More from the Future

This is an addendum to the previous post about climate fiction that keeps me SANE.

You know how I raved about

by Kim Stanley Robinson? And linked to a YouTube video of Robinson speaking at an event? Well, I went looking for more videos of Robinson speaking about the effect his book has had on climate action discourse, and boy howdy, have things ever changed since it was published.

In fact, things were already changing in the direction his book envisions while he was writing it, and he only found out after publication.

Here are a couple of talks Robinson has given on how scenarios in The Ministry for the Future fit into the rapidly evolving reality and discourse of climate change action, found on YouTube:

Robinson notes that Ministry is a book that talks about how humanity "gets through the next century without going through a mass extinction event - and audiences are hungry for that story." Indeed, indeed!

"Although we're in a dangerous moment, doomism is not appropriate," he says in this podcast's opening.

Plenty of other videos show up when you search "Kim Stanley Robinson" on YouTube. I really suggest you pick up the book from your local library and plunge in. Even if it doesn't catch you for a first-page-to-last read, it rewards those whose style is more "read-around," since Robinson switches up the content to mix first-person accounts of climate disasters and regenerative projects, articles and news stories from the near future, and even quasi-dialogues that might be the author channeling a future version of himself, to parallel the 25-year time frame of the narrative following the Ministry's Director and staff as they face peril and decision.

Or, just enjoy the videos! Robinson is an excellent speaker with an easygoing brilliance. A guy who stays SANE!

#MinistryfortheFuture #books #clifi #scifi #sciencefiction #climatechange