Tag: books

A Review – The Ministry for the Future

A review of a 2021 sci-fi book of how we confront a huge world-wide crisis, globally join forces to avert environmental disaster and create a new future for the planet. Is it wishful thinking?

The following is my Goodreads review of a 2021 sci-fi book that may be fiction but optimistically expands on current technology, some new scientific ideas and a global willingness to confront our environmental disaster. Where most science fiction stories paint a grim picture of the future, this one is a story of how we beat the odds and created a wiser and more humane world.

While much of Robinson’s works have described the far away future, this book contemplates a horrific disaster only years away that is the catalyst for finally changing the way we treat our environment on a global scale. Totally impossible to believe on its timescale and scope of change, it nevertheless provides some hopeful consolation that a bright future may still be possible for our planet.

PK

 The Ministry for the Future
 by Kim Stanley Robinson

 My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I’m generally not a sci-fi reader unless a book is strongly recommended or I hear it contains some interesting new ideas. The author KSR is obviously well known for his thinking and writing about the future by extrapolating present ideas or emerging technologies. I learned about this book while following Molly Wood’s “Everybody In the Pool” newsletter and podcast on environmental tech. There really is a growth of invention and investment in that sector – affirming a reality that there is capital and interest in solving our doomsday environment conundrum.

While this book has a weak storyline, it grabs the reader at the beginning with Frank living through the horrors of “The Great Indian Heat Wave” an event that kills millions within a single week. It shocks the entire world into finally becoming aware that the environmental problems need to be addressed. What seems to be implausible is that India becomes the model for solving these issues and the rest of the world seems willing to actually act together in solving it on a global scale. The Ministry of the Future become the catalyst for laying out big plans and our protagonist, Mary, is the cool director of the Ministry that can save the planet.

KSR asks us to believe that countries just a few years into the future will be willing to see past the politics and change their nationalistic attitudes for the good of the planet. Even China is seen as an enlightened, wise collaborator. This collaborative approach causes the planet to see benefits quickly with innovative solutions and within one lifetime.

Like most who read this book, I really enjoyed the innovative solutions that KSR presents like a carbon capture coin investment strategy (similar to bitcoin), pumping up trapped water from the polar icecaps, swarm drones, wide use of airships and the birth of a new beneficial social network. There’s even a mind-bending thought of using sanctioned positive terrorism on the bad environmental actors. His material is best with creative new ideas that have some basis in fact today. If only they were that simple to evolve.

After the initial few exciting chapters, the book shifts back and forth between different points of view and how the evolution of the Ministry creates the bureaucratic plan. The environment improves quickly. The storyline seems lost but observations on possible new solutions are worth the read. The Ministry has helped create a world that works together living peacefully on the same planet.



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A Review – Richard Ford’s Be Mine

Here’s a review of Richard Ford’s latest novel in the Frank Bascombe series. Frank has his son’s health problem to deal with as well as reconciling his past, present and future as he ages.

The following is my Goodreads review for this new Richard Ford book, one of my favorite authors. Ford’s famous for his character Frank Bascombe, a fictitious character now appearing in a fourth Bascombe novel. He’s full of wisdom and wit and always a pleasure to read. His everyman characters live ordinary, yet unique lives set in places and people you recognize – including many places in New Jersey! This one takes place mostly in a cold mid-west winter under uncomfortable circumstances. Not a joyful read, but always entertaining.

PK
Be MineBe Mine by Richard Ford
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wisdom is the currency Frank Bascombe has to offer readers who choose to explore the pages of Be Mine, or for that matter any of the other four Bascombe novels on living a life in these times. When I plumb my life (I’m 75) at the age of Frank (He’s 74), I can’t help but think he knows exactly where I am and what I’m thinking and experiencing.

Crafted by an extraordinarily talented writer and storyteller, Ford can make even the drollest facts interesting and draw you into a storyline that might otherwise turn off readers. The art is in the storytelling. His subtle magic will suck you in as you begin to discover a reality and hope that exists at any age.

Here he starts by posing the question, “What exactly is happiness”? Putting the messy details aside, he posits that it may be as simple as the “absence of unhappiness”. Yet how do we become and stay happy? Frank is reminded of this by memories of his mother and a high school reunion which impress upon him the secret of life is just to be happy; as if we could tailor our our actions and our circumstances to make it so.

Frank is in the that retirement stage of life of being partially connected to an old career by shifting into an easy, part time job working for Mike Mahoney, his ex-real estate partner who remains a friend and ally to Frank. Those past tumultuous years (documented so well in all the Frank Bascombe novels) of being a writer, teacher, real estate agent, husband, father, lover and friend have gone by. Life is simpler now with a stressless job, a few trusted friends, a comfortable home and a realization of his successes and failures in his life, family and career. In a word, Frank is “happy”. That’s not in a joyful way but in resignation. The absence of unhappiness gives him no right to complain.

Frank has previously survived a young child dying, a divorce, an estranged daughter, a second wife leaving him and numerous other challenges that life has put in front of him. Yet through all this he has found that life is good and there’s little left to go after. It is a waiting game as to what’s coming up next?

Frank’s immediate dilemma that has shaken his world is the fact that his 47-year old bachelor son, Paul, has been given a terminal diagnosis of fast staging ALS. Paul lives alone but near his dad. His sister can provide limited help remotely. So, Frank decides his life must change as he moves from his comfortable home in New Jersey to Minnesota to assist him. Suddenly, Frank is shaken from his comfortable “happy” life with the idea that he must do something to help Paul.

Knowing Paul’s ildeocycrancies – he has many – Frank offers to take him on a crazy last car trip to visit the Badlands and Mt. Rushmore. It’s a quirky road adventure that fit both their personalities and the bizarre timeline they find themselves in. This is mid-winter, February (around Valentine’s Day) at the Mayo Clinic where Paul is a participant in an advanced ALS research program which only leads to the prognosis that he has little time left.

It’s a story of both father and son estrangement and love for each other. Maybe the biggest gift they can give each other is their remaining time together. Both share a similar sense of humor in their dialog that offers the reader a hundred different funny and entertaining moments they share together, for the last time. Both are self-deprecating. Despite his serious disease Paul insists on calling his ALS condition “Al’s). Paul’s life career goal was to be a ventriloquist which never fully materialized. But his years developing greeting cards for Hallmark shows in his dialog with Frank.

Ford knows how to make the most of words and branding to help bring home the commercial and absurd aspects of our everyday lives. For example, he points out businesses like “Free Will Cleaners, Lint Free or Dye”, “Little Pharma Drugs” and “Vietnamese-American Hospitality”. One of Paul’s favorite t-shirts says “Cornhole IS America”. Many commercial brands from Walmart to Starbucks to Dunkin Donuts are woven into the story which lends to its legitimacy.

The adventure takes him through mid-western America as two keen observers like modern-day Tocqueville’s. Visits to the Comanche Mall, the Northern Lights Octoplex. the Corn Palace, Fawning Buffalo Casino and Mt. Rushmore tell a different story of today’s America. They meet medical staff, protestors, nurses, ex-military, loving couples and ethnic strivers. Just common good folks out in this cold unforgiving land of promise.

On Comanche Mall…
Shopping malls all emit the same climate of endgame up and down their carnivorous expanse. (They were never meant to be places where people belonged.) The mealy light emanates from nowhere. Air is a warm-cool Temperature found only here, and riding it is a cotton candy aroma, like at a state fair. “When you wish upon a Star” sung by a cricket is being piped in on top of everything.”


On Mt. Rushmore…
(Paul’s observation to Frank)– “It’s completely pointless and ridiculous, and It’s great.” His eyes are jittering and gleaming. “There’s not enough in the world that’s intentionally that stupid.” (Frank’s observation)He is smiling beatifically, as if he’s experienced an extraordinary discovery and surprise. A confirmation. I’m merrily happy to believe we see the same thing the same way once – more or less. It is pointless and it is stupid. And if seeing it can’t fix him, it can a little. “We’re bonded,” Paul says slyly still smiling, gazing with complete awareness toward the presidents. I am his favorite turd.


There’s no happy ending to this story as you might expect. Frank appears to have reached a new awareness of his late stage in life and a resignation that he had done all he could. Maybe it’s time to look at things fresh again and renew friendships. With Paul gone, he has eliminated the “unhappiness” of seeing his child pass but re-gained a stable“happiness”. At least for now. With happiness there is hope.

My hope is there’s more Frank Bascombe to come.

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