A gripping gateway to future possibilities
This is a big book in every sense: 576 pages long, spanning decades in time and most parts of the world in place. MFF is often cited as a leading example of Thrutopian fiction: meaning that it offers us a picture of the future which is realistic but at least partly positive.
The sheer scale of the book makes it hard to sum up, but also means that it becomes an immersive experience to read it, so you start to inhabit a convincing version of the future. The book is also classed as ‘hard science fiction’, i.e. based on plausible facts.
There are many voices in this book, but the main thread is around Mary Murphy, head of the Ministry for the Future, a body set up under the Paris Agreement, which aims to champion the rights and needs of future generations.
Seen from the viewpoint of these heavily discounted future beings, the active, manipulative selfishness of big business, the bureaucratic inertia of the international banks (“rulers of the world”, as Mary calls them), and the widespread denial, all feel truly painful, especially as the scale and intensity of climate disaster grows.
A catalytic disaster is an extreme heatwave in India, which kills 20 million people within a month, but propels India into becoming a role model of sustainability: closing its coal mines, becoming carbon neutral, moving completely to organic, regenerative agriculture.
This sounds a plausible scenario, as do many of its other ideas. During the 2030s, and 2040s, we see climate terrorism becoming widespread, using cheap drones to destroy fossil-fuel systems (e.g. air travel, dirty container ships) and assassinate individuals making big money from polluting activities. Cows across the world are infected with BSE, so meat consumption collapses.
The book offers some attractive visions of how technology could step in when fossil-fuelled transport collapses, such as hydrofoil schooners with sails and electric motors coupled with photovoltaic sail fabric, and airships.
Overall, what MFF depicts is a future of growing chaos and conflict, in which, slowly and painfully, many right things begin to happen. As confidence in money almost collapses, the international banks at last adopt Mary’s plan for a new carbon currency to reward cutting emissions and not extracting fossil fuels. This is quantitative easing on a huge, global scale, but slowly it works, and atmospheric CO2 finally starts to fall.
If, like me, you’d like some glimmers of hope despite the many shades of gloom ahead, I recommend this book. Yes, it’s optimistic, but it is plausible too: progress could happen, and if it does, it will probably have to grow out of things getting worse before they improve, as they do in this book.