The Ministry for the Future

“It’s only fate!”

This is a line from the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, and Frank hears a doomed young man utter it as they head to the lake to survive the heat wave. Frank spends the rest of his life atoning for the fact that it is not fate but health derived from his unearned privilege as a Westerner that allowed him to survive. Robinson uses this line to develop two themes: the death of capitalism and the battle for Earth. Most characters in the novel are forced at some point to accept what looks like fate—the destruction of civilization by climate change and inequality that is built into capitalism—or engage in action to change it.

“I am a god and I am not a god. Either way, you are my creatures. I keep you alive. Inside I am hot beyond all telling, and yet my outside is even hotter. At my touch you burn, though I spin outside the sky. As I breathe my big slow breaths, you freeze and burn, freeze and burn. Someday I will eat you. For now, I feed you. Beware my regard. Never look at me.”

Chapter 2 is one of several riddles; this one comes after Chapter 1, in which the sun does indeed burn nearly everyone to death except Frank. Robinson’s use of the first-person riddle form allows him to anthropomorphize the sun to emphasize the impact nature still has on humans, even though technology has alienated humans from nature.

“Humans are burning about 40 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion tons) of fossil carbon per year. Scientists have calculated that we can burn about 500 more gigatons of fossil carbon before we push the average global temperature over 2 degrees Celsius higher than it was when the industrial revolution began; this is as high as we can push it, they calculate, before really dangerous effects will follow for most of Earth’s bioregions, meaning also food production for people.”

Ministry for the Future is hard science fiction set in the near future, meaning that actual science serves as an important