Thank you NetGalley for an e-arc of this book. This is definitely a unique science-fiction book on climate change and how it can impact our society. It goes through social, economical and environmental problems. It generally has some main characters and it follows them from time to time, but I feel like in general the book is about the humans and our society. There are short chapters with with interviews, news articles, government discussions and so on. In some ways it reads like a non-fiction, especially at the start of the book.

It is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. Find a friend and read it together, discuss every chapter and then find some non-fiction books on the subjects presented! Incredible!!

It's obvious that Kim Stanley Robinson is a very talented author with unique ideas but this really wasn't for me.

The opening chapters are horrifying and intriguing but once again felt we were being preached too which I am not a fan of in fiction...educated yes, always but heavy handed preaching just isn't my thing.

I can see why so many people enjoyed it and hate to be the odd one out but I really struggled throughout.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams regards climate change just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think the last year or so have been tough, but that's just peanuts to what happens when our planet gets warmer. We’ve all seen the news, the reports of what happens and yet we seem closer to the deadlines repeated kits a few decades ago. In Kim Stanley Robinson’s powerful and thoughtful The Ministry For The Future we get a story examining why change is so hard but also making the case this is the only way to win.

The story starts with a severe heatwave in India and places us initially with a young aid worker named Frank in the wrong place at the wrong time. The heat destroys power to the city and he and thousands of others congregate in a lake trying to keep cool a lake that ends up warmer than the human body. Frank is the only survivor. Across the giant country millions of others also die. The latest global climate summit while expressing sympathy ultimately does very little to change current plans and help other countries move off oil or prepare for the droughts and increases in water they know are coming but one unusual idea has been created possibly as a PR stunt a small unit formed to represent the generations of the world to come to give them a voice to say the plans we have are not enough and the press nickname this group The Ministry For The Future headed by Mary Murphy. She knows deep down change is needed and a strange encounter with Frank spurs her and her team to actually say it’s time to act. Will the rest of the world do the same?

This is not a great person of history novel this is more akin to a journalism long read. Robinson opts for a truly global story as if we are reading a new paper’s long read of what happened over a twenty year period in the future. Each short chapter explains the science or economics being discussed; gives us the boots on the ground view of farmers, miners, scientists refugees and even disaster survivors as the years go through. Across this then are the policies and actions the Ministry tries to get people on board for.

Robinson succeeds first in making the read undertand the scale of climate change - why 35 degree heat at the tropics is going to be deadly, destroy food chains and lead to more refugees. We get to realise exactly how much water one glacier contains and then realise what the Antarctic shelf melting actually would result in. It’s sobering and the approach used is powerful and as we rotate across the globe makes us realise this isn’t a small problem a few countries need to fix alone.

What makes this stand out though in climate science fiction is the way that Robinson then explores why no one is acting not just a few useless politicians but ultimately it’s the economy and specifically it’s focus on short term profit. The story examines the faulty human logic that the future will always be better even if we don’t do anything to make it that way and it challenges the idea the costs to stop it are too high when you realise the benefit is the trillion and trillions of dollars a livable planet for the future gives us in benefits.

Although this isn’t a short read I continually came back to find out how the world Robinson created changed. The tension is less action scenes and more discussions or people dealing with natural disasters. Robinson notes some will want more drastic action and in some scenes it could be seen the Ministry created it’s own black ops division to attack those willing to get in the way or send some pointed messages to industry and it’s users but for a lot of the book it’s the art of persuasion that ultimately there are no other viable actions.

Robinson gives us change on epic scales - the way global financial systems can be changed to encourage good behaviour. Moving to safer methods of power for vehicles; changing agricultural landscapes and attacking the dark lords of the internet barons and wealthy horsing far too much. We slowly see the changes tart to take hold and Robinson argues such change actually may help the whole world with a e continue model that was already on its last legs. A more co-operative based world is this novel’s war-cry. It’s a fascinating novel that always makes you think and look at our world itself differently.

The story is not a blueprint for change but it is very much saying the future isn’t yet sealed. We watch the Ministry change minds and this is very much you need hundred of ideas and thousands possibly millions working together to try and stop it - the ideas on technology, power, money and local democracy though are good at explaining what’s in the way of change and we don’t really have any other options anymore.

The story has a few weaknesses we see The Minstry characters more as people in offices and Robinson didn’t really make many of the characters come alive but the journalistic approach here works we get impressions of people but the focus is on wider world changes. In one chapter Robinson thinks we may finally see Hong Kong change for the better but it has clearly been written before the recent changes in 2020 making those paragraphs bittersweet to read. Despite those minor issues though it’s a compulsive read for me.

The Ministry for the Future will not give you flowing action and a found family saving the world. What it will do is give you the science fiction that talks of ideas. It is talking about the near future but it’s 2021 in its sights. These issues are all around and will happen without change. It does though strongly believe we can change our ways because humans are clever and can work together. It’s quietly angry, focused and hopeful all in one long read and something once you do read it will be thinking about it for a long time afterwards. Highly recommended!

I’ve been wanting to read this author for years and years, finally got one via an arc (though I do have one in my TBR pile), and..:..it’s just one long complex academic lecture on climate change with a barely there plot to make it a fiction book.

Not for me sorry!

My thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for the copy

The Ministry For The Future is being billed as Sci-Fi by many, and I suppose it is. It is set in the future, and the discussions are largely based on technology and ideas that do not yet exist (not that I am aware of anyway) but to me it didn’t feel like Sci Fi. I think the main reason for this is that it is set so close in the future. The book essentially opens in the 2020’s, which last time I checked was NOW, and although we do move through the years and eventually end up some time in the future, it still isn’t really that far away in comparison to most books of the genre (at least the recently written stuff, we aren’t talking about Huxley or Arthur C. Clarke now). So while it didn’t feel like Sci Fi, it is certainly still Speculative Fiction. All in all this book is about climate change, and what humans can do to reverse the damage that is being done to the planet. After reading this novel I can only hope that some of the ideas within come to pass, just not the ones that kill people.

There were large parts of this book that I LOVED but before I go any further I would like to state that I don’t think this book is going to be for everybody. There were some sections which I didn’t like, and that i found a bit boring. One or two of these were essentially lists, other parts were large sections of information that I found a bit overwhelming (Some people love that kind of thing but it isn’t for me). It has come to my attention that this is quite common in books by the author, so maybe I would have been aware of it if I had read him before. Luckily the sections I didn’t like are few and far between.

While the story is told primarily via two main characters (Mary and Frank) we also visit other characters and get their viewpoints of what is happening in the world at that time. Some of these characters literally get a few sentences, or pages, while others return here and there throughout the book. This is something I think people will love or hate as it does interrupt the flow a bit. Personally it was something I really liked about the book, and viewed these snippets as on the ground reactions to what was happening as a consequence of government decisions in the story.

Our main characters could not be more different. Mary is Irish, and former Minister for Foreign Affairs. She is made head of The Ministry For The Future and orgainisation set up with one goal – to get countries to commit to reducing carbon burn. This will in turn help with getting the planet back on the right course in terms of climate change. Also known as stopping global extinction. She is an excellent character, and obviously very strong. She is the one who brings the ideas to the table, but it is largely up to governments if these ideas will be accepted.

Our second main character is Frank who is introduced at the very start of the book in excellent fashion. I have to say the books opening is one of the best and most evocative that I have read. Frank somehow survives this opening section (one of the few who does) and is left with permanent survivor’s remorse, PTSD and a host of other problems. His journey through the book largely deals with how he hopes to deal with his personal problems as well as helping the efforts to change society.

Mary and Frank eventually become known to each other and for one reason or other Frank has quite an affect on Mary and her decision making.

While Frank and Mary develop and grow over time, as we all do, the real changes in this book come to humanity as a whole. The change in society over the course of the book is quite astounding and while many of the changes that come about are essentially forced onto people, it is for the greater good.

I found the ideas presented within fascinating, and it left me wondering just how scientifically viable they could be. Some of the ideas of how to reduce air travel, and get some of the more affluent members of society on board with these changes are a bit extreme, but still show an interesting example of the lengths people may be prepared to go to in order to save the planet and, by extension, humanity as a whole.

Overall I did really enjoy the book, it took me a while to read but that was due to the size of the hardback more than anything. I was reluctant to carry it around and was left to reading it at home when I would usually read during lunch breaks at work also.

While I enjoyed it I am not sure if I would recommend it to everybody. If you have an interest in climate change, and the future of humanity in the next few years then this one might be for you. It is certainly one for fans of Speculative Fiction, and maybe some Sci Fi fans too!

I unfortunately was unable to read and review this book as I didn't get the chance to read it before it was archived on Netgalley! I am however still intrigued by the concepts of the story, and if I read and review it in future will be sure to post here and/or on my Goodreads, etc!

A very up and down Sci Fi story. Lots of interesting information relating to climate change and carbon reduction, at other times the story was very mundane.

A brilliant, hopeful look at the future. I’ve enjoyed previous books by the author with similar themes of climate change, environmental impact, technological adaptation etc, but this was next level. Loved the way that the main narrative was interspersed with snatches of life from other perspectives and these brilliant, often dryly funny remarks. He’s a master of the genre!

The Ministry for the Future is an astonishing feat. A ‘history’ of climate change in the coming decades, from the perspective of the mid- to late-21st century. It’s an ultimately optimistic work, focusing not just on the potential disasters ahead but on how they might be averted or mitigated.

First, the bad news…
The novel follows the story of a Zurich-based international organisation set up in 2025, which would become known as the Ministry for the Future. Its purpose is to “advocate for the world’s future generations and to protect all living creatures, present and future.”

Kim Stanley Robinson is a formidable writer, known for his epic futuristic novels such as the Mars trilogy, about the colonization of Mars. Here, we’re on home ground but the scope is as immense: the fate of our planet. But while the work is formidable in scope, in execution it’s accessible and at times inspiring.

At some 700 pages, The Ministry for the Future is not a light novel in any sense of the word. It’s a novel of ideas, rather than character- or plot-driven. I never thought I’d find myself googling ‘quantitative easing’ and ‘structural adjustment programs’ in order to better understand a novel. The Ministry for the Future digs deep into climate science, economics and politics. However, while it demands some focus, it’s really not that hard to follow and it’s all held together by the narrative strand following two main characters. The first is Mary, the head of the Ministry. The second is Frank, an American aid worker who barely survived a heat wave in India that killed 20 million people.

Frank, suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, is a wannabe climate activist. He is disillusioned with mainstream organizations but cannot find a sufficiently ‘activist’ activist organization to take him in. He serves as an embodiment of the helplessness, trauma and guilt of most of humanity.

“Everyone alive knew that not enough was being done, and everyone kept doing too little. Repression of course followed, it was all too Freudian, but Freud’s model for the mind was the steam engine, meaning containment, pressure, and release. Repression thus built up internal pressure, then the return of the repressed was a release of that pressure. It could be vented or it could simply blow up the engine. […] and so they staggered on day to day, and the pressure kept building.” - The Ministry of the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

And so, eventually, activists start to “blow up the engine”. Shooting down planes, infecting cows with mad cow disease…

Meanwhile, Mary is also starting to feel helpless and hopeless. When the Ministry experts come up with a radical proposal, it’s Mary’s job to pitch it to the most influential people in the world, in a meeting of the US Federal Reserve and other central banks.

“Because money ruled the world, these people ruled the world. […] Non-democratic, answerable to no one. […] Mary thought of her group back in Zurich. It was composed of experts […] many of them scientists, all with extensive field experience […]. Here, she was looking at a banker, a banker, a banker, a banker, and a banker. One principle for bankers in perilous times was to avoid doing anything radical and untried. And so they were all going to go down.” - The Ministry of the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

Stuff just HAS to change!
Reading this novel is at times like watching a documentary. It’s informative, explaining some basic concepts such as why glaciers are melting so fast. But while based on today’s reality, of course it is fiction, predicting what might happen in the future. Ultimately, the proposed ideas are rather optimistic. People come together to develop more or less plausible technical and economic solutions to heal our world.

Having seen in recent years, and especially in 2020, how polarized people have become, how immovable in their ideology, at this point it’s hard to share the optimism. Time will tell.

I imagine that many people would hate this novel. After all, it’s hardly a ‘novel’ at all; rather a speculative (and very long) essay. But if you share some of the helplessness, trauma and guilt associated with our destruction of our climate, and want to deepen your understanding of what needs to be done, it’s a hell of a lot easier to read this than to dig into the actual science and economics yourself.

What does become clear is that there is no magic bullet, no single miraculous solution. And much of the world, as it is now, will break or will need to be broken before things get better. We may well be at a point where we need a complete rectification of our values, lifestyles and social structures.

Change comes from revolution, and revolutions are founded on hope. Hope — and imagination.

I’d like to imagine some bankers and other world leaders reading and being inspired by this book. Not to mention ordinary people like you and me. Protecting our home is a shared responsibility.

My thanks to the publisher, the author and Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.

Sorry but I'm not going to get to finish this book, life is too short to drink bad wine or struggle through a book that is just not gripping my attention. I love reading but every now and then (not often) i just have to put a book down and move on to something else. This unfortunately is going to be one of those times.. Its easy to say its not you its me and that could be the case with this book. I wont be giving a good review but wont give a bad one either, i just didn't get the desire to read more. Thank you for the opportunity to have a go.

Leer a Kim Stanley Robinson se está convirtiendo últimamente en un deporte de riesgo, por la necesidad de musculatura en perfecto estado para sostener sus voluminosos libros. The Ministry for the Future no es la excepción en esta tendencia, si no un paso más en la progresión.


No tenía muy claro que esperar de este libro, porque no parece que esa muy fácil escribir algo atractivo sobre funcionarios ministeriales, aunque ahí tenemos a Paco Roca y Guillermo Corral con su El Tesoro del Cisne Negro para dejarme por mentirosa. Creo que lo más importante sería aclarar que no se trata de una novela al uso, es más bien un ensayo novelado, como parece que le está gustan cada vez más escribir al autor. Resulta difícil pues valorar el libro ya que conjuga ambos géneros y no lo consigue hacer de forma homogénea. Como novela hace aguas por todas partes pero como ensayo es lúcido y clarificador aunque también inocente. Prefiero sinceramente quedarme con esa parte e ignorar un poco los idílicos paisajes suizos y los muchos comentarios sobre su forma de vida, al parecer inmejorable.

Estamos ante un libro sobre el cambio climático y sus consecuencias, el autor indaga en las causas que lo han provocado y posibles acciones para paliarlo e incluso hacerlo retroceder. En este sentido, es una lectura fascinante, ya que el principal culpable según Robinson es el capitalismo y sugiere usar las armas de las que los estados disponen para regular el mercado. Así mismo, resulta poco creíble cómo algunas de las soluciones se implantan sin apenas resistencia y dan resultados maravillosos. No me imagino a las grandes fortunas del mundo renunciando a sus ganancias y el hecho de que los terroristas ejerzan una labor de eliminación de malvados con precisión quirúrgica sin apenas consecuencias tampoco me entra en la cabeza, por poner algunos ejemplos.

Así que, salvando también este problema (se me van acumulando, KSR), ¿qué queda del libro que hace que merezca la pena? Las ideas y las explicaciones. Si decidimos leer The Ministry for the Future como no ficción, como un ensayo de futuro cercano, nos encontraremos con una obra que facilita la divulgación de conceptos que quizá no tengamos del todo claros y que aboga por reducir la huella de carbono individual y colectivamente. En este sentido, no puedo recomendar el libro como la novela que pretende ser y tampoco conozco los ensayos al respecto como para hacer una comparativa, pero al menos a mí me ha dejado mucho material para reflexionar, que quizá sea lo mejor que me pueda llevar de esta lectura.

Surprisingly grim. I found the concept and themes fascinating, but at times the book felt a bit too much like a science lecture. Nothing wrong with that, but I expected something else.

I initially struggled with this near future, cli-fi novel – I’m all too aware of what we’re not doing and where it’s likely to lead. So at times, the first quarter of this hefty tome made for harrowing reading – especially the terrible heatwave in India. Fortunately, Stanley Robinson isn’t interested in depicting apocalyptic outcomes – he’s far more interested in exploring ways Humanity can find ways out of the crisis we’ve boxed ourselves into. And this book, discussing our broken global fiscal system and uncontrolled capitalism, brings into being a Ministry For the Future, headed up by a gutsy lady, Mary Murphy.

She is the main protagonist in this sprawling, multi-viewpoint book that jumps across the globe, looking at a wide variety of possible fixes to sequester carbon, get our global temperatures headed back downwards, repair our eco-systems and rewild swathes of the world. While it doesn’t tip into a horrorfest of a destroyed civilisation, neither is it some wafty, unrealistic take on human nature – the bankers running the world’s finances are all but frog-marched into doing the right thing, for instance.

And if you’re wondering how the above turns into a tight, pacey story the keeps the pages turning – it doesn’t. Stanley Robinson doesn’t subscribe to providing the usual ingredients – while I quite like Mary, she isn’t innately appealing – too driven, self possessed, and frequently angry. But there’s no real overarching narrative, as the story keeps jumping from one scenario to the other and a few sections are just pure self indulgence – nope, I don’t want to read a first-person narrative from anything at a cellular level…

So why didn’t I hurl this one across the room for such nonsense? Partly, because the man can write. The prose is always punchy and readable. But mostly because the ideas he posits for possible fixes just keep coming… and coming… and coming. I’m fervently hoping that right now, there are committees not dissimilar to The Ministry For the Future – with futurists providing all sorts of ideas, scientific, sociological and societal to get us out of the looming climactic and environmental catastrophe we’re heading for. And that Kim Stanley Robinson is a member of at least one of them. Because if we are to get through the rest of this century as a species, we certainly need the kind of encompassing raft of changes Stanley Robinson advocates in this ambitious, thought provoking book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in looking at how to get the world out of the mess we’re in…
8/10

This might be about great big ideas, but without a decent narrative or memorable, well-developed characters I simply don‘t care. If I want to read essays about possible solutions for climate change, I do that. And if I want to dive into blockchain or speculate about economics and virtual currencies, I talk to my colleagues at work. Throwing in the odd chapter with minuscule plot and barely there characters doesn‘t make this a readable novel for me.

Mary and Frank were not bad and I liked the Antarctic setting, there just wasn‘t enough of all that. Hence, boredom. I started skimming a third into the book and finally DNFd at 56%. Not for me.

I received this free e-copy from the publisher/author via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

An extraordinary novel with dizzying scope! In a sense, it is light on plot and character, yet in another way it is packed full of it. One moment a committee meeting will be in focus, next Robinson has jumped through a microscope to tell the story of a carbon atom over the course of billions of years, then onto nations acting and reacting to one another on a macro level.

The novel asks the question of what it would take to make an about turn and save the planet from the effects of carbon burn. The time is in the near future and the planet is suffering. My understanding is that this marks a return to similar ground to Robinson's previous novels.

The book comes across as incredibly well-researched and though technical at many points, rarely gets bogged down. I can't claim to have understood every idea, but I remain astounded at the many angles that Robinson comes at the topic while maintaining a strong line of story throughout. He covers politics, psychology, economics, law, geoengineering and all sorts with great deftness.

There is a massive and pertinent question which Robinson asks of the reader: What part are you willing to play in saving the world for future generations? He presents the vision of a global community which brings itself together, creates a new sense of international citizenship and does what needs to be done.

There are two things I should make clear about The Ministry for the Future. First, it is a beautiful book, filled with hope and tragedy, and I loved it.

Secondly, I think some readers will hate it.

I'll try to explain why.

The Ministry for the Future is a sort of biography of the Earth over the next fifty years or so. Beginning with a cataclysmic heatwave in India in the 2020s - an event in which millions die - it considers how humanity as a whole might tame its carbon habit. The means chosen in the first place is the creation of an organisation to speak up for the interests of future generations, of animals and plants. Of course, once established, this organisation runs a risk of being a sop to the planet. It has to be better than that. It must influence, advocate, persuade, even twist arms. The Ministry faces the same problems as exist at the present - vested interests, the superrich, cognitive biases, apathy, fear of change and much of the book is focussed on diagnosing and addressing these.

Based in Zurich, this organisation attracts a talented group of lawyers, scientists, engineers, development workers and others who set about tackling the problem. The Ministry is personified in its head, Mary Murphy, a former Irish Minister for Foreign affairs. Murphy, though one of the most developed characters in the book, is only seen in glimpses - persuading at gatherings of central bankers or world leaders, living her (rather pleasant) life in Zurich, occasionally in meetings at the Ministry or elsewhere. In the final few chapters she does I think approach being a rounded character but for much of the book she's essentially a device to convey a viewpoint, a determination to see the work through, whatever it takes. (Early on, Murphy calls for a "black ops" wing of her organisation to apply pressure in deniable, if not frankly illegal, ways. We see some actions which possibly arise from that - though with this book it's always hard to tell, and there are many actors own this stage).

The other character we spend most time with is Frank May, a development worker caught up in that early heat wave and whose life is shattered afterwards. He becomes a drifter, living rough around Zurich and crossing paths with Murphy. Eventually they becomes friends, of a sort: perhaps he is her conscience. Frank is, though, for the most part rather one dimensional, essentially an embodiment of trauma and perhaps guilt.

There are others who we meet briefly, and sometimes return to. Most are there simply to narrate particular events or illustrate the scale of what's going on. So, there are geological engineers trying to prevent the glaciers from sloughing into the ocean. There are refugees narrating their journeys and eventual stalling in camps. There are privileged movers and shakers, for example at Davos. Protesters on the streets of Paris. And many, many more. Often these people are anonymous. More rarely we get names, and the story revisits some a number of times. Very occasionally they cross paths, and we'll suddenly realise who someone is, seen from a different perspective. I felt most of these characters were good representations of points of view or of happenings, but often little more. In some places, there are attempts, I think, to humanise them - for example by giving one person a tragic accidental death - but the sheer scale of the book and the number of voices involves militates against this, and given the scale of tragedy in the opening section, it's also curiously hard to care about such isolated events. In a different vein, there are even a few short chapters narrated by abstractions such the market, history, a photon, a carbon atom, or the Sun.

Many sections of the book, though, while they may be loosely presented as analysis or reports by characters, are really articles or essays. The word "we" does a lot of hard work, introducing factual sections of the book as the experiences and offerings of particular populations or groups. There is an entire chapter, towards the end, which is a list, introducing the contributions and projects of a host of nations, alphabetically, to the problems of climate change and societal transformation. Hopeful and inspiring though it may be that these initiatives and approaches exist (and I believe they are all real) I would defy even the most completist of readers to actually, you know, read that chapter word for word.

Which has brought me to the reason some readers will, I think, not get on at all with The Ministry for the Future. It is very much its own type of novel: the author has thrown overboard most expressions of plot, character development or insight and indeed, largely of writing conventional fiction here. It is, in that respect, worlds away from New York 2140 which was similarly focussed on climate change but, recognisably, also a novel driven by its characters' lives and choices.

For my part, I greatly enjoyed this book. I liked the way that Kim Stanley Robinson draws out an argument that addressing climate change will require not simply the spending of money or the passing of laws, but a complete reordering of society and its values ('What's good for the land is good for us'). At one level that makes it all seem even more daunting: at another it's a radical vision that feels achievable, paradoxically, not in spite of, but because of, the size of the task.

I also enjoyed Mary Murphy's evolving quest, throughout this book, for the strongholds of power - pursuing the leaders, the legislators, the bankers, the economists (dismissed pretty scathingly) who all seem to shuffle off responsibility to others, combining handwriting with adroit passing on of the problem. To a degree, Murphy's approach correspondingly evolves into a kind of administrative ju-jitsu, using the system's flaws themselves for leverage on the problem. Is that feasible in reality? I don't know, any more than I know whether the idea of pumping out the water from the base of a glacier, to prevent it lubricating the ice and to slow down the rate of flow, is feasible. Thy book seems to have some good ideas which sound plausible, but I'm not a banker, I'm not an engineer, I don't know.

All this may make The Ministry for the Future sound very dry, and indeed it is overwhelmingly factual, until the last 50 pages or so. But that's not so say there isn't excitement, even drama and danger here. A section towards the middle where Murphy is forced to trek through the alps at night (she's no climber) is a tense and beautifully described mini adventure. There are human-scale tragedies here alongside the planetary ones, even if they play a rather minor role in the book.

Above all I think this book does convey a sense of hope - something we certainly need right now. Remember, revolutions are built on hope - and if there's one thing this book does assume and, I think, go a fair way to establishing, it's the radical, the revolutionary, changes that are needed in the coming decades to avert catastrophe. So let's hang on to our hope!

I really wanted to like this book. I’m a lover of dystopian novels, but I don’t tend to read Sci-Fi so thought this could be a good book to read.

This book is about the climate crisis. The novel starts in 2025 with a heat wave which kills 20million people. There is a newly formed agency called Ministry of the Future which has been established to ensure the health and safety of following generations.

However, apart from this, I have no idea what happened. The book is brutal - reading the many, many pages of the description of the heatwave is awful. Don’t get me wrong, it’s well written, but it is a horrific thing. I don’t know if I’m fatigued by bad news (after all, we’re surrounded by it at the moment) and so I may come back later to try this again because the book has a majority high rating. However, having laboured through the first 15%, I have just had to give up and start something new, something a bit less depressing.

Where hard Sci-Fi meets human psychology.
I love Kim SR's grim and chillingly accurate take on global warming.
Like in previous books, the author tackles the inconvenient truth of climate change head on.
No sugar coating.
A lot of research has gone i to this book, and it makes the scenarios very realistic.
Not a book for the faint-hearted, but something everybody should read.

It's the first book I read by this author and I loved her style of writing, how well researched is and the world building.
Unfortunately I'm not in the mood for appreciating the bleak atmosphere and the story fell flat.
I will try to read it again when I'm feeling more optimistic.
At the moment it's not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The inimitable Kim Stanley Robinson returns with The Ministry For the Future, a damning indictment and terrifyingly prescient exploration of the chaos wrought by climate change, both now and in the near future if we continue as a collective to live in ignorance. With increasing urgency, KSR depicts a startling but ultimately hopeful outlook of our next three decades on earth using his skill for acute observation whilst exploring in a gripping and engrossing manner the issues of climate change, technology, politics, and the human behaviours that drive these forces. He has built such a richly-imagined and intricately thought-out world that you cannot fail but to be immersed in it and to marvel as its creation.

People complain that it's a political thesis wrapped inside a fictional novel, but instead of feeling indifferent or even angry towards this (as some seemingly have been), I admire someone with a large following and platform using it to share their fears, ideas and eventually their hopes regarding the survival of the human race as a species, our planet and its ecological system. This is a much more optimistic read compared to some of his past post-apocalyptic stories and with less catastrophising. The timely, powerful and relevant moral message I came away with was that our future is still a sustainable one if as a species we put in enough work to turn this around instead of merely turning our backs. A vitally important must-read for those who are invested and interested in not only our survival but in us thriving, too. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Orbit for an ARC.