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3.5 

The Ministry for the Future

By Kim Stanley Robinson
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

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 books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis.

"One hopes that this book is read widely—that Robinson’s audience, already large, grows by an order of magnitude. Because the point of his books is to fire the imagination."―New York Review of Books

"If there’s any book that hit me hard this year, it was Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, a sweeping epic about climate change and humanity’s efforts to try and turn the tide before it’s too late." ―Polygon (Best of the Year)
 
"Masterly." —New Yorker

"[The Ministry for the Future] struck like a mallet hitting a gong, reverberating through the year ... it’s terrifying, unrelenting, but ultimately hopeful. Robinson is the SF writer of my lifetime, and this stands as some of his best work. It’s my book of the year." —Locus

"Science-fiction visionary Kim Stanley Robinson makes the case for quantitative easing our way out of planetary doom." ―Bloomberg Green

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636 Reviews

3.5
“Need to reread when I have time to give this book the attention it deserves.”
Slightly Smiling Face“Set in the not so distant future the United Nations establishes the Ministry for the Future, an organization who is tasked with the mission of "working on behalf of future generations." Their goal is to address climate change and takes place after the Paris climate agreements do not meet their targets. There are so many characters and storylines I found it confusing but the two main characters were worth paying attention to. Frank, an American aid worker who survives a horrific event in Indian where the temperature rises so high millions of people die and Mary Murphy the Irish diplomat who is in charge of the Ministry for the Future. This book is chock full of science far above my pay grade and more ideas and policies about innovative approaches to fighting climate change than I could possibly digest. But though some of it was way over my head and the policy side of the story made me want to fast forward, overall I have to say I did find it hopeful and refreshing to read a scenario where humans figure out ways to actually succeed at saving our planet.”

About Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt and 2312. In 2008, he was named a "Hero of the Environment" by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.

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