MINISTRY FOR THE FUTURE
by Kim Stanley Robinson o-o-o-o
May just be the best climate-fiction novel in existence, certainly the best climate-fiction novel I've ever read. It is for the most part a problem-solving novel, and I like that. Robinson is able to make the uphill battle involved in all the bureaucracy and policy-making and head-butting that would ostensibly constitute the seemingly impossible task of reversing climate change read like a rollicking adventure without ever once diverging from keeping it grounded in realism. Robinson also seems to have a genuinely global perspective, which comes across very believably and in a way that is not easily accomplished. Central to the narrative is also an assassination plot and an unlikely friendship that add a good dash of thrill to the narrative and help guide the entire story through. It is only at the very end that Robinson loses my interest, from chapter 100 onward, after all the damage to the planet is successfully reversed and the protagonist retires from her position, we spend several chapters following her around, meandering from place to place not really doing anything of great interest. At that point, the whole purpose of one's inclination to pick up the book at all, the “Ministry for the Future” stuff, has long passed and successfully been put to paper. What happens after that is just so pointless and boring and to my mind wouldn't really be of interest in any novel of any genre for any reason. It's a shame so many chapters were written to end what is otherwise a fantastic novel on the blandest note imaginable. Still, the first two thirds of the book are enough to make it essential reading.