Het ministerie voor de toekomst

by Kim Stanley Robinson, Kim Stanley Robinson

Paperback

Dutch language

Published by Starfish.

ISBN:: 978-94-92734-23-5

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 …

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

10 editions

Libbum reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

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

3 stars

In principle I should have really enjoyed this, but it was just a good book, not a great one.

KSR has done exactly what he set out to do, and does not deviate from his usual 'apply the technology & investigate deep character driven reactions'. Here he asks the question that ultimately is _the_important one of our times: how exactly do we get ourselves out of this climate mess?

I really can't fault any of this. The characters are interesting, the fact that we get to hear from many of the usually sidelined voices is great, there's a bunch of technology, humanity prevails albeit with a lot of sacrifice. What's not to like in a well written KSR story that follows this standard template?

After a lot of thinking on that I seriously cannot say. 'Nothing is wrong with that' is really the correct answer, but I just don't find …

hunterowens reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

the world's least compelling theory of change

1 star

ok even as somebody who would be predisposed to liking this book (as a student of bureacracies, etc) this was a trash fire

no understanding of politics LMAO
several weird fake mystical chapters about geology
despite being 500 pages the fucking plot barely moves nad the both a murder and a romance are tacked on at the end. The murder, of course, is russian.
basically fucking red mars but for climate change, the heads of the worlds governments basically don't change from 2020-2050ish

also, goddamn blockchain is used as a solution for money laundering, lmao.

ok even as somebody who would be predisposed to liking this book (as a student of bureacracies, etc) this was a trash fire

no understanding of politics LMAO
several weird fake mystical chapters about geology
despite being 500 pages the fucking plot barely moves nad the both a murder and a romance are tacked on at the end. The murder, of course, is russian.
basically fucking red mars but for climate change, the heads of the worlds governments basically don't change from 2020-2050ish

also, goddamn blockchain is used as a solution for money laundering, lmao.

benwerd reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

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

5 stars

What a magnificent, epic, hopeful, joyful book. It starts with a catastrophe - an extrapolation of climate change and the very dark places it might lead us - but then takes us on an exploration of how we might deal with it. It’s an informed celebration of invention, resolve, and the human spirit. If I have a criticism, it’s that it sometimes is too utopian, but what a change that makes. This is hard economic science fiction, and yet, one of the most human books I’ve ever read.

AndySoc1al reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

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

5 stars

It's hard to believe that KSR has been making me think and entertaining me for 35 years now, but it is definitely true. From his California trilogy in the 1980s to the Mars trilogy in the 1990s, to his alternate history "The Years of Salt and Rice," Mr. Robinson has been able to transport readers to so many other worlds and times it's impressive that he can continue to surprise. The Ministry for the Future starts just a few years in the future, is rooted in centuries of human disregard for the environment, and shows a plausible - if difficult - path to a better future. And it's a great story besides. I want to live in his world.

anaulin reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

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

4 stars

My notes: anaulin.org/blog/book-notes-the-ministry-for-the-future/

loppear reviewed The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Numb optimism

3 stars

Suitably KSR, this is dry, procedural, deep, a montage of near future heroic and tragic efforts between a few human threads of lived-experience-if-not-plot. I was anticipating optimism, technological and human spirit, and that's all here but not as much as struggling with the absolute and relative violences and deaths of current delay on climate response, of terrorism and surveillance and refugee camps and wealth. And plenty of meetings. A lot of thinking about the scale of actions necessary, and great essays on where exactly we are stuck.

ingrid 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, …

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.

eve massacre reviewed Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

None

3 stars

Need to let it settle. It is an important book, no doubt, but in parts it's just rambling on and good writing is just as much about what you do not write as about what and how you write.