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lightreadsThe Ministry for the Future
3/5. Climate SF about what has to happen in order to reverse course on carbon emissions. Spoiler: it takes the deaths of millions, violence, and the dismantling of global order from the top down.
Mixed feelings on this one. It's an odd book: half the reviews I've glanced it called it "hopeful," and the other half called it "grim." I lean far more towards grim in that I see nothing hopeful either in the high cost Robinson plausibly assigns to this task, or in the realization that the vast majority of these things are not going to happen and we are, therefore, fucked.
As a book, it's didactic and scattered, skipping through points-of-view and dropping in various documents, transcripts, riddles, and other ephemera. It has moments of sublimity, like the description of a late night flight across the Alps on foot, where he is at his best. And it has moments of deep exasperation – see, just for one, his contention that crypto will save us all. He also has a take on China which is not only factually way way off base even in the months since this book was published (in this book's future, the HK takeover of 2021 didn't happen) but also, I strongly believe, symptomatic of some really misinformed understandings of Chinese geopolitics. I will spare you the whole essay, but this is a thing I will get up in arms about.
Relatedly, he is, as usual, noticeably sloppy on social stuff (so they just . . . build . . . a new social network . . . that half of humanity joins because it's better than Facebook . . . except no one knows who built or runs it . . . and it presumably therefore has no moderation because that takes an enormous staff . . . wait, no, this makes zero sense). But in many of his other books he makes up for it with big science ideas. There are a few of those here, in passing, but this book never lingers on anything longer than a moment, so it's hard to get invested.
But, well, you throw out as many ideas as are in this book, a lot of them are going to be bad, so there you go. File this one under 'not sure I enjoyed it, but I'm glad someone did the thought exercise.'
Content notes: Mass death.
3/5. Climate SF about what has to happen in order to reverse course on carbon emissions. Spoiler: it takes the deaths of millions, violence, and the dismantling of global order from the top down.
Mixed feelings on this one. It's an odd book: half the reviews I've glanced it called it "hopeful," and the other half called it "grim." I lean far more towards grim in that I see nothing hopeful either in the high cost Robinson plausibly assigns to this task, or in the realization that the vast majority of these things are not going to happen and we are, therefore, fucked.
As a book, it's didactic and scattered, skipping through points-of-view and dropping in various documents, transcripts, riddles, and other ephemera. It has moments of sublimity, like the description of a late night flight across the Alps on foot, where he is at his best. And it has moments of deep exasperation – see, just for one, his contention that crypto will save us all. He also has a take on China which is not only factually way way off base even in the months since this book was published (in this book's future, the HK takeover of 2021 didn't happen) but also, I strongly believe, symptomatic of some really misinformed understandings of Chinese geopolitics. I will spare you the whole essay, but this is a thing I will get up in arms about.
Relatedly, he is, as usual, noticeably sloppy on social stuff (so they just . . . build . . . a new social network . . . that half of humanity joins because it's better than Facebook . . . except no one knows who built or runs it . . . and it presumably therefore has no moderation because that takes an enormous staff . . . wait, no, this makes zero sense). But in many of his other books he makes up for it with big science ideas. There are a few of those here, in passing, but this book never lingers on anything longer than a moment, so it's hard to get invested.
But, well, you throw out as many ideas as are in this book, a lot of them are going to be bad, so there you go. File this one under 'not sure I enjoyed it, but I'm glad someone did the thought exercise.'
Content notes: Mass death.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-25 12:38 am (UTC)Yes, he was writing cli-fi way before it was trendy.