The Ministry of Time

On one of Graham’s first days outside the Ministry since his extraction, he observes, “You have enslaved the power of lightning, […] and you’ve used it to avoid the tedium of hiring help” (12). This humorous introduction to the use of technological progress belies the pensive, cautionary tone the novel eventually takes toward the subject. Part of the book’s message develops through the expats’ observations about technological advances and the negative effects they have had on life in the UK since their time. Another part comes through dire descriptions of the future from Adela, the Brigadier, and Salese. These observations culminate in a message that warns against unsustainable practices in the name of technological progress; a warning that promises continued destruction if unheeded.

A central part of the expats’ adjustment includes empathy tests. When they view images of WWI soldiers, “caved and razed by new weapons,” the expats are shocked by “the ultramodern scope of the harm” (74). Warfare may have been brutal throughout history, but technological advances made it too horrific for the unaccustomed psyche to contemplate. It was deemed too risky and demoralizing to inform the expats of the atrocities from Hiroshima, Auschwitz, and 9/11. Likewise, the novel critiques climate change resulting from modern technological practices in industries like agriculture, energy, and manufacturing. The narrator and Graham endure a heat wave that requires water and air conditioner rationing, and Graham notes, “My England wasn’t like this” (84). Even small, seemingly mundane details demonstrate the widespread effects of such practices, like when the narrator must describe intensive farming to Maggie in explaining the bland taste of her apple.

Adela’s reports about the near future suggest global powers like the UK continue on the same destructive path, using technology in unsustainable ways. She says tigers are extinct in her time because Russia started using chemical weapons without regard for the effects on crops. In fact, she says, the whole world is at war over resources; they’re “running out of everything” (301). Adela’s attitude about it—encapsulated by the line, “Some other countries get left behind, but that’s how progress works” (301)—demonstrates the kind of mindset that only exacerbates the problem. Further in the future, the Ministry and the British government invest in weapons and manufacturing that Adela blithely describes as “not what you probably still call ‘carbon neutral’” (301). The results create the world as the Brigadier and Salese know it: The atmosphere is so full of toxic waste from chemical weapons experiments that everyone lives in bunkers. London no longer exists. As the narrator learns, even the ability to travel through time doesn’t enable humans to fix these mistakes once they’ve been made. They can, however, mend the future by learning and making better choices, hoping to balance technological progress with sustainability and avoid the devastation in the Brigadier’s time.

By the time Adela reveals that she ordered Quentin’s death—his “neutralization”— readers likely have some sense, from subtext and foreshadowing, that the line between good guy and bad guy isn’t where the Ministry says it is. The narrator later learns that the Ministry, not the Brigadier, killed Arthur. In another timeline, they killed Maggie too. Unfortunately, the narrator lacks insight into the Ministry’s actions and intentions and thus rationalizes them. She says her mother “drilled the karmic repercussions of […] lying” (6) into her and consequently precluded any political career she might have (6), yet on the same page she notes, “We were told we were bringing the expats to safety. We refused to see the blood and hair on the floor of the madhouse” (6). The narrator thinks she fully embraces honesty, yet she actively ignores a sense that the expatriation project is unethical and inhumane. Ultimately, the Ministry’s violations of expats’ privacy, freedom, and dignity are ethical dilemmas not limited to time-travel experiments but indicative of real-life government practices that may go unchecked and have far-reaching consequences for society.

Much of the novel focuses on experimental ethics specific to time travel and the Ministry’s expatriation project. Simellia humorously points out some of the project’s obvious ethical dilemmas, citing her reason for mentioning them by saying, “I ask both as a psychologist and a person with a normal level of empathy” (7). Her underlying point is that anybody could see that what they’re doing is morally problematic at best. The narrator later reveals that seven expats were originally extracted and two have already died. Legal and ethical guidelines typically don’t allow experimentation on humans without rigorous studies showing an experiment’s safety. When governments operate under top-secret clearance, however, no oversight holds them accountable to ethical standards. Only after the narrator gets to know Graham does she see him as a fully realized person and recognize the psychological trauma of being extracted from the life he knows into one where everybody he loves is long dead.

By Chapter 8, which is 80% into the text, the narrator is still rationalizing the Ministry’s actions: “Of course I felt sorry for them. They’d been at the mercy of the Ministry since they arrived. […] But the Ministry had saved their lives. It had some small say in how those lives continued” (262). Her purposeful ignoring of how the Ministry violates expats’ rights and privacy leads her to make selfish decisions that she later regrets. This escalates her internal conflict and eventually forces her to extrapolate the unethical practices of the expatriation project to a broader examination of ethics in any government experiment.

When the narrator meets with the Secretary and calls him evil, he responds, “I am happy that you have the luxury of thinking that. It means your life is so safe you are pleased to play with the notion of individual morality. Individuals are not important. A country is” (325). Putting a country before individuals can be seen as the rationale behind the kind of sinister government practices that lead to inequality, social turmoil, and war—which pervade the future that Adela and the Brigadier describe. The narrator compares the Ministry’s tactics in the expat “readability” working group to MK-Ultra, the illegal program of the 1950s-1970s in which the US Central Intelligence Agency conducted dangerous human experiments without participant consent. This broadens the thematic look at ethics to other types of experiments and to other superpowers’ governments. Graham eventually confronts the Ministry’s rationalizations directly when Adela insists they mean him no harm: “Perhaps you don’t intend to kill us. But to survey a man, to rob him of his freedom and use him like a tool—would you not consider this harmful?” (305). His objections are not specific to the experiment’s time-travel aspects. Rather, they focus on the government’s disregard for individual privacy and freedom; objections that apply to real-life government critiques and lend an element of social commentary to the novel.