Why did I love this book?
The Ministry for the Future is a fictional story with very real lessons for those fighting for a stable climate.
It begins with a terrifying scene from an extreme heatwave and ends with humanity more or less solving the climate crisis. How? We watch a range of characters explore a range of strategies over decades.
Some work to restructure macroeconomic policy, others geoengineer glaciers, still others gently shift consumer behavior. In the end no one person can take full credit, but millions can point to their contributions.
Storytelling is its own form of strategy., Characters sow actions and reap results; narrative chains events together over time. Ultimately, Ministry reminds us of our agency to step up to the greatest challenge facing humanity.
25 authors picked The Ministry for the Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…