Discuss the novel The Ministry for the Future
2020 – The Ministry for the Future
Comments
13 responses to “2020 – The Ministry for the Future”
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Hey KSR and Ministry For The Future fans!
I’m a composer based in Los Angeles and was deeply affected by MftF. “It’s Getting Hotter” is the opening number from an unofficial, non-commercial fan-created musical demo I composed, inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the author or rights holders and was created solely as an artistic proof of concept.
Through cinematic orchestration and a retro-futurist aesthetic, I set out to explore what a truly suspenseful, large-scale climate thriller might sound like on stage. The score draws musical influence from Stephen Sondheim and John Williams, with visual inspiration from Dr. Strangelove, Tales from the Loop, and state-of-the-art video projection.
https://play.reelcrafter.com/qSkhEYSVRoGEUlfdJ9wP2w
Hope you enjoy and would love any feedback!
Cheers,
Max
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What if the most radical act of hope is planning for a future that still has a chance?
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The quotation marks were left out on the bottom of page 3 The Ministry for the Future “Please sir, help sir.” “Go to my clinic at two,” Frank said. “For now … little ones out of this.” “But there’s nowhere!” This bothers me as KSR is such a fantastic writier and voice. Can it be corrected before the next printing?
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I can’t express the volume of my disappointment with Ministry. Are you, too, blind to the 400-pound gorilla in the room? I’m on page 318 and I have yet to read the words “birth control”. Since you don’t seem to have noticed, humans breed like cancer. Every environmental problem stems from or is worsened by this.I read The Population Bomb (Erlich) in 1971. I got it, and I’m not particularly smart. As long as growth is our God, as long as religious leaders use population as a political weapon, this planet doesn’t stand a chance.I will trade in my wonderful 40-mpg car for an electric. I also just applied for a Sustainability Specialist position with my county (a Catholic county). I don’t have any illusions of the future of this planet. I just want to die with a little less guilt.
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A very interesting and exciting book. The author deals well with the economic problems of the capitalist economy. But Plan B is not described in detail, at best there are hints of socialism. In the third part, after carbon coin succeeds, there is no more information on the economic situation. What happens to the billions of workers after liquidity and the economy are frozen? (Chapter 75)
Sometimes the author comes very close to a solution but lacks the courage for the final step – the actual abolition of money.
Chapter 103 describes the Celebration of planetary consciousness. All humans could be sisters and brothers. This would happen if all people were to work voluntarily from this day onwards. The Money would then really disappear and that would be plan B. Then all people would be sisters and brothers, without restrictions.And many of the obstacles mentioned in the book would really be removed.
More information: https://LetUsBe.One/en/
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Hi Kim, I have written at least 6 of your books. I’ve been reading Ministry of the Future slowly and have some ideas to share with you, some of which is written in detail in my book, Equal Rights Versus the Rights of Property. I’d like to send you a copy of the book so you can see my take on U.S. history & corporate capitalism. Could you let me know an address where I could send the book to you by mail? It should be printed next month. I’ve been tracking climate change since 1990 and currently do legal forest protection work (including for carbon sequestration & storage) in eastern Oregon. You can see what I do and photos of me in the forests with volunteers at bluemountainsbiodiversity.org. My email for contacting me is: bluemountainsbiodiversity@gmail.com, for letting me know where to send a copy of my book to you. I’d also like to have a conversation at some point about ideas in Ministry and ideas in my book to consider–esp. re: issues around capitalism wrecking progress on phasing out fossil fuels, banks, and how to address the current situation based on U.S. “ourstory” re: finance and movement-building, etc. Thank you for your good writing and getting good ideas out there in Ministry for the Future. I originally wanted to be a novelist, but instead I became an activist, naturalist, and poet. I do have some hopefully constructive critique about some aspects of Ministry, such as re: carbon capture, the role of banks and their authority over society, and saying “and so on” in virtually every chapter! I’m also interested in how you viewed the balancing act involved with writing non-fiction/speculative fiction. Enough said for now. I look forward to your response and hope I can send a copy of my book to you. For the Wild, Karen Coulter, Director, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project
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What is Robinson’s positioning on terraforming in Ministry For the Future?
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Reading this question posed by Ezra Klein to a panel including KSR (see https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/magazine/ezra-klein-climate-crisis.html) led me to wonder whether anyone has constructed a narrative around this fanciful future scenario:
A critical mass of key military decisionmakers among the major world powers (spanning democratic and authoritarian regimes alike) reach a consensus that the biggest threat to their respective homelands is that of inaction on climate change by their own national governments. Could collective military action lead to the birth of a supra-national government whose primary raison d’etre is enforcing climate change mitigation?
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I’m just starting Ministry, and I noticed a phrase – and I’ve seen other authors make the same error – and it drives me nuts: On page 18 he writes: “Mary Murphy, an Irish woman of about forty-five years of age. . .” Why “ABOUT?” It’s Stan’s book and Stan’s character; doesn’t he know how old she is? Why can’t he say, “Mary Murphy, a forty-five year old Irish woman?” Or, “Mary Murphy, whose bright red hair made her look younger than her forty-five years.” Yes, I know it’s picky, but statements like that are literary potholes – they make us think about the writing instead of the story.
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Has KSR ever discussed “Apocalypse Never?” Can anyo ne here say if it is worth a read? Seems the opposite of what MftF is all about.
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Did anyone else pick up on Shaman echoing throughout KSR’s new book? It was subtle at first – scattered mentions of Schist & Ibex, or a Mother Earth religion. For me it was explicit toward the end – Mama Mia! Mama Mia! Mama Mia!
am I reading too much into it? If you think it’s intentional, why do you think KSR did this?
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Just a quick issue.
The relationship between the International Criminal Court and the United States is inaccurate in the book. “The US and several other big countries had withdrawn from the court’s jurisdiction after several negative rulings…” The US was never a signatory to the Rome Statute. While Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, there was never really a hope that the Senate would ratify the treaty. Additionally, there has never been a US citizen tried by the ICC, though there are plenty that could be.
Also, the relationship of the ICJ to the various States is fairly accurate, but there is a way that the U.N. can ask for advisory opinions that are not binding but carry much weight in their advice given. See, the Nuclear Weapons Case, where the ICJ rules that there isn’t any precedent outlawing nuclear weapons, but that their use must be within the confines of humanitarian law already established regarding war. More accurately, there is an issue with the ICJ that the jurisdiction is voluntary. And that doesn’t mean, in this situation, that the State agrees the court exists to render verdicts in a situation, but that for each situation a State is brought before the court requires voluntary submission to the jurisdiction. So, the US can bring other States to the ICJ while at the same time denying jurisdiction in most (read, all) cases in which a different State brings a case against the US.
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Thank you for the amazing novel! I was a little nervous about taking in another treatment of the climate change issue, but you did so well with this that I’ve grabbed up Mr. Robinson’s California series as well.
I came to Mr. Robinson’s books via the Mars trilogy, then Red Moon, and have always liked the treatment of political and scientific issues in those: the tensions, the pressures, etc. This book was a completely different book and one I feel I can take part in.
Here’s my LinkedIn. I put this here to show that I have the skill, experience, and predilection for this particular task. I have already done plenty of cryptocurrency work, but more importantly, pure cryptographical work in this area. I releasing an offline first verifiable data protocol written with friends and see a lot of possibilities with the idea of p2p networks moving at the speed of snail mail some days. If you’re interested in our work check out the Pigeon Protocol Consortium Spec.
The main reason I’m writing is that I believe in the world-changing power of decoupling and recoupling of various technologies, first as decentralized versions of people gaining abilities only afforded the wealthy and powerful before, then as a centralized version that aims for better ends as a society of trust. The Ministry of the Future reinvigorated that drive in me and I want to take part in the scientific efforts that this would mean.
As you can see, I already lean towards distributed computation, structures of trusts, and verifiable communication in an unverifiable world. I also am very socially minded, having been a mentor most of my life and experimented with several ways of moving beyond profit-driven capitalism. Your book showed me that profit could be trained toward a motivator for good as much as authorities can be directed towards supporting the right causes to keep their place in life. That’s got me more thinking.
I’ve designed and have taken part in various projects to make social actions measurable and tradable: time banking, local coins, et al. I’m starting to wonder if a Service Coin would be a good idea. Not one that is decentralized in totality like BTC or Ether, but more in line with Facebook’s Diem architecture has. I’m thinking of the charities and workplaces being validators of effort by running validation nodes, sharing the valid chains with each other in mutual trust with asymmetrical keys exchanges instead of proofs pushed forward for untrusted environments. This can immediately speed up chain propagation and insure markets that trade such coins that there is some stability to the coin. In addition to that, if it were tied to treasury bonds of some other federal instrument, it could become a stable coin that ensures that work done as a service to our communities, increases the stability and value of our country.
I would like to hear your thoughts, Mr. Robinson, on such a venture before I flesh it out more. Where can this be made stronger? More useful? What can go wrong? How to avoid that? Be frank, I can take it.
~ xorsense
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