosis with increasingly militant eco-terrorist, is able to enact policy that significantly curtails both state and capital in such a way that it can ensure a relatively smooth transition to a sustainable post-capitalist future.
As for the story, parts are well written and most of the characters are at least somewhat engaging. At the same time, it is clear that the characters are mere devices for the utopian speculations and subordinated to the “idea” of the book. The book thus remains trapped within its genre as a “novel of ideas” where more general literary qualities are secondary to the “point”: that an ecological non-capitalist modernity is possible.
While the lacklustre literary qualities lower my overall impressions with the book they could be forgiven if the point was more convincing. My main critique of the book is that it is both too utopian and to trapped within what I, with Mark Fishers overused term, would call “capitalist realism”. It’s limits as a utopia is that institutes such as the state and the value-form remain post capitalism, it is unable to portray a future where such heteronomous institutions can be completely overcome. Furthermore, it is utopian in the sense that anthropogenic climate change can be overcome smoothy through largely technocratic means, while at the same time catering to some form of increased democratisation.
While this review has been largely negative, I would still argue that the book is well worth the read. In my case not as inspiration, rather the opposite, as an exploration of the limits of modern civilisation and how it despite the authors intent still appears as a world that still limits human autonomy and a complete sublation, the magical word aufhebung comes to my mind, of the nature-culture divide.

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.

This is the story of how to intentionally expand the fissures in capitalism's skin so it bleeds out and eventually dies. It's not utopian. It's about as violent as I imagine it will need to be. Its concerns are a whole planet affair and not centered on the west. It definitely doesn't skimp on the economics. The solutions are thrilling to entertain and on the whole it's a pretty hopeful story. It doesn't lean in only one direction either-containing everything from collective living, science, banking, industry, activism, violence, murder, and blimps (errr, sorry, I mean airships).

To me this felt a bit like a left-wing Ayn Rand book: it purports to take place in the real world, but people and the world in the book work just differently enough that it's practically impossible to gain insights about it about the real world - supposedly one of the book's goals.

Oh, and the author verbed "blockchain". Ugh.

Loved it. It is desperate and bleak at first, but it offers some hope. Sometimes it is vague, yes, and perhaps a bit overly optimistic, but I enjoyed a reasonable vision of a livable (maybe even desirable) future adapting and minimising the worst effects of climate change. A world where humanity finds a balance and respect for our biosphere.
I do wish it featured indigenous voices and characters more than it does, but otherwise, it does raise some interesting ideas and possible paths for our immediate future.

The first 1/3 landed really well, but it started falling apart quickly after that. First KSR I've read, and I had "hard scifi" expectations for characterization, but there was still some corny stuff.

But despite the awkward anonymous first person chapters and uncomfortable Switzerland fetishization I think it succeeds at its primary goal: envisioning a collaborative utopian approach to realistic climate change impacts.

Fascinating idea, and plot. 10/10 in the first half. Loved the way the author unfolds the first decades. Also loved some of the very technical but also very well explained solutions proposed. Disappointed but not disagreeing that we will need increasingly negative incentives alongside leadership and economic invectives to tackle climate change. My interest in the book dropped significantly towards the end, but if you think about it it's an extremely hard book, plot and story to wrap up.