The cover of The Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future

by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Ministry for the Future was described to me as something like “sci-fi, but economists are the heroes.” The description was an excellent nerd-snipe, and also perfectly accurate.

The book tells the story of a near future in which climate change has started having direct, cataclysmic consequences to people around the world. The main characters are involved in a unified global effort to change the course of the crisis through a combination of political and diplomatic collaboration and strong-arm economic policymaking. It definitely does get slow in parts, and the characters don’t feel terribly relatable or emotionally engaging, but that’s pretty common of hard science fiction.