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Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Checkout 19: A Novel (2022) by Claire-Louise Bennett


Book Review
Checkout 19: A Novel (2022)
by Claire-Louise  Bennett

   I was wowed by Checkout 19, the latest book by English author Claire-Louise Bennett. The narrator is a uni student in the UK, working at a grocery store during breaks and musing on her past as she works. The entire book takes the form of a monologue a la Thomas Bernhard- who is my favorite author.  Thus, I loved every minute of Checkout 19, and it made me wish there were Audiobook editions of Thomas Bernhard's books.   I wish there were more books like this one that I could read and Claire-Louise Bennett is an important voice in contemporary literary fiction.

The Ministry for the Future (2020) by Kim Stanley Robinson


Book Review
The Ministry for the Future (2020)
by Kim Stanley Robinson

  I've read a few different summary articles revolving around the literary trend of "cli-fi" which is short for climate fiction- a label that seeks to eschew the combination of the words science and fiction.   Climate focused science fiction is as old as the genre itself, but J.G. Ballard wrote a well known novel called The Drowned World in 1962 that was clearly set in a post-Global Warming environment.  The modern idea itself, that emissions of carbon causes greenhouse gases to heat the earth dates to the 1950's and it was popularized in the 1980's.  Obviously it's still controversial.   Kim Stanley Robinson is a prolific writer of best-selling science fiction that is known for being progressive in terms of the suite of ideas being advocated, scientists as heroes, the conquest of space, if not in terms of his representations. 

  When The Ministry for the Future was released in 2020, Robinson gave many interviews where he indicated that he was trying to use his powers of imagination in a more or less concrete manner and that the intent of The Ministry for the Future is serious.  I found his take absorbing.  The Ministry for the Future is created by the UN to represent future generations and given a budge and headquarters in Switzerland.  World action is galvanized after a "wet bulb" incident (when combined temperature and humidity prevent the human body from cooling down, resulting in death) kills 20 million people in India, and things begin to happy.

  The head of the Ministry of Sound is a former Irish politician who seems to be modeled on Mary Robinson, her main aide a ex-Nepali Marxist by way of Indian operator who heads their "black ops" division.   They are helped on their way by the so-called Children of Kali, an amorphous, poorly described network that perpetrates hugely succesful global acts of terrorism.  Robinson introduces ideas by the bucket full that draw from across the ideological spectrum- blockchain based currencies pegged to carbon removal, drilling through the Antarctic ice and pumping water up to be refrozen, genetically eliminating all cattle on earth with a modified mad cow virus, shutting down air travel by bringing down hundreds of private planes. 

  Again, while reading The Ministry for the Future I had the same thought I often have when thinking seriously about the future, which is that any kind of monstrous, global disaster that wipes out half of humanity would quite easily be a net win for the environment and the Earth itself.   It's hard to make any kind of logically consistent argument in favor of humanity as an ever expanding species.  Surely there needs to be some kind of limitation of the endless EXPANSION of human activity and humanity itself.  Obviously, the personal decision whether to reproduce is the only thing an individual can control, but isn't there a seriously strong argument against the endless expansion of economic activity?  The ultimate weakness of the neo-liberal economic order is that the externalities of fossil fuel driven economic activities- those costs that are not assumed by the business earning the money from the activity- subsume the profit because eventually the world will end because of that activity. 

  So who will stop these businesses?  Only state or super state level actors.  And can Democracies do it?  Probably not, because these businesses are huge interest groups in every democracy in the world.  That leaves non democracies and non state actors, so Dictators and Terrorists, or I guess, a UN Agency run by an Irish politician.  I wouldn't bet on the UN. 

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