Today Marshmallow is writing about The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, a climate future novel originally published in 2020.
Marshmallow’s Quick Take: If you care about the environment and enjoy science fiction, then this is the book for you!
Marshmallow’s Summary (with Spoilers): The book starts in 2025 (five years after the book publication date) with a horrific heat wave in India. Frank May, an American volunteer helping support the locals in rural towns, witnesses one of the worst atrocities of the century and barely survives the fatal conditions. Afterwards, he is left permanently haunted with the memories of burning bodies in a boiling lake.
The great Indian heat wave is just the first of many natural disasters to come. To protect the world from the dangers of climate change, a new UN body is chartered to help fulfill the Paris Agreement: the newly dubbed Ministry for the Future. It serves to represent the peoples of tomorrow and all the unborn generations that will have to contend with the repercussions of climate change today and onwards.
Unfortunately, they were too late to save India from the heat wave. So India takes matters into its own hands. Spraying sulfur dioxide into the skies, India mimics the aftermath of a volcanic eruption to block the sun’s rays from reaching its people again. This helps lower temperatures by a bit but not enough. The truth is undeniable. Time is running out.
Mary Murphy is the head of the Ministry for the Future and is thus tasked with the impossible task of fixing climate change. Together with her international team of scientists, economists, lawyers, and advisors, she must develop strategies to combat and prevent the worst effects of global warming – both latent and potent. They start with the glaciers and the Arctic. Dyeing the sea water yellow, scientists speculate that the heat from the sun will be reflected back into space and decrease the rate of warming. Soon, the entire Arctic sea is a repulsive yellow; yet, it works and more time is bought for the world. Researchers struggle to get funding for a glacier-saving project and eventually figure out that they can slow the rate of disappearance by sucking out the meltwater from underneath the ice.
There are so many intricate details and fascinating theories presented in this book that force you to reckon with the sheer scale of our climate situation. Throughout the book, Mary and Frank take action into their own hands in different ways in different places. Woven throughout the book are the narratives of other characters that weave into a larger epic. In The Ministry for the Future, you will learn just how terrified you should be of what is to come so you understand how critical it is for us to start acting now.
Marshmallow’s Review: I think Vox Magazine’s Ezra Klein summed up this book best, “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… Robinson is one of the greatest living science fiction writers.” I wholeheartedly agree. While I cannot attest to the scientific soundness of his proposed methodologies, I believe he offers us a wider view of the creativity we will need in order to survive this climate catastrophe as a species and as a planet.
You start this book and are immediately shell-shocked by how terrifying things are likely to get. The first couple of chapters leave their mark and I do not think younger bunnies would be able to get through them. (Caramel was curious but the first chapter stopped him in his tracks.) As such, I think this is an excellent book, but probably only for bunnies older than 14.
In the rest of the book, you see the realistic struggle of policymakers and researchers working to fix the environmental damage humans have caused. It was very frustrating to see up close how slow action is being taken. However, it is also very disturbing that Robinson seems to believe that change will only truly come if there is rampant ecoterrorism! More realistically, he proposes that there is no silver bullet; we will need an entire spray of arsenals aimed at the plethora of problems before us.
The Ministry for the Future does a fantastic job of showing us just what situation we have gotten ourselves into and the possible ways out. That said, this is not a book that is very easy to read. There are one hundred and six chapters and the whole book is around 563 pages. This is not necessarily a problem until you realize that his writing style is something you need to adjust to. Once in the rhythm of reading it, his prose is very enjoyable and envelops your entire focus, giving your senses exactly what is necessary to paint the perfect picture in your mind. He has little excerpts of poetry-like paragraphs describing the perspective of things like sun rays, carbon, caribou, history – inanimate things or creatures we normally do not consider the emotions or thoughts of. I found this fascinating. He also writes certain chapters like they are the minutes from a meeting or inserts random experiences from unnamed characters whose stories tie into something mentioned before or after the chapter. I adjusted to his style and deeply enjoyed it but that does not mean it was easy. On the contrary, this might have been the hardest book I’ve ever read. It is long and the style can be a bit arduous at times. Not to mention, the vocabulary is advanced, to say the least, and references to obscure economic and historical terms are ever-present. Expect to reach for your phone or a nearby dictionary every few paragraphs.
I really do think The Ministry for the Future is excellent. But I would have really liked to see him write another version that is more accessible. Perhaps one day he will consider writing an easier-to-read version of the book that younger children and teens could comprehend quicker. So many wonderful and inspiring ideas and concepts and stories are told here that could help encourage the change we need. But, because of the caliber of literary prose here, it is almost completely inaccessible to anyone who isn’t a dedicated reader or already an environmentalist. I love the environment and reading, and even I almost couldn’t make it to the end. This is coming from someone who has regularly read books over 500 pages and found this to be a very enlightening book.
I think the quality and message and ideals portrayed in it make The Ministry for the Future a book that everyone should read. I just hope he makes a more accessible version so that everyone can truly absorb his ideas and embrace his message. Right now, I worry that those invaluable stories are kept hidden within the pages of this book.
Marshmallow’s Rating: 99%.
