The Ministry for the Future

Although not marked here, I did read one of Robinson's Mars Trilogy and thought it was super tedious. This takes the kind of global engineering approach (with dry characterization) from that and applies it to a problem I actually care about: how humanity is going to survive climate change. Or fight it, even!I think Robin Sloan recommended this as 'an optimistic climate change novel', which was enough for me to jump at it. We have so many climate disaster novels! I want to have some mental frameworks for what it could look like if we actually - succeeded in fighting climate change?

And I think ultimately this paid off for me. I really enjoyed this, and loved the ideas in it. It's begging for a stronger edit, and has some *real* dumb chapters, but it's sparked a TON of ideas and new concepts around climate, and now I think I can start to counterbalance Gibson's 'Jackpot' idea with Robinson's 'Ministry' idea.

Noted on June 10, 2021