Arcadiana

A Blog about Literature, Culture and the Environment

Narratives of Resilience: Human and Non-Human Resistance in Climate Fiction during the Anthropocene

Hope in dark times
Ms. Kanika Godara & Dr. Sudeep Kumar, Central University of Haryana April 4, 2024

by Kanika Godara and Sudeep Kumar

American climate fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson is known for his progressive views, which led him to oppose the dystopian mindset. His writing “stands out for its steadfast commitment to utopian possibilities” (Heise 18), and he is recognized as one of the rare modern writers who persistently and consistently weave utopian ideals into his stories. Robinson persistently presents his audience with future scenarios, including climate change, grounded in science. From his work The Wild Shore (1984), in which he makes an “announcement of… The “Anthropocene” caused by human-made, terraforming climate change.” Robinson has made the earth’s climate a central issue in his work.

The author explores various themes in his works, including terraforming in the Mars trilogy (1992-1999), exploitation of natural resources in Antarctica (1999), science in the Capital Trilogy (2004-2007), and a flooded New York City in the book New York 2140 (2017). In these works, the author portrays the challenges faced by individuals in adapting to the harsh climate conditions (Markley 13). Additionally, the author explores the tension between competition and cooperation within the global climate crisis (Houser 203). Similarly, the novel under consideration The Ministry for the Future (2020), in this paper extensively addresses the issue of global warming. 

Kim Stanley Robinson’s most recent work of speculative fiction, The Ministry for the Future (2020), takes readers on a trip into the not-so-distant future where he shows the many effects of climate change and proposes a counter-Utopian solution to this worldwide catastrophe, imagining what a collective effort to lessen the impact of the problem could look like. Through the use of evidence-based storytelling, Robinson crafts a future history that gives voice to those who are underrepresented in popular narratives and gives them a chance to share their experiences. A wide variety of people, from miners and scientists to geoengineering project participants and even an anthropomorphized carbon atom or history itself, have their voices heard. Importantly, Robinson incorporates aspects of non-fictional notes into his work. 

The story of The Ministry for the Future begins in 2025, with scenes set during a heat wave in Uttar Pradesh, India, where all but one American charity worker, Frank May, aged 22 years, perishes. Because these types of events are believed to overload the power grid, a power outage occurs at the same time as the highest ever recorded wet bulb temperature, which suggests a combination of heat and humidity that is fatal for humans. Right from the outset, there is a significant tension between the present and the hypothetical future due to the near-future setting and the realist backdrop. One follows Frank May and his train of thought in the opening chapter, which stands out from the remainder of the novel with its apocalyptic yet incredibly plausible and scientifically imaginable vision.

The author employs the tense “he suppressed a cough” to provide readers with a vivid depiction of the tragic events in which he is an involuntary participant. The individual experienced a recurrence of coughing due to the excessive heat of the air, akin to inhaling a blazing fire (Robinson 3). Because “the world both inside and outside well higher than body temperatures ought to be” (12), the lake water in which Frank and the other city dwellers seek refuge does not offer any relief. The lake and his corpse nearly fuse together. Animals perish before humans, even if Frank tries to aid them. Older adults and young people die first. After a while, Frank is only left alive; when his rescuers discover him, they say that his skin looks like it was boiled. While doing so, it encourages readers (particularly those in the North) to put themselves in the shoes of those impacted by environmental disasters and consider the ways in which these effects have manifested in the real world so far and the dangers that may arise in the future.

Following this terrifying prologue, the story examines reactions to and consequences of the growing consensus that action is necessary to combat climate change. There are two main characters in the book, American charity worker Frank May is among the few who survived the climate disaster described in the first chapter and he is currently in India. It should come as no surprise that he is burdened with survivors’ guilt and traumatized by PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder)2. The other main character, Mary Murphy, is a politician from Ireland. She is appointed to lead the United Nations agency, the Ministry for the Future, which was established to ensure compliance with the Paris Agreement3 and other global climate treaties. Despite its lack of resources and authority to enforce the agreements, the Paris Climate Agreement (COP 21)4 (Robinson 109) can nonetheless provide financial backing for small-scale climate initiatives and put moral pressure on governments and banks. 

Compared to Robinson’s earlier works, The Ministry for the Future has much less structure. Even though Frank and Mary keep popping up, there are many other characters and their points of view. Unlike many modern literary novels, including those that dabble in science fiction, Robinson has little interest in delving into bourgeois interiority. Instead, these two main characters are intentionally simplistic and uninteresting. Their unique personality traits are shaped by their interactions with the environment, which include economic, social, political, and technological factors.

The world system cannot be entirely cognized or experienced; hence, Spinozian comprehension of the system sub specie aeternitatis or a Hegelian grasp of the system in its dialectical fullness are both implausible, according to Robinson. Given this, Robinson presents some viewpoints, some of which are only tenuously related. All of these points of view are based on limited, specific experiences, but they all have far-reaching consequences that affect individuals worldwide. Rather than being a seamless whole, the book is filled with gaps; this agrees with Robinson’s argument that anything that was completely formed would be inadequate in terms of depiction.

Writing science fiction has become “the realism of our time,” according to Robinson, who asserts in multiple interviews and articles, because it is an open, infinitely expandable, and never-completed endeavor. A “heightened sense,” to borrow Jameson’s phrase, of our soon-to-come social reality in all its hard actuality and still-open potentiality” is given to us by the novel’s plurality. Apocalypse prevention and surviving the horrors of climate change are themes that run throughout the Ministry for the Future. There is no utopian or messianic vision of revolution presented in the book. Even just seeing this would help us understand what we are fighting for; thus, it is a win-win situation. Thoughtful analyses of realistic policies with significant benefits that could be put into practice in our current reality abound in this book.

While it is widely acknowledged that no single technology can prevent a global catastrophe, the collective use of these technologies and a society that encourages their research and development can slow or stop climate change’s uncontrollable effects. These detailed explanations aim to show us that these processes are possible in the real world, given our current technology and social and political institutions. Robinson acknowledges that global political demonstrations and environmental terrorism will be needed to pass these sensible restrictions. The novel’s protagonists migrate to carbon-neutral airships because ecoterrorist drone assaults damage fuel-consuming aircraft so often that even the rich are scared to fly them. 

The Ministry for the Future emphasizes optimism. It assumes our capitalist overlords can be convinced or intimidated into accepting the reforms needed to save humanity. As indicated, the narrative favors reform over revolt. A better world situation is presented in the narrative. Robinson suggests (maybe correctly) that American conditions are so bad and irreversible that they cannot be fixed, although she says little about the US in the book. Although he mostly writes about California, the setting of many of his novels, Robinson does portray certain progressive environmental efforts made by individual states. However, according to the book, other countries fare far better than America. A new government is elected with the sole purpose of ensuring that a climate disaster of this magnitude never occurs again after the climate disaster in India completely discredits Modi and the Hindu nationalists.

The story also imagines a China that maintains its environmentally friendly economic policies (in comparison to the rest of the world) but gives up on its authoritarian rule (not because it’s nice, but because it doesn’t work) and gives more rights to its exploited working class. Even though anti-immigration right-wing parties will be around Europe in 40 years, they will not be able to seize power or derail the liberal tradition’s half-enlightened internationalism.

In the latter part of the story, during the latter half of the 20th century, readers are introduced to the inaugural global commemoration of Mother Earth, which subsequently gives rise to Mother Gaia religion. The sum of these descriptions is an imagined cultural and social movement in response to the climatic catastrophe. Ideas for solutions often emerge on the fly, unrelated to the logistics of putting them into action. As an example, Frank May hears about the 2000-Watt society as he strolls through Zurich; in this society, people make decisions about their food, transportation, and heating based on the fact that 2000 Watts is equivalent to the energy produced globally per individual (195). Mary Murphy and the other members of the housing cooperative that she rented from her former coworker Trudi Maggiore adhere to the regulations that Frank had previously hinted at in his story about the 2000-Watt civilization.

This information is revealed toward the novel’s conclusion. The idea of adhering to these guidelines was introduced earlier in the text and is already familiar to us. This highlights how the wealth of ideas throughout the novel can also serve to challenge our thinking. This concept urges placing the person inside bigger systems that we are a part of and dependent on, as seen in the opening scenes during the Indian heat wave when the air conditioner stops working owing to an electrical shortage. Several individuals persist in their efforts to modify the system using both grassroots and top-down approaches. 

In sum, we get the best-case scenario from The Ministry of the Future. Inevitably, there were mismanaged policies, terrorist assaults, right-wing revanchists, and corrupt regimes that cost lives. By the novel’s end, the world looks to have avoided global disaster, but climate and social advances are precarious. The planet needs tireless labor and huge worldwide unity forever. Thankfully, things have improved for now. Based on present resources and technologies, The Ministry for the Future (2020) shows that a better world is possible. While we realize the necessity of these scientifically attainable but politically untenable advances, we know we are only helpless with them. 

Time changes the Ministry’s dystopian future vision to utopian. It depicts a society “as considerably worse than the society in which that reader lived” (Wegner 81), nearly collapsed due to systemic inaction on climate change, from the start to the scenes of the apocalyptic heat wave, which eerily reflect what could happen in the readers’ lifetimes soon. By the end of the book, the reader should see a society “considerably better than the society in which that reader lived” (Wegner 81), a utopian vision of a world ready to address global warming’s socioeconomic and environmental challenges. Robinson fills a narrative gap (Rothman 4) by showing how we can rewrite the plans rather than exhibiting the finished product. The Ministry for the Future uses multiple perspectives to help readers consider their past, present, and future.

About the authors: 

Kanika Godara is a PhD scholar at the Department of English and Foreign Languages, Central University of Haryana, Mahendergarh.

Dr. Sudeep Kumar is an Assistant Professor at Department of English and Foreign Languages, Central University of Haryana, Mahendergarh.

Works cited:

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