The Ministry for the Future - Kim Stanley Robinson

Introduction to the Book – The Ministry for the Future 

Have you ever wondered what the world might look like if climate change became not just a threat, but a crisis that demands urgent action from every corner of the globe? // That is the reality Kim Stanley Robinson imagines in The Ministry for the Future, a story that blends science, politics, ethics, and the human struggle to survive on a planet in peril.

At the center of the novel is the Ministry for the Future itself, an international organization based in Switzerland tasked with protecting the world’s most vulnerable populations from the ravages of global warming. // Led by the determined and idealistic Mary Murphy, the Ministry faces an impossible task: to slow the accelerating climate crisis while navigating political rivalries, economic power struggles, and human resistance to change. // It is a story of both immense pressure and profound hope, showing how one group of people tries to bend the arc of the future toward survival.

The novel is sprawling in its scope, yet intimate in its focus on human lives. // We meet climate scientists racing against time, refugees fleeing deadly heatwaves, bankers and policymakers grappling with radical solutions, and everyday people whose lives are shattered by floods, droughts, and famine. // Robinson doesn’t just describe disasters — he explores the moral and practical dilemmas that come with solving them. How far should humanity go to save itself? What sacrifices are justified?

What gives The Ministry for the Future its power is Robinson’s ability to combine storytelling with rigorous research. // The novel reads like both a cautionary tale and a blueprint, exploring solutions from carbon-backed currencies to geoengineering, from international treaties to grassroots activism. // It forces readers to confront the terrifying reality of our warming planet, while also imagining how collective action, innovation, and courage might still change the course of history.

But the heart of the novel is not policy or technology — it is empathy. // It is about the lives of the vulnerable, the ethical questions we face, and the recognition that climate change is ultimately a story of humanity, not just science. // In every extreme weather event, every ethical dilemma, and every act of courage, Robinson asks us: What kind of world do we want to leave behind?

So — why should you read The Ministry for the Future? // Because it is urgent, imaginative, and deeply human. // It is a novel that challenges us to think, to feel, and to act. // And it reminds us that even in the face of overwhelming crisis, hope, innovation, and determination can still shape the future.

In the end, The Ministry for the Future is not just a book about climate change. // It is a story about responsibility, resilience, and the choices that define us — a vision of a future we can still influence, if only we dare to try.

Reading 1 (Part 2)

1

It was getting hotter.

Frank May got off his mat and padded over to look out the window.

Umber stucco walls and tiles, the color of the local clay. Square apartment

blocks like the one he was in, rooftop patios occupied by residents who had

moved up there in the night, it being too hot to sleep inside. Now quite a

few of them were standing behind their chest-high walls looking east. Sky

the color of the buildings, mixed with white where the sun would soon rise.

Frank took a deep breath. It reminded him of the air in a sauna. This the

coolest part of the day. In his entire life he had spent less than five minutes

in saunas, he didn’t like the sensation. Hot water, maybe; hot humid air, no.

He didn’t see why anyone would seek out such a stifling sweaty feeling.

Here there was no escaping it. He wouldn’t have agreed to come here if

he had thought it through. It was his home town’s sister city, but there were

other sister cities, other aid organizations. He could have worked in Alaska.

Instead sweat was dripping into his eyes and stinging. He was wet, wearing

only a pair of shorts, those too were wet; there were wet patches on his mat

where he had tried to sleep. He was thirsty and the jug by his bedside was

empty. All over town the stressed hum of windowbox air conditioner fans

buzzed like giant mosquitoes.

And then the sun cracked the eastern horizon. It blazed like an atomic

bomb, which of course it was. The fields and buildings underneath that

brilliant chip of light went dark, then darker still as the chip flowed to the

sides in a burning line that then bulged to a crescent he couldn’t look at.

The heat coming from it was palpable, a slap to the face. Solar radiation

heating the skin of his face, making him blink. Stinging eyes flowing, he

couldn’t see much. Everything was tan and beige and a brilliant, unbearable

white. Ordinary town in Uttar Pradesh, 6 AM. He looked at his phone: 38

degrees. In Fahrenheit that was— he tapped— 103 degrees. Humidity about

35 percent. The combination was the thing. A few years ago it would have

been among the hottest wet-bulb temperatures ever recorded. Now just a

Wednesday morning.

Wails of dismay cut the air, coming from the rooftop across the street.

Cries of distress, a pair of young women leaning over the wall calling down

to the street. Someone on that roof was not waking up. Frank tapped at his

phone and called the police. No answer. He couldn’t tell if the call had gone

through or not. Sirens now cut the air, sounding distant and as if somehow

submerged. With the dawn, people were discovering sleepers in distress,

finding those who would never wake up from the long hot night. Calling for

help. The sirens seemed to indicate some of the calls had worked. Frank

checked his phone again. Charged; showing a connection. But no reply at

the police station he had had occasion to call several times in his four

months here. Two months to go. Fifty-eight days, way too long. July 12,

monsoon not yet arrived. Focus on getting through today. 

Reading 2 (Part 3)

The part of Antarctica that holds its ice the longest is near the middle,

between the Transantarctics and an ice-submerged mountain range called

the Gamburtsev Mountains. The Gamburtsevs are almost as high as the

Alps, yet still completely buried by ice; they were only discovered by

overflights using ice-penetrating radar. Between this newly discovered

range and the Transantarctics there’s a flat plain, surrounded by mountains

in such a way that scientists estimate the ice sitting on it won’t reach the

coast for at least five thousand years. In other areas of the continent ice will

get to the sea in the next couple of decades. So it’s another case of location,

location, location.

Naturally this Point of Maximum Ice Sequestration is a long way from

the sea, and the polar ice cap there is ten thousand feet thick, meaning about

that high above sea level, as the bedrock under all that ice lies just slightly

below sea level. So if you were thinking of pumping seawater up onto this

part of the ice cap to keep sea level from rising, it was going to take a lot of

energy. And a lot of pipeline too. Run the numbers and you can see: not

going to happen.

Still there were people who wanted to try it. Non-quantitative people, it

would seem, and yet rich despite that. Chief among these curious people

was a Russian billionaire from Silicon Valley, who felt Antarctica as a place

to dump seawater just had to be tested, so much so that he was willing to

fund the test. And you take grant money where you can find it, when it

comes to getting to Antarctica. At least that’s been my working method.

So an austral spring came when a fleet of private planes flew south from

Cape Town, South Africa, where there’s a permanent gate at the airport that

says ANTARCTICA (I love that) and we landed on the Ronne Ice Shelf,

overlooking the frozen Weddell Sea. There we unloaded and set up a village

of yurts, Jamesways, and tents, which looked small in the vast expanse of

ice, because it was. Even the tourist villages at Pioneer Hills and under the

Queen Astrid Range were larger. But this one served as the drop site for an

ever-growing collection of specialized equipment, some of it lent to the

operation by Transneft, the Russian state-owned oil pipeline corporation.

The biggest piece of equipment was brought to the edge of the Ronne Ice

Shelf by a massive Russian icebreaker, and unloaded in a tricky operation: a

giant pump. Intake pipes were punched through the sea ice, and a transport

pipeline was attached to the pump and run inland, across the Ronne Ice

Shelf and up to the polar cap, past the South Pole to Dome Argus, the

highest point on the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet. Because it was higher, this

was felt to be the energy equivalent of the even more distant Gamburtsevs.

The power for the pumping, also the heating of the pipeline to keep the

water liquid in the pipes, was provided by a nuclear submarine reactor

donated for the occasion by the Russian navy. If it turned out to be feasible,

the billionaire had explained to people back in Russia, this operation might

turn into one of the biggest industries in the world. And save St. Petersburg

from drowning. The fact that this supposed industry would require the

power of about ten thousand nuclear subs was apparently left out of the

discussion. But okay, an experiment in method, sure. Why not.

Reading 3 (Part 4)

Days passed for Frank one like the next. He didn’t mark a calendar, or

keep track of the day of the week. Every once in a while Syrine and her

younger girl would come by to visit; seemed like once a month or so. He

got the impression the older girl was too mad at him to come. Mary Murphy

came by more like every week or two. She worked nearby, he thought.

The meals in the prison dining hall were solid Swiss food. He was

gaining a little weight on it. He read over his bowl or plate, books from the

library. Occasionally an English-language newspaper, published weekly in

Paris. The prison library had a lot of books in English, and he made his way

through them unmethodically. John le Carré, George Eliot, Dickens, Joyce

Cary, Simenon, Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe was funny. Lucky to have

been able to ransack the wreck of his ship like that. All that stuff he saved

had given him a good life. Not unlike Frank’s in some ways. He too was

stranded on an island, getting by.

Most days he got on the 8 AM van that ran prisoners around the city. He

kept getting off at the refugee camps. This was always a little disturbing,

but he did it anyway. Maybe it was what one of the therapists had called

habituation. Go right at what bothers you, face up to it. One of the books in

the prison library had been written by an African man who had traveled up

the coast of Greenland in the early twentieth century, staying in Inuit

villages. Eskimaux, he called them. He wrote that they had a saying in their

cold little villages, to deal with the times when fishermen went out and

never came back, or when children died. Hunger, disease, drowning,

freezing, death by polar bear and so on; they had a lot of traumas.

Nevertheless the Eskimaux were cheerful, the man wrote. Their storm god

was called Nartsuk. So their saying was, You have to face up to Nartsuk.

This meant staying cheerful despite all. No matter how bad things got, the

Inuit felt it was inappropriate to be sad or express grief. They laughed at

misfortunes, made jokes about things that went wrong. They were facing up

to Nartsuk.

Which they all had to do. One day, working a camp food line and seeing

a distraught refugee’s face out of the corner of his eye, he understood that

eventually everyone was post-traumatic, or even still mid-trauma. These

people he served had been variously beaten, shot at, bombed, driven out of

their homes, seen people killed; all had made desperate journeys to get here,

sleeping on the ground, hungry. Now they were in a new place where

possibly new things could happen, different things, good things. It was a

matter of being patient, of focusing on the people right in front of your face.

Possibly they could get past their traumas, eventually. You had to talk to

people.

Frank seldom talked to anyone, but sometimes he did, and then he found

himself babbling a little. But asking questions too, and listening to what

people said to him. No matter how bad their English was, it was always

better than his attempts at their language.