Tag: Environmentalism

Ministry for the Future

Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson

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.

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Revenge and Rabbit Holes

Revenge and Rabbit Holes by Mandy Hager

I reviewed Mandy Hager’s Strays & Waifs as part of the great Kapiti fiction theme – there are so many good reads coming from that stretch of coast. Something in the wind, perhaps. Strays was the first gutsy read in the series ‘Chasing Ghost Mysteries’, now followed by book two, Revenge and Rabbit Holes, which again, is a mix of thriller, mystery/crime plus ghost story, with a healthy dollop of Mandy Hager’s signature ‘fight for what’s right’ theme. I like a book that’s high on entertainment but still manages to have decency anchored in its body.

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Birnam Wood – book review

Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton

Well, I didn’t see that one coming. What an ending! Bloody hell, Eleanor Catton first lulls us with a nice gardening collective and then goes full-on James Bond.

So much has been written about Birnam Wood already and all of it is full of praise: dark and brilliant (the Guardian), an astounding analysis of human psychology (the Spinoff), an explosive climate-change thriller (FT), phenomenal and utterly gripping, electric, spectacular, a complex and absorbing web of human relationships (Various). And yes to all that.

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