The Ministry For the Future is thought provoking climate fiction

Kim Stanley Robinson offers hope in The Ministry For the Future

Science fiction novel The Ministry for the Future is set in the near future and will make you think about how we can get change.

The Ministry for the Future is a body set up by international agreement to tackle climate change. The book starts with their inability to do so.

The dire consequences of this for humanity are embodied in the terrifying experience of a man and the guilt he carries as a survivor. He is, in a way, the conscience of the book.

The story explores the inadequacy of the economics of growth and finance. It faces up to the powerlessness of governments, central banks and the system to make the change.

It explores the ways  individuals, groups and societies across the globe try to confront and stop climate change and environmental destruction. In different ways, they take on or work round economics, finance, the banks and governments—from the reformist and radical to the revolutionary.

And it does not duck the question of violence. Robinson raises thought provoking questions about what revolution could involve.

What happens in the book will cheer you, and make you think about revolution or at the very least that another world is possible. Ministry for the Future is brilliantly written and a great read.

• Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Published by Orbit, £9.99