Staff Picks: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
It’s Locus’s 2020 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!
Jonathan Strahan chooses The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Gary K. Wolfe says, “At times The Ministry of the Future seems bent on exploding the notion of what a novel can be. Of Robinson’s 106 chapters, some are narrated by anonymous characters who never show up again (such as one of the pilots in India’s aerial seeding program), some are essays on everything from carbon sequestration to economic theory and wealth distribution, some are stand-alone stories or testimonies (like one about a climate refugee, another by a sailor enduring slave-like conditions on a corporate ship, still another by a Namibian miner), some are dialogues between unnamed interlocutors, some are straightforward historical exposition, some are meeting notes, some are in the form of childhood riddles (“Some day I will eat you. For now, I feed you,” says the sun in one of the easier ones), some are no more than catalogs. One chapter simply recites some 200 climate mitigation or sustainability projects undertaken by nations all over the world.”
Read Gary’s full review online or in the October 2020 issue of Locus.
