Ministry for the Future
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) 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, postapocalyptic 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 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
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Community Reviews
Uneven. Much of the plot is great and spellbinding. However, it often falls into liberal dreaming in a way that irritated even this liberal dreamer.
Since I live in Switzerland, many of the story's references felt familiar to me. It actually inspired me to look up a couple of destinations for future day trips. That part of the story felt local.
But most of the tale felt as though I were hearing it from some distance away - missed connections and snatches of events that felt incomplete, or that I didn't know how they fit into the story. Breathtaking near escapes that just dissipated. Threats that never materialized, or ended up happening in some twice-removed, after-the-fact fashion.
Despite the locality of the events, San Francisco and Switzerland, I feel the story always kept me socially distanced - not a tale for our times.
But most of the tale felt as though I were hearing it from some distance away - missed connections and snatches of events that felt incomplete, or that I didn't know how they fit into the story. Breathtaking near escapes that just dissipated. Threats that never materialized, or ended up happening in some twice-removed, after-the-fact fashion.
Despite the locality of the events, San Francisco and Switzerland, I feel the story always kept me socially distanced - not a tale for our times.
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