The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

THE IMPOTENCE OF BEING EARNEST

Even the severest critic of The Ministry for the Future will agree that it is well-researched and well-intentioned.

This 600-page tiny-print novel by Kim Stanley Robinson is a vastly ambitious eco-sermon wrapped in a thin SF plot. It presents a rousing scenario where the people of the world come together to defeat capitalism, carbon, and greed itself and thereby assure humanity’s planetary future. Along the way, The Ministry for the Future (TMFTF) solves every pressing issue of our times—climate crisis, biodiversity loss, deforestation, refugee crises, economic collapse—by employing economics, physics, biology, history, psychology, philosophy, mythology, cryptofinance, AI, along with a stiff dose of terrorism. The visionary elements in the tale are breath-taking; the narrative elements less so. This is a novel perfectly in keeping with our present-day ethos—concerned, angry, knowledgeable, and ultra-virtuous, but deficient in humour, colour, pacing, plot, characterization, and literary merit.

The novel’s beginning is set some small-town hellhole in the Indian state of Bihar that lets Robinson trot out the usual stereotypes about India—poverty, crowding, filth, misery, caste—and bring in the inevitable white savior in the form of an American guy, Grant, working for a nonprofit providing free healthcare to the unwashed masses. Along the way, Robinson throws in some references to Indian mythology (Arjuna, Karna, Kali) to show that he understands the culture he’s talking about. In this chapter, northern India is experiencing an apocalyptically terrible heat wave and the nameless town in Bihar where Grant works is not spared. People are dying like flies. And that is before the electricity fails and things get hotter than ever. Grant works round the clock in an ultimately futile attempt to rescue the townsfolk. He alone survives. The point-of-view in this chapter stays with Grant, and it appears that he’s the only one who matters. None of the natives seems to have any kind of personality or inner life. At no point did I ever care about what happened to any of them, so impersonal and emotionally distanced is the way they are portrayed. Not as thinking, feeling human beings with emotions, intelligence, personality, or humor, but essentially as walking maggots, embodiments of poverty, filth, and disease. So my cliché about their “dying like flies” is intentional.

Despite these flaws, this beginning chapter is well-written and gripping, showcasing the caliber of writing Robinson is capable of. I wish I could say that about the rest of the book.

First, the plot, such as it is. (I would include a spoiler warning if there was indeed a real plot that could be spoiled.) An Irishwoman, Mary Murphy, and the eponymous Ministry she leads are trying to save the planet by ensuring the welfare of the generations to come. They are opposed by the usual suspects—corporations, oil companies, bankers, other government bodies, and so on. The Ministry employs a crack multi-specialist team that includes geologists, economists, lawyers, psychologists, computer scientists, and even an intelligent robot. In the early years, the Ministry makes little headway. Nobody listens to them. Despite the genocidal heatwave in India, it’s business as usual. Even when other climate-related disasters strike, including a catastrophic flooding in Los Angeles, little progress is made. Evil corporations and brutal regimes continue to work together to deny people their basic rights, driving an ever-increasing flood of refugees fleeing climate disasters and slave labor.

Then various eco-terror organizations begin to take direct action. Airplane flights increasingly come under drone attack until such a point that airline companies are forced to abandon jet flights altogether and switch to airships and other eco-friendly aircraft. A similar eco-terror campaign takes out motorized commercial shipping, leading to a return of sailing ships. Coal plants and other polluting industries are likewise terrorized out of business.

An assassination campaign targets the super-rich who discover that even their walled fortresses offer little refuge. This is narrated by a survivor of India’s heat wave. These Miserables are so scarred by their near-death experience—from which they emerge as the walking dead, needing years to even get to the point of being able to talk—that “not all of [them] were human.” They emerge from their ordeal with one aim: destroy the people who they hold responsible for the climate crisis. Concepts such as the sanctity of life mean nothing to them anymore. These avenging angels band together to form the Children of Kali, Kali being the goddess of wrath in Indian mythology. Rejecting the tactic of suicide bombing, they employ fleets of lethal drones “the size of sparrows” to assassinate the people they blame for the heat wave—presumably fossil fuel executives and other usual suspects. One would imagine the rich and mighty would immediately retaliate, using all their vast resources to track down and destroy their assailants, but they simply capitulate, retreating deep inside their fortified homes where the drones can’t get them. But even there they are not safe. The Children start breaking into these houses and kill their targets there, often in front of their family members. People guarding the “guilty” are killed as well, being considered fair game—“protecting mass murderers makes you complicit in mass murder”—but the Children avoid “collateral damage” in the form of the accidental killing of innocents. The “guilty,” though, have nowhere to hide, because “Kali sees all.”

Finally, the tide begins to turn. Despotic regimes and overthrown by peaceful democratic protesters. A worldwide program to guarantee the rights of refugees is created. A social media network called YourLock, created by the Ministry, replaces Facebook and other commercial platforms, giving average citizens the right to perfect privacy and a way to have their voices heard. In parallel, a blockchain-based “carbon coin” created by the Ministry begins to replace fiat currencies, driving dark money out of circulation. Based on carbon reduction, this currency motivates people to stop burning carbon and start sequestering it, or, as in the case of oil-producing countries, to leave it in the ground untapped. Oil companies are carrot-and-sticked into reversing their operations and pumping CO2 back into their oil wells.

Glaciologists succeed in slowing the melting and breakup of ice bodies by pumping out the water under them and pumping water on top of them. Vast eco-corridors come into existence to protect wildlife habitats and to reduce biodiversity loss. And lo and behold, carbon levels in the atmosphere stabilize and then drop so fast that it exceeds the wildest dreams of climate crusaders. And finally, there comes a day when the entire global population unites in singing a worldwide Kumbaya.

The progress made the problems that remain are captured in a two-day COP meeting of the Paris Agreement signatories. Although the Paris Agreement had always been perceived as weak, “it was, perhaps, like the moment the tide turns: first barely perceptible, then unstoppable.” Humanity is on the right track at last. A “good Anthropocene” is born. We see a vast amount of evidence of this on display; posters, talks, organizational tables, all attesting to what had looked unattainable a few decades prior. More and more clean energy is generated while more and more CO2 is removed from the air and safely sequestered. Clean energy, “the crux of the challenge,” is no longer a challenge. More good news comes from the Global Footprint Network which has a poster showing how humanity’s over-exploitation of renewable biosphere resources is finally over; simultaneously, more and more of the planet is being “rewilded,” including much of the boundless acres of cropland previously used for livestock rearing.

Enlightened economists show evidence that equality and equity are flourishing worldwide aided by global socialist policies that prioritize equitable distribution of resources and impose stiff penalties on concentrations of wealth. The blockchain-dwelling carboni, or carbon coin, plays a major role in enforcing this, as people no longer have anywhere to hide their disproportionate assets. Seen emerging is a new economics that ditches the cold calculations of the GNP and GDP –measures that are more interested in the health of the market than the health of human society – in favor of a “Biosphere and Civilization Health Meta-Index,” or BCHMI.

Some new trends are discussed only offline at the meeting. Human population growth rate falls to 1.8, well below the replacement rate of 2.15, but this being a sensitive topic for various reasons—such as religious concerns and fear of demographic collapse--is not openly celebrated. Also left mostly unsaid is the role played by the various Depressions and climate disasters in thinning out the world population and thus reducing the global carbon footprint.

The second day of the conference is devoted to paying lip service to remaining problems—mistreatment of women, failed states, nuclear menace, pollution, ocean acidification, etc. At the end of it, Mary goes to visit her personal “remaining problem,” Frank, who is dying of cancer at a hospice. She tells him about the conference. She praises the Chinese model of state-owned and state-managed enterprises and attributes the climate progress made to the fact that “everyone’s beginning to do things more like them.”

“So it’s really America that is the main problem,” Frank concludes.

Robinson charts this Chinese-inspired transformation of human civilization--from a plague of ecosphere-destroying greedy capitalists into a race of people living in harmony with nature—with convincing detail and well-thought-out ideas. At its best, TMFTF presents a utopian vision for humanity that seems naïve yet thrillingly attainable. Even where the project is over-simplistic—for instance, if killer drone technology can be used for taking out the bad guys, can’t it be used by the bad guys for taking out the good guys as well? – its overall thrust feels both optimistic and realistic. No wonder the novel has drawn so much acclaim, especially from the elite commentariat. There is something infinitely reassuring about having the responsibility of saving our planet—which in the real world will involve actually changing our ways, living in smaller houses, flying less often, eating less, and so on—taken from us and handed over to a benign Ministry staffed with the best and brightest of the world. Sometimes having a beautiful vision can be a good substitute for actually attaining it.

As a vision statement or as a call to arms, therefore, TMFTF is par excellence.

Where this novel fails is, well, as a novel. A good novel, in my no-doubt-old-fashioned opinion, should have realistic characters, meaningful relationships, and strong emotional arcs. Some suspense and tension would be welcome as well. The narrative beats should feel organic, not externally imposed. Even when I can’t identify with any characters, I should care about what happens to them. Unfortunately, TMFTF serves us short in all these aspects.

None of its characters makes any kind of impression, least of all Mary Murphy, the de facto protagonist. She seems such a blank nonentity that every scene, every dialogue, every flashback that involves her feels achingly dull. Nor do any of the other characters fare any better. Take Frank May, the American do-gooder from the first chapter, who ends up with a severe case of PTSD after being nearly roasted to death in the Indian heat wave. I did feel a bit for him at first, but after the tenth or twentieth flare-up of his symptoms, I lost interest and hoped he would soon die and put us both out of our misery (which he kindly does at some point). The long scenes of dialogue between Mary and Frank go absolutely nowhere. They are tedious, repetitive, and pointless.

But the Mary-Frank exchanges sound positively Wildean when compared to what happens between Mary and Art, a love interest introduced in chapter 70 or so, possibly at the insistence of some agent, editor, or publisher who felt the novel would have more traction if it included a romance. The results are disastrous. Not only are the Mary-Art interactions devoid of spark, they are positively cringe-inducing in many places. Witness this brilliant passage just after Frank has introduced them to each other:

“Mary, Art here is the owner and pilot of The Clipper of the Clouds, a blimp—or is it a dirigible?"

“A dirigible," Art said with a little smile, "but you can call it a blimp if you want. Many people do. Actually, airship seems to be becoming the usual term, to avoid that confusion."

"And you take people up to see wild animals.”

"I do."

"Mary and I went up to the Alps a while ago and saw a little herd of chamois, and some marmots."

"Very nice," Art said. "That must have been lovely."

"It was," Mary said, trying to join in.

Art attended to her. "Do you go up to the Alps often?"

"Not really," she said.

Jane Austen, take notes -- your Elizabeth-Darcy dialogues pale in comparison!

Chapter 102, in my opinion, is the most toe-curling chapter in the entire book, because it seems to be trying to set up a romantic frisson between Mary and Art, but only succeeds in being so awkward that it’s positively painful to plough through. Mary has signed up to go on a round-the-world airship voyage with Art as pilot and a bunch of other passengers. They glide over a rewilded part of Northern California where they see hundreds of animals including a family of (reintroduced) wolverines. Then over the Rockies, along a great circle over the Arctic Ocean, now dyed yellow to increase its solar reflectivity, past vast herds of caribou, and so on, all the way across the world, past the Antarctic, and back home. Every evening Mary and Art meet up, fail to ignite sparks, go to the bathroom—I’ve never seen a book where the protagonists visit the loo so often, someone please advise them to get a medical exam—and then retire for the night to resume the same pattern the following day. Was it for this boredom that the Earth was saved?

Here is Mary ruminating, just after Art finishes explaining how the Mediterranean, a dry basin once, filled up at the end of the last Ice Age:

She watched him closely. A flood, a sudden breakthrough. … Was he a dry plain himself, she wondered, a space waiting to be flooded? Was she the Atlantic, he the Mediterranean? And she? Was she rising? Would she pour over into him and fill him up?

Where are the Guardian’s Bad Sex Award judges when you need them? Ironically, the author says in one of his interviews that his aim is to “focus on the story’s characters and their emotional lives, as being central to how fiction works” so that he gets to “to play the game of literature to the full, and for the long haul.” When I read statements like this, I wonder if the climate apocalypse might not be such a bad thing, after all.

So much for character and emotion. How about the thriller elements? Is there any satisfaction to be had there?

Sadly, no. Every time the novel seems to be headed for some thrills, some action, Robinson kills the tension dead and moves on to something else. Any anticipation built up is given no satisfying release; it is always “build-up, anti-climax, context switch” over and over. It almost feels like Robinson is deliberately toying with genre conventions to deny us any standard thrills or reader satisfaction, trying to copy what Ishiguro does so brilliantly in Never Let Me Go. But I doubt such is his intention, and in any case, Robinson is no Ishiguro. His scenes fizzle out. Occasionally, something interesting seems about to happen, but it never does, and the “something interesting” is never heard of again or is mentioned passively a few chapters later after it has happened and after any interest we might have had in it has long evaporated.

Take the extraordinary efforts taken by the Swiss security agency to protect Mary after her office is bombed. A tough, competent, humourless team of four is assigned to guard her day and night. The first step is to spirit her away to a remote hideout in the Swiss Alps. Mary goes along reluctantly, unconvinced that she’s in personal danger. The arduous and somewhat risky journey to get to the safe house is described in great detail. KSR’s love for the mountains comes through really well, and the lengthy descriptions of the varying landscape—bare rock, meadow, glacier, ice field, firn—and the equipment—crampons, climbing boots, outerwear, climbing helmet, harness--would fit wonderfully in a mountaineer’s diary or in an in-flight magazine. As the journey progresses, Mary’s reluctance diminishes. She realizes that her situation is “quite frightening, actually, if she allowed herself to think about it.” So it’s with relief and gratitude that she hauls her weary body up the steep slopes into the safe house.

But Mary is not allowed to enjoy her well-earned rest there, because that very night a large block of rock from an overhang—it seems odd that any habitation would be built right under such an obvious hazard—breaks off and nearly crushes them all. Coincidence, Mary argues, but her minders think otherwise. So it is back into the “space suit” and an even more arduous and riskier trek—including such attractions as deadly crevasses hidden under snow and terrifying chasms called “bergschrunds” separating slopes of ice and rock—and a helicopter ride and a 6-km hike through a tunnel to a top-secret Swiss defence establishment in the mountains where she arrives completely Alpenverbraucht or Alp-wasted. She relieves her feelings by indulging in some plain speaking with a bunch of Swiss leaders assembled there. “Other countries lose tax money which gets put into [your banks],” she tells them. “So you’re rich in part because you’re the bagman for criminals worldwide.” (Everybody knows this, but I guess it’s worth repeating.) She advises them to change their ways, put all their banked assets on the blockchain, and “put their ill-gotten wealth to good use.” For good measure, she transfixes them with her trademark glare, which she has always been able to use to “freeze people in place.”

This chapter high up in the Swiss Alps is about as exciting and thriller-ish as TMFTF ever gets. Mary and the book go downhill from there. I was expecting to see some validation of those heroic mountaineering efforts in the form of some real danger, some violent attempt on her life, but nothing ever happens. Later, it turns out that there was no threat to her life at all, and that Mary’s own assistant, Badim Bahadur, may have engineered the blast on her office. (Why he did that is not clear, seemingly it might have been some half-assed attempt to spur the Ministry/Swiss government into action, or some such nonsense.) So the whole exercise was pointless. Even the revelation of Bahadur’s treachery falls flat, as both he and Mary just shrug off what in a better novel would be a pivotal confrontation. The novel is filled with so many of these non-climaxes, non-confrontations, and non-releases that it becomes the literary equivalent of an anejaculatory and anorgasmic duo desperately trying to gratify their erotic fantasies but achieving only a series of frustrating starts-and-stops.

All in all, this is a massive, sweeping, curate’s egg of a book. A rousing eco-manifesto with tremendous detail and deep passion is packed into a crude and poorly-conceived storyline with cardboard characters and passionless relationships. The Ministry for the Future has an oversized brain but lacks a pulse.