The Ministry for the Future

I downloaded to this audiobook because Ezra Klein said it was the most important book he had read in 2020—not for the story or literary quality so much as for the realistic and comprehensive way it addresses the coming climate crisis. This is a novel of ideas in the truest sense. It\’s really about envisioning the future: what the climate catastrophe will look like, and how the world might change to address it. It is at times tragic and depressing, at other times optimistic. The scope of the novel is impressive. It definitely made me see the climate crisis in a new light, and got me thinking seriously about all kinds of things, and that\’s what a novel of ideas is supposed to do: make you think. The novel is well worth reading for that reason alone, though be warned at times the story and the characters definitely take a back seat to the ideas. I found the narration of this audiobook uneven and sometimes quite irritating. This is a huge cast, and it seems like they just mailed out the chapters to a bunch of voice actors with little coordination or direction. So, different characters voices sound radically different at different times. The whole tone can shift radically too. The biggest problem I had though is that some of the voices are just over-wrought, over-done, garish and cartoony. This happens throughout, but I got especially frustrated by the Irish narrator who reads Mary\’s chapters: her idea of doing a mans voice is make her voice as closed and raspy as possible, her Russian and Indian accents have wild sing-songy intonations, and her American accent is whiney. This is a real shame because Mary becomes the novel\’s main protagonist and her chapters are long. I got to the point where my heart sank every time she came back on to start a new chapter, and I almost didn\’t make it through to the end as the result. All that aside, it\’s an important book and well worth engaging with one way or the other. If you\’re picky about your narration, you might want to read it rather than listen to the audiobook.

I love KSR and I wanted really badly to love this book. But I just couldn\’t get into it. The climate catastrophic isn\’t my problem. After all, I loved New York 2140. * Scientifically illiterate take on Organic agriculture & Vandana Shiva. * Poor philosophy of morality & punishment. * Apologizes for and even glorifies terrorism. * Implies that people \”need\” religion. * Misuse and apparent total lack of understanding of \”ideology\”. * Airships. Nothing very exciting happens in the book. Some scenes sound exciting in theory, but I wasn\’t excited reading them.

We have some narrators here, Fitzgerald the worst among them, who read without understanding of: 1. The material 2. How words are pronounced 3. How sentences work 4. Any accent other than their native one The experience is comparable to an ice pick in the ear. Returning the audiobook and buying a paper copy instead.

The first step to change is being able to imagine how it could happen. I just loved that toward the end of the story, emissions start to fall. They top off at 474 ppm, hang at that level for a decade and then start to drop 5 ppm per year. Reforestation and seaweed farming and ??? I\’m listening to it again to learn it better. . Author is not perfect. He has not much studied nonviolent movements and is, as are so many, rather a leftist. Don\’t those two go hand in hand? But he knows a LOT about climate. I learned a lot and I\’ve been a climate activist for a dozen years. Nothing he said seemed just plain wrong to me. And his putting all that info in stories is like chocolate coating it. . Author is rather optimistic. The story characters discuss possible collapse of civilization, but do not mention the possibility of human extinction. . This book earns author a spot on my climate heroes list: Paul Hawken, Greta Thunberg, Donella Meadows, Al Gore, John Michael Greer, Pope Francis,

An accidental dystopian view in the authors view of utopia. It is basically a Marxist/Greenpeace utopia that glorifies terrorism and authoritarianism for the \”greater good.\” The tech and engineering is well thought out and interesting, but characters and story are naive. The story itself is a bland delivery mechanism for the evangelism. More of the same old political dogma.

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