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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