Kim Stanley Robinson 2020. The Ministry for the Future. London: Orbit. 523 pp.

Not a narrative novel but a kind of hopeful future history told in a long series of vignettes, of which one series contains the thread what narrative there is, that of the main characters and the international Ministry for the Future, charged with rectifying climate change. Other vignettes are a bit cute to work, as when photons are given first person for a couple of pages. Has moments of insight, inspired solutions (like pumping groundwater from under glaciers to slow them up) and anticipates a few current events (like faltering Twitter) but misses the obvious elephant in the room: warfare. Instead it is naively hopeful that international co-operation of governments (partly) and bureaucracies will prevail. Easy to see why it would rate as a favourite of Barack Obama.