The Ministry for the Future
Kim Stanley Robinson · 2020
A near-future novel about the institutions fighting climate change. Not a thriller; more like a documentary of the possible. Robinson invented a form for the climate crisis novel, and it became required reading in policy, economics, and literary circles simultaneously. The most important climate fiction ever written.
The case against
Robinson opens with the heat wave, twenty pages as harrowing as anything in climate fiction, then hands the book to meeting minutes, riddle chapters narrated by abstractions, and seminars on carbon coins. Mary and Frank carry maybe a third of the pages. As policy argument it is serious; as a novel it keeps forgetting to be one.
Best of Last 10 Years · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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