The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The opening set piece in Kim Stanley Robinson’s “cli-fi” novel The Ministry for the Future will stick with me forever. It describes a brutal heat wave in India occurring in the not-so-distant future. Temperatures rise and rise until they exceed the physiological capacity for human life. Eventually, more than one million people die. This is the tipping point that finally motivates society to confront climate change. Through the subsequent 500 pages, the book describes the formation and efforts of the Ministry for the Future, an organization with legal authority and mandate to protect future generations. With scientific accuracy, it explores the role of nature, geoengineering, climate eco-terrorism, and creative economics. It tackles these complex issues using great characters and a snappy writing style and offers a compelling yet terrifying future-scenario. For me, it was tremendously powerful. Two years after reading it, I still think about it nearly every day.
Recommended by Jonathan Thompson