Phil Denhoff
Updated a reading goal:
Read 5k pages in 2025
Progress so far: 787 / 5000 16%
I didn't enjoy "Ministry For the Future" nearly as much as some of KSR's other works like Red, Green, and Blue Mars. The book felt underdeveloped with ideas that I felt ridiculous. Using cryptocurrency as some sort of cure-all monetary solution - the idea that anonymity in currency would be such a useful asset or make money a better investment seems foolish.
The engineering projects, the sci-fi part of the book, also didn't convince me. Red Mars had the decency of being overtly fantastical; "Ministry For the Future" fell into a sort of uncanny valley where hearing about the projects, they just don't seem feasible.
I was also disappointed with the characters. I thought that this, like Red Mars, would be more of a story of many different perspectives, and I felt the focus on Frank and Mary, and in particular their relationship, dominated a lot more of the story than I would have liked. While it did make sense to focus on Mary as she was the minister for the Ministry For the Future, I just didn't find it that interesting.
I thought dialogue was boring at times. In particular, there was a section of the book that was just listing countries and their different climate solution projects which was extremely boring, and I wish I could have skipped it, but I was listening to an audiobook. The sections about the children of Kali and news articles about things like the drones were quite interesting. But most of the divergent non-narrative sections that added to the world were just kind of unengaging.
In short, it’s not something I’d reread.
I didn't enjoy "Ministry For the Future" nearly as much as some of KSR's other works like Red, Green, and Blue Mars. The book felt underdeveloped with ideas that I felt ridiculous. Using cryptocurrency as some sort of cure-all monetary solution - the idea that anonymity in currency would be such a useful asset or make money a better investment seems foolish.
The engineering projects, the sci-fi part of the book, also didn't convince me. Red Mars had the decency of being overtly fantastical; "Ministry For the Future" fell into a sort of uncanny valley where hearing about the projects, they just don't seem feasible.
I was also disappointed with the characters. I thought that this, like Red Mars, would be more of a story of many different perspectives, and I felt the focus on Frank and Mary, and in particular their relationship, dominated a lot more of the story than I would have liked. While it did make sense to focus on Mary as she was the minister for the Ministry For the Future, I just didn't find it that interesting.
I thought dialogue was boring at times. In particular, there was a section of the book that was just listing countries and their different climate solution projects which was extremely boring, and I wish I could have skipped it, but I was listening to an audiobook. The sections about the children of Kali and news articles about things like the drones were quite interesting. But most of the divergent non-narrative sections that added to the world were just kind of unengaging.
In short, it’s not something I’d reread.
Updated a reading goal:
Read 5k pages in 2025
Progress so far: 224 / 5000 4%
That ending was earth-shattering, but feels so right for the world.
This was a tough book to read at the start. I mean it's such a gross concept for a story — animal meat consumption is banned because of a suspected viral infection in non-human animals. And yet, consistently what I felt was that the book gave me an opportunity to look at modern industrial cattle & pig "farming" processes and think about how disgusting and inhumane they are. Yes, meat is more expensive if the cow is allowed to have a life. Is that such a bad thing? Do you need to eat meat at every meal? Of course not.
The writing was a bit hard to follow at times, and the translation is imperfect — for instance, manually translating the Spanish name for Soylent Green instead of, y'know, calling the movie "Soylent Green".
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Tender is the Flesh far more than I thought I would. So gross!
That ending was earth-shattering, but feels so right for the world.
This was a tough book to read at the start. I mean it's such a gross concept for a story — animal meat consumption is banned because of a suspected viral infection in non-human animals. And yet, consistently what I felt was that the book gave me an opportunity to look at modern industrial cattle & pig "farming" processes and think about how disgusting and inhumane they are. Yes, meat is more expensive if the cow is allowed to have a life. Is that such a bad thing? Do you need to eat meat at every meal? Of course not.
The writing was a bit hard to follow at times, and the translation is imperfect — for instance, manually translating the Spanish name for Soylent Green instead of, y'know, calling the movie "Soylent Green".
Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading Tender is the Flesh far more than I thought I would. So gross!