When the pandemic began — it’s not over — I stopped reading dystopian fiction, some of which I had recommended in Summer science-fiction a couple of years before. The last one I had read was Station Eleven, which I am glad I did so before March 2020. My first read this Summer has been Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future — here is Bryan Alexander’s final instalment from his book club.
The Ministry for the Future can be called speculative fiction, and in this case provides a wide array of methods and processes that we might collectively use to get us through the current climate catastrophe. As fiction, it is more persuasive than any research report or white paper. It opens with a heat wave in India with temperatures above 38C and 60% humidity. Millions of people die as a result. Well, the 2022 heat wave in Pakistan and India hit 49.5C! (more…)
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