The Ministry for the Future

Robinson includes many chapters that take the reader through sometimes arcane theoretical discussions on economics, the history of ideas, political science, and climate science. The personae in these chapters appear either as objective narrators who avoid the use of “I” pronouns, or as dialogues between a professor and their skeptical student, or dueling academics who use these dialogues to clarify economic and political concepts. Alongside these chapters are riddles that define or reframe objects and ideas for the reader.

The more objective chapters include the abstract diction of theorists, and these chapters almost always end with a refusal to talk about what these theories might look like in the real world. As the novel advances, however, the voice of theorists, especially in chapters on economics, becomes increasingly opinionated on the need for economics to accommodate itself to the reality of climate change. By Chapter 64, that dry voice has morphed into a playful voice that jokes about whether killing capitalists is a literal or figurative idea.

Robinson uses these chapters to critique academic disciplines, especially economics, as being implicated in a system that is mired in inequality. The dialogues, on the other hand, frequently illuminate the connections between economics and politics, and the rough, juvenile humor in those chapters on the part of the skeptical voice makes it clear that philosophers and academics’ abstraction are not particularly worthy of respect.