I DID NOT much like this novel, I may as well say. I do not usually enjoy science fiction (although this is not much like typical science fiction except for being set in the future, roughly 2020-2050). But Ministry for the Future is about clearly important matters--climate change and what it will take to address the problems we are already facing.
In a way, it this moment's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Even though Harriet Beecher Stowe was not among the greatest novelists of her time, you really did need to read that novel; it vividly represented the most urgent question facing American society at that time. Robinson does that for us. Ministry for the Future is not a great novel, but it is still a must-read.
As a novel, it's a grab bag. There are two main characters. Frank, who works for an international aid organization, is the sole survivor when a heat wave hits a village in India where he is working. Traumatized, he is anxious to do something, anything, to address the climate crisis, but as an individual he has painfully limited options--so he attempts to (in a way) kidnap Mary, the other main character.
Mary is the director of the (fictional) UN agency named in the novel's title, which has the job of working to make sure the earth has a future. Compared to Frank, she has a lot of influence, a lot of institutional heft behind her, but she can't actually make anything happen, either. She can get meetings with people, make proposals, speak to the media...but she can't order the world to stop using fossil fuels.
Frank eventually goes to prison for not-exactly-kidnapping Mary, but she visits him, and they develop a relationship, both being vitally interested in the climate crisis. Their conversations make up a good chunk of the book. I never warmed up all that much to either Frank or Mary, but I learned a lot from their conversations.
But a lot of the book, more than half I'd guess, is a variety of other things. Riddle chapters, in which you have to guess the identity of the speaker, who turns out to be (e.g.) carbon, or money, or capitalism. Chapters that are the minutes of Mary's group's meetings. Chapters that are vignettes of people doing something to address the crisis: restoring the ice cap, or sequestering carbon, or figuring out how to make a "commons" work. There are more dramatic events--bombings, assassinations, economic crashes--but these occur offstage. They are reported rather than narrated.
Eventually, by the time we are 450 pages or so along, progress is made--an actual reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere is achieved. It feels good.
The novel is mainly about how hard it will be to reverse the damage already done to our world, but it does leave you with a vague sense that maybe we can do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment