Kim Stanley Robinson has gone into the future for us, and things are as we all, surely, anticipate. The world is burning and flooding and we are wiping species from the planet with aplomb. We have soiled the bed. Civilisation, basically, has fucked itself. This is not so much a catastrophe story (though it certainly begins that way), but a genuine and extraordinary exploration at what we might do afterwards to save what is left before the apocalypse.
I can see why Barack Obama called it his book of the year for 2020. Maybe if it had been published before he left office he might have kick-started a better response, instead of kicking the can up the road so future current numpties could blow it up. In Ministry for the Future the disaster of climate change somehow doesn’t (as we’re praying) miraculously come right by itself but escalates at an alarming rate. Who’d have thought? The UN sets up a ‘Ministry For the Future’, a body protecting the rights of future citizens from known harms committed by their ancestors. That’s us. The après moi le déluge generation. What a brilliant scenario.
Frank May is an American doctor working in India. (Just an aside for the climate deniers out there: this book was written in 2020. Three years later the horrific opening scenes begin to play out in reality in Ballia, India.) It’s a horribly realistic start to a story. Our man, Frank, has the advantage of American health and a couple of bottles of water. He makes it out, but leave his sanity behind with the bodies in the lake.
Mary Murphy is another narrator whose story connects with Frank’s. She is the head of the Ministry, based in Zurich and described in fond detail, and in charge of deciding which of the hare-brained, billion dollar, wicked and impossible schemes the world should adopt to give future citizens – if not the life they deserve – at least a life.
There are other narrators: Syrine, a displaced woman and her child; Badim, an aide to Mary and part-time terrorist; an female Indian farmer; some Islanders; bankers and engineers; arctic icemen; a photon and other non-human riddling type narrators commenting on the state of the world. It’s the whole interconnected globe chipping in. Prepare for a complicated and long book.
Mary and her Ministry come up with some crazy ideas. I love the scope of these. This is extreme Think Big. One suggestion is to pump meltwater from beneath glaciers so the ice can anchor to the rock and stop sliding in to the ocean. They will need to do this in several thousand locations. ‘The power for the pumping, also the heating of the pipeline to keep the water liquid in the pipes, was provided by a nuclear submarine reactor donated for the occasion by the Russian navy. If it turned out to be feasible, the billionaire had explained to people back in Russia, this operation might turn into one of the biggest industries in the world. And save St. Petersburg from drowning. The fact that this supposed industry would require the power of about ten thousand nuclear subs was apparently left out of the discussion. But okay, an experiment in method, sure. Why not.’
There are huge sections on financial rearrangement, quantitative easing, a whole new banking system based on carbon coin, fiat money all digital and in block-chains. I didn’t know what ‘fiat money’ was and skipped over pages of this. It gets pretty technical. But basically an entire realignment of how money is distributed and used. Very Robin Hood with environmental cred. I loved it.
Years ago my son, aged 12, wrote a school speech aimed at solved global warming by pumping sea water into deserts to create inland lakes, providing rain from evaporation and water trickling down to form aquifers that would rise up as fresh water hundreds of miles away. He won first prize for the speech and I’m pleased to know he’ll have a job in the future– this becomes a serious idea at the Ministry.
The Ministry has many meetings all over the world, which Mary either sails to or flies by dirigible. ‘Today we’re here to discuss potential alternatives to the global neoliberal order, which seems to be in such imminent danger of collapse. Are there any already existing alternatives we can look to?’ My God, there certainly are. And a million ways to enact them.
You’ll want to know the ending – does Kim Stanley Robinson have us all dying a horrible death through our self-made catastrophe? Are there glimmers of hope for the human race? Well, there’s a certain format for fiction, but you can believe what you will.
I have recommended this book to a lot of people, but carefully. It’s not for everyone. There is a solid story about Mary and the Ministry to carry you along while you drown in the overwhelming deluge of impossible ideas, but most of it does feel overwhelming, which must be the point. The attempt to overwhelm us into action. Obviously the first thing we need is a Ministry for the Future.
Cristina Sanders' blog 