Book #6: Ministry for the Future
Your second option for our climate fiction read.
Hi friends! I’m Jess and this is Book Club for the Planet, an online community for us to read about the climate crisis in community.
UPDATE!! Meeting will now take place on Sunday, June 27 at 1 pm EST. This post formerly said that we’d meet on Sunday, June 13.
For your second cli-fi novel pick, head into the not-distant future and inside the mind of science fiction icon, Kim Stanley Robinson, with The Ministry for the Future. We’ll meet on Sunday, June 27 at 1 pm EST. As a reminder, you’re welcome to pick either this book or Gun Island, or read both!
For as much as I read sci-fi and seek out books on climate, this book surprisingly wasn’t even on my radar until I heard an author interview with Ezra Klein on Ezra’s podcast. In my current experience of reading climate fiction, this book hits on some unique themes, including… its setting (just a few years into the future, rather than the distant future), plot (how and when will we actually start responding, through policy and action, to the climate crisis), and the questions it seeks to address (Does policy even work, or is it as corrupt as the system it’s operating in? What’s the difference between “slow violence” and “hot violence”?). All of this made me feel like this was an urgent, necessary read.
I’m now about 70 pages in and have zero regrets in picking up and reading this book. Don’t think you will, either.
As for our book club meet-ups, everyone is welcome to join, whether you’ve finished the book or not, and to engage in whatever way feels right to you. Maybe you’re coming to connect with others and work through these questions with a sympathetic sounding board, or maybe you’re coming to learn in a listen-only mode. You are welcome here! Our meetings last for about 90 minutes, but it’s totally ok to come for the first 45 minutes or an hour if that works for you.
For those who are new to our meetings, here’s how it works:
A few days before our meeting, I send out a separate Mail Chimp newsletter with a Zoom registration link. Please register so our fellow organizers and I can plan appropriately for the size of our expected group. If you have unsubscribed to that newsletter (life happens and my email inbox perpetually has over 5,000 unread emails in it, so I get it!), please also make sure to unsubscribe to this Substack as well so I don’t accidentally re-subscribe you to the Mail Chimp newsletter when I’m updating the lists every other month.
That’s it, for now! Happy reading!