The Ministry for the Future

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By Kim Stanley Robinson

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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

20 Reviews

3.5

Padma Warrior

Created 12 months ago

“Must read Cli-Fi”

Beautifully writtenMind-bendingFuturisticDarkEducationalThought-provoking

eric knudson

Created about 1 year ago

Gwendolyn N Nix

Created about 1 year ago

“Science fiction always feels a bit like asking for a tarot reading or having your future read on a crystal ball. Sure, the aliens might be a bit unbelievable, but truth is stranger than fiction. For Kim Stanley Robinson’s peek into the future, things hit a little too close to home, and open the curtain on a lot of topics beyond science that are inhibiting us from saving the planet from climate change. I wouldn’t consider this fiction. It’s hard to navigate, the characters aren’t that appealing, and don’t even get me started on the ending for Mary, the head of the Ministry for the Future, when she retires. However, if I peered at it as a place for these characters to speak hard truths, it became something else entirely. And, in that narrative, I started to understand the impacts of economics and global distribution, capitalistic greed, and the need for hard grueling change. The book made me think, and look at our current impending climate doom with both despair, but also hope. I think if it has been written as non fiction, it wouldn’t have reached as many readers, or been waved off as another alarmist climate story (not to imply that we shouldn’t be alarmed… the red warning lights have been flashing for a while now). Plus, it’s hard not to enjoy the personification of a carbon atom.”

Pedro Dal Bo

Created about 1 year ago

“This book at times feels ominously prescient about the future and at others it feels like a long list of various ideas (a lot of them are actually pretty interesting). Though it was fun to read about a world that starts in the present day and ends up in an ideal version of the future where we’ve worked out climate change.”

Sadie

Created about 1 year ago

“Unconventional and challenging to read. If you go into it expecting to learn something (as is usually the case with a KSR book) and exercise patience through the slow parts, you will come away with a sense of hope that the climate disaster CAN be mitigated in time. We can make the hard choices. We can think outside the box. Humans can up-end the status quo and challenge the powers that be. What I find troubling is that KSR's vision is a violent one, a solution that relies on terrorism and mass casualties. Is this the only way to force the banks and the capitalists to finally change? Maybe. Maybe it's only one possibility. At least, the book will leave readers thinking about the options rather than burying their heads in the sand.”

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.