I’m aware that by writing a review of a book I am only 30% through, I risk losing my motivation to continue reading it. By categorizing my initial sense of this book as either impressively compelling or just one more summer read, I risk squandering my curiosity about what comes next.
But just as a slice of fresh baked peach pie has no need of anything other than the first bite to incentivize a second one, I can feel a voice on the wind telling me that this work of imagination, which is delivering an insightful portrayal of the world in which I live, will keep me reading until the end. In this work of fiction, the author reveals a wide and deep understanding of the precarious future that hovers over our world.
He makes a powerful case that the future is so important–even though less and less of it awaits me personally—that it is vitally important to do all we can to preserve some of it for the future beings who keep arriving on these shores, like passengers swimming to the beach when their ship is broken on the rocks.
Isn’t it true that all our activities, and all our anticipations and interpretations about what is happening around and within us–once they are assigned their place–are mostly forgotten, like suitcases falling overboard during our journey?
“The Ministry for the Future”, by Kim Stanley Robinson, was “One of Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year,” a couple of years ago. That fact stays with me as I read the vision of the future that caught the interest of a president who, for eight years, did what he could to preserve our world for future generations.
Perhaps one of the characteristics we all look for in the narratives that come our way, is that they manifest a range of knowledge that we don’t ourselves possess and never will, since there is not enough time in our remaining life to acquire that kind of sureness of understanding–even if we believe that we ever had the capacity to do so.
It is already apparent, 30% in, that the author possesses a broad and penetrating understanding of how human societies work, of the conditions that are affecting sea levels, global and regional temperatures, and the way that governments, corporations, communities, and individuals respond to the catastrophes that are already raining down on our planet. He is also able to present this knowledge–of how humanity relates with our world—in a narrative that includes interesting characters and dramatic situations.
It seems appropriate for me to now pause in the midst of reading this book—which tells the tale of characters trying to preserve something for future generations—long enough to notice that I too, along with everyone I know, am living in an earlier—but by no means early–stage of that catastrophe. The 70% of this novel that is remaining for me to read is a telling representative of the remainder of my own life and for the life of all of us human beings currently alive on Planet Earth. What lies ahead of us—what we call “the future” as if we understood what that means—deserves a speaking part in the narration of our own lives. I can only hope that in the final 70% of this tale the author will find a way for human society to reverse the already deadly heat waves and rising sea levels that seem as irreversible to the inhabitants of this ‘fictional’ world as their early manifestations do to many of us in this one.
I don’t have 70% of my own life awaiting me in the future, but the analogy is there anyway. I want to treat the remainder of “The Ministry for the Future” as a local spokesperson for the future that is waiting for me, and for everyone I care for, and for the living planet that deserves better treatment than our species is now giving it.
Since I seem unable to create a compelling vision of a future in which we have turned our patterns of behavior around in time to preserve a tolerable future for those who come after us (although I keep trying), I’m allowing myself to hope that Kim Stanley Robinson has found a way to do that. If not, there’s always a thick slice of peach pie to keep me looking forward to one more breath.