1. Thread. crookedtimber.org/2021/05/03/the… We’re running a Crooked Timber seminar on Kim Stanley Robinson’s extraordinary book the Ministry for the Future. This book has already gotten lots of attention (see @ezraklein vox.com/2020/11/30/217… and @BarackObama
https://twitter.com/barackobama/status/1339631669104570370?lang=en)
2. So what we want to do is to help the book start doing its practical work in the world. It's a novel that both sets out to make the consequences of climate change as viscerally as possible, and to think through what other economic, technological, political and social changes...
3. might help fight it and perhaps, over the longer term, even start to turn it back. It is in short, a book that is intended to be read as a novel, but also to start arguments and get people moving to start doing things. We've brought together a number of different people.
4. The first piece is by @OlufemiOTaiwo crookedtimber.org/2021/05/03/wha… . He asks why the book depicts catastrophe leading to political transformation in India, but more of the same in the US and developed world - a doubling down on a refreshed version of elite led global capitalism.
5. The participants variously engage with the book, argue with it, talk through its fictional choices and use it to think through which of the changes it talks about might work, which won't, and what could maybe be done instead. When it's finished, we'll publish Stan's reply.
6. We hope that others engage as we have, and start doing things too. One reason why the book has had such an extraordinary reception is that it's a catalyst for these kinds of conversation - people have needed a book like this for a long time. Now let's get working. Finis.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
