Book Review: "The Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson

The Ministry for the Future (2020)
Kim Stanley Robinson (1952)
563 pages

Although some progress has been made in recent years on reducing the rate of increase of greenhouse gas emissions, deeply entrenched economic interests – and the political representatives they bankroll – continue to slow-walk, if not largely stymie, measures to meaningfully reduce emissions. As if to highlight this reality, last year yet another summit labeled as the last, best chance to avoid the worst impacts of climate change produced little more than non-binding resolutions – the equivocating outcome of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting of the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow leaving little reason for optimism that countries can marshal the will to act decisively.

As a consequence, it remains difficult to envision how substantive progress can be achieved in time to avoid the ever more destructive impacts of climate change predicted to come. This can make it tempting to extrapolate our present direction as yielding a dystopian world, one in which a collapsing biosphere brings civilization to its knees. Certainly, such a dark vision of the future seems more plausible than an optimistic one.

Perhaps, however, the most likely scenario lies somewhere in between such extremes, with humankind, as it so often does, muddling through, progress coming in fits and starts – too late to avoid substantial deterioration of our economic and social well-being but soon enough to avoid a complete collapse of civilization. Such is the middling path that science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson charts in his novel The Ministry for the Future, in which he imagines the next several decades as a bitter struggle between those whose profits depend on continuation of the status quo, and those whose frustration and anger boils over in response to climate change’s increasingly dramatic and deadly impacts.

Robinson opens his story with two events that could hardly be more dissimilar, but that together come to catalyze increasingly aggressive action on addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

The first occurs in 2024, during COP29, at which a new agency is created, one tasked with being an “advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens … [and] all living creatures” (16) regarding the impacts of climate change. Quickly dubbed The Ministry for the Future, the new agency sets-up its offices in Zurich and begins exploring ways to generate support for present-day policies to fight climate change by leveraging concern for its devastating future impacts – the storms of our grandchildren, to borrow the title from physicist and climate activist James Hansen’s 2009 clarion call for action (my review of Hansen’s book linked to at right).

Shortly after the agency’s founding comes a second critical event: a deadly heat wave in India that kills millions of people in the span of just a few days. This sudden, shockingly large loss of life transforms India socially and politically; most dramatically, it incites a militant movement of environmental activists committed to using any means necessary to force civilization away from its addiction to fossil fuels. The group operates in the shadows, undertaking increasingly deadly actions against a variety of industries with significant carbon footprints, forcing these businesses to accelerate their adoption of more sustainable products and services to survive.

The success of these attacks in accelerating the shift to a greener economy, together with increasingly dire climate catastrophes, lead the dedicated but initially cautious staff at the Ministry for the Future to begin pursuing more aggressive policies. One of the principal plot lines in the story follows the work of the agency head and her subordinates as they, in large part through trial and error, search for ways to achieve changes that will stem the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

Through the work of the agency, as well as that of other organizations and individuals, Robinson explores potential paths forward on the issue of climate change. The variety of approaches he touches on – financial, technical and social – include both the realistic and the outlandish, and many in between. Some prove effective and others not, with most occupying a gray area of uncertain benefit; nearly all, however, lead to unforeseen consequences, whether environmentally, socially or otherwise.

The cover blurb on the edition I read captures perfectly the style Robinson has adopted in building his story around the pursuit of a sustainable future, describing the book as a “science fiction nonfiction novel.” Using short chapters of often just a few pages, Robinson alternates between forwarding the narrative plot, and presenting vignettes on different topics related to climate change. These latter include literary descriptions of nature and its processes, explorations of economic and technical solutions that could potentially reduce emissions or address climate impacts, and depictions by nameless individuals of the impact of climate change on their lives and their communities.

The whole comes to have a bit of the feel of a workshop or brainstorming session on climate change’s impact and potential solutions, with the broader conceit of a novel tying it all together. The fictional format frees Robinson from the burden of the rigor that would be necessary for a non-fiction treatment of such ideas, and gives him the ability to explore them in more intimate, human terms.

Not surprisingly, Robinson portrays the most consistent and consequential resistance to the implementation and success of these policies as coming from those with a vested interest in the status quo. And, in his telling, the key to overcoming such opposition and accelerating the shift to sustainability lies in the growing militancy of environmentalist groups so horrified by the deadly impacts of climate catastrophes that they feel justified in employing aggressive and even deadly acts. Their success then leads political agencies, such as the Ministry for the Future, to take a more forceful stand in pursuing policies, as opposed to simply relying on reasoned argument.

This depiction of not only the success of such deadly acts but also their necessity raises a question in relation to the real-world situation regarding climate change: we read in the media about groups that strike out against individuals or organizations that they, for whatever reason, feel deserve it – by doxing them, launching cyber-attacks, or even, as in the 1960’s, with bombings. But, why then haven’t we seen this kind of aggressiveness from those in the environmental community who view climate change as an existential threat, if not necessarily for humankind, then at least for civilization as we know it?

Perhaps the environmental community is simply made up largely of people for whom such militant measures are an anathema, or who continue to feel that changes can yet be made in time to avoid the worst of future climate disasters. Or it could be that, as Robinson imagines in his novel, such aggressive reactions are yet to come, in the wake of some truly devastating climate disaster, one that kills millions. At that point, as in the story, it may not even be environmentalists who reach for more aggressive tactics, but rather those directly impacted by the destruction and death, and who feel disenfranchised from any political ability to effect change.

Another issue that Robinson identifies, but somehow also sidesteps, is that while climate change is a global phenomenon, any particular impact occurs locally. Climate disasters can certainly occur at several different locations simultaneously, but each of these still has the feel of a local event. And, as he points out relative to such events in his story: 

people had a very hard time imagining that catastrophe could happen to them, until it did. So until the climate was actually killing them, people had a tendency to deny it could happen. To others, yes; to them, no. This was a cognitive error that, like most cognitive errors, kept happening even when you knew of its existence and prevalence. (349)

This misunderstanding applies even for the dramatically impactful event that kills millions to open his story: as the rest of the world is shocked, but then goes back about their business.

And yet, in Robinson’s story, while the militant group that emerges from this local disaster begins by engaging politically against its home country government, it quickly shifts to a more global stance, arguing that the problem has largely been created by the leading Western industrial economies, over the past century and a half. For that reason, they recognize the need to act on a global scale, to carry out dramatic and deadly actions to get the response they seek. And Robinson portrays them as doing so successfully.

But the cognitive error described above could be expected to lead those in other countries to resist the pressure being brought by what would clearly be considered environmental terrorists, likely leading to a military response against them. Robinson, however, doesn’t portray countries as effectively countering the acts of this underground group. In part he links this to the development of the kinds of small, distributed, difficult-to-counter weaponry (such as dramatized here) that would allow such groups to successfully carry out attacks on a global scale by rendering traditional military operations relatively impotent. But ultimately, it’s somewhat unclear why the group doesn’t generate a more aggressive response against it.

It's a minor quibble, however, about an otherwise provocative and timely novel. In The Ministry for the Future, Robinson creates a vision of how the fight over climate change could play out over the next few decades, as increasingly dire climate disasters motivate those most impacted to strike out at those who continue to prosper from inaction. Into an engaging plot that follows the struggles of activists fighting to slow the rise of greenhouse gas emissions, Robinson weaves vignettes on climate change and its impacts, and on technical, economic and social approaches being brought to bear, making his novel an engaging mix of fictional and real-world drama.

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Other notes and information:

The question raised above, of why the doxing, cyberattacks and other direct actions against particular individuals doesn’t seem to take place in support of environmental causes, could also be asked for the increasing frustration and anger over sky-rocketing inequality, and even other causes. If Robinson’s vision of environmental groups becoming more militant in a near-future with powerful, decentralized weaponry comes true, will such methods also be used by other groups, for other reasons? And, though the consequences of these methods seem largely positive in the novel, will the presence of such kinds of weapons instead tip the world over into a violent and destructive melee between groups of many different stripes? 

 Robinson’s approach in The Ministry of the Future of imaging a future for mankind that is as messy and muddled as its present parallels that of earlier of his novels, such as 2312 (my review linked to at right).

 

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003)
Mark Haddon (1962)
226 pages

For those who love to read, the serendipitous discovery of a wonderful book can take many forms. One of the most magical for me is when a family member or friend recommends or gifts a book that I can with confidence say I was highly unlikely to have ever come across on my own – or to have selected even if I did – and to discover an enthralling story that I wonder how I had missed.

I experienced this most recently with Mark Haddon’s novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, a book I had not heard of before being gifted it by my friend Carilee. Haddon’s story begins innocently enough as an enjoyable read, before a heart-rending moment half-way through leads to a courageous and poignant journey of self-discovery.

The story opens with fifteen-year-old Christopher discovering a neighbor’s dog has been killed. Deciding to follow in the steps of one of his favorite characters, Sherlock Holmes, Christopher sets out to discover who did it.

Christopher narrates the story, and early on we learn that while he feels a special connection to animals, he has trouble understanding human expressions and emotions, and he hates being touched, or surrounded by crowds of people – stimulating environments causing his brain to effectively shut down to prevent a kind of information overload. On the other hand, he has a photographic memory and a profoundly logical way of viewing the world and solving problems, both of which help him manage the challenges he faces as he carries on with his investigation.

Perhaps most importantly, Christopher has a dogged persistence that keeps him pushing forward, even as obstacles, both external and personal, frustrate his progress at seemingly every step. This trait becomes most evident when his detective work eventually leads him to a shocking discovery, one that turns him onto a path of events that completely upend his life.

Haddon presents an unflinching but profoundly compassionate portrait of Christopher. By allowing him to narrate the story, as opposed to using the third person, Haddon allows readers a more subtle view into Christopher’s world. We see him as he views himself – his recognition of his own capabilities and limitations, and his acknowledgement of his impact on his family and others. We learn, too, the ways in which he has come to manage his life around the realities of his situation.

Perhaps most striking is Haddon’s portrayal of Christopher’s growth as the story evolves: though by the end of the story Christopher takes risks beyond what he could have imagined before, he remains essentially the same person. As readers, we are forced to confront our expectation that Christopher will be somehow fundamentally transformed by the growth he experiences – lose his fear of being touched for example, or no longer sink into himself or throw tantrums when confronted with an over-stimulating environment or a situation that challenges his expectations. But that is not in the cards; Christopher, like each of us, has his particular personality and way of dealing and interacting with the world, and as Haddon’s story makes clear, growth happens for each of us with these largely inalterable constraints.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time draws a reader into what is at first a seemingly quite straight-forward and comfortable relationship with its main character, Christopher … and then explodes that simplicity with a profoundly shocking and traumatic revelation. In its wake, we watch Christopher persevere in the face of both his own fears and the circumscribed expectations that his family and the world have for him.

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Other notes and information:

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Finding the Mother Tree" by Suzanne Simard

Finding the Mother Tree (2021)
Suzanne Simard (1960)
348 pages

The expression not being able to see the forest for the trees takes on a whole other level of meaning for readers of Suzanne Simard’s remarkable work Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest . A professor of Forest Ecology, Simard has spent the past several decades seeking to understand how forests function, and what she has learned has dramatically overturned long-standing, deeply held beliefs in the timber industry and among forest managers and scientists. Through extensive experimentation, she has discovered that while a forest may appear to be a collection of individual trees competing for precious resources, it is in reality a deeply interconnected community, in which trees share resources and communicate timely warnings to one another, even across species. In the wake of reading her book, a walk through the woods becomes a profoundly changed experience.

Simard grew up in the thickly forested mountain ranges of British Columbia, Canada, within a family deeply involved in the timber industry. This engendered in her a deep connection to trees and forests, and by college she began working seasonal jobs for logging companies. One of her assignments included driving out to clear-cuts that had been replanted with seedlings in order to assess the health of the crop, and this activity led her to the question that has come to drive her life’s work: Why are so many of the seedlings doing so poorly?

Over the decades that followed she doggedly pursed answers to that question. Her key, initial realization came from her examination of the root systems of trees and other plants. Noticing the prodigious variety of fungi attached to the roots, she began studying what was known about the role particular fungi play for different species of trees and plants.

Coming to understand how fungi allowed trees to access more resources, she eventually traced the fungi from the roots of individual trees and found them extending and connecting to the roots of nearby trees, apparently linking the trees together in a kind of network, one that crossed species. This observation led her to a groundbreaking insight that she would spend decades exploring, demonstrating, and expanding upon: forests are not filled with isolated trees competing with one another; instead, forests are a community of trees that sustain one another, even across species.

Her book is structured around the cycle of her subsequent discoveries. In each case, she first describes the origins of a critical insight she has while exploring the forests of British Columbia with the eyes of one deeply immersed in the natural world; next, she describes the complex experimental trials she sets up to evaluate her hypothesis; and, finally, we share with her the breathtaking moment when her research validates her idea. As she then carries that conclusion with her on subsequent outings into the forests, we follow her thinking as it leads her to yet another, further insight, starting the cycle anew.

Simard did this work for many years from her position within the British Columbia Ministry of Forests. However, despite her carefully designed and executed experimental trials demonstrating the validity of her hypotheses of how trees grow better as part of a varied community, Simard’s results represented such a significant departure from the forestry orthodoxy of the late 20th century – that trees compete with one another, and so to maximize growth of a particular species all other species in that location must be comprehensively eliminated – that she faced increasingly virulent push back from both those inside the forestry industry and those in academia supported by that industry. Eventually, continuing her work in her position in the government ministry became untenable, and so she left to take a position at the University of British Columbia, where she has been free to pursue her work with less restriction.

In must be noted that even for Simard, each new insight has represented such a radical departure from what she had learned in school that it is immediately followed by a kind of stunned wonder: “can it really be true?” This happened most strikingly as challenges in her personal life led her to seek refuge in yet another walk through a forest in British Columbia, during which she came to the concept of the presence in forests of the Mother Tree mentioned in the book’s title, ancient trees that serve as the hub of support for an entire grouping of trees in the forest. Validating the key roles played by such trees through subsequent experimentation, this discovery represents the culmination of her work so far: that an established tree will eventually become the center – the mother – of a vast network of surrounding trees; that while it helps sustain and nurture a variety of spices in it orbit, it clearly recognizes and gives preference to its own offspring, the seedlings of its own seeds; and that, at the end of its life, it unloads its remaining resources out into its network as it dies.

Though the existence of such mother trees represents the capstone of the work she describes in the book, she continues her research, and closes by hinting at the possibility that forests – through the complex networks of connections between trees and plants – exchange some level of awareness that could be considered thinking, if in a radically different way from human thought. Always careful not to get ahead of her data, she makes no concrete claims here, only raises the possibility. But her decades of surprising insights and carefully researched results – radically transforming our understanding of forest ecology and indicating more sustainable approaches for maintaining them – give her a solid ground on which to continue probing the boundaries of our current understanding.

Although the trees are the obvious stars of Simard’s book, it becomes clear that what makes the cooperation between the trees possible is the seemingly endless variety of fungi in the soil: “An intricately woven rug. … They unlocked essential nutrients. … [Through their] networks, all the plants in this forest belonged to one another.” (168-9) The central role fungi play led me to wonder if it’s not the fungi that are the masters here, effectively “farming” trees in order to access the resources they themselves need. Could it be that, through a long evolutionary process, fungi came to the beneficial solution of increasing their accessible resources by linking trees together into a cooperative community? Perhaps humans simply have a biased viewpoint – living aboveground with the trees – that leads us to see the fungi as supporting the trees and not vice versa. Of course, perhaps the deeper truth is that there are no masters, and it’s simply an integrated dance of life…

At one point in her text it almost seemed that Simard was considering such an orientation, but she doesn’t end up going there. Instead, she notes “similarities with our own human brains,” with “Mother trees [as] the majestic hubs at the center of forest communication, protection, and sentience.” The fungi in this view represent the links through which trees send “chemical signals. Chemicals identical to our own neurotransmitters. Signals created by ions cascading across fungal membranes.” (5, italics in original)

Whether describing her view of how trees work together in a forest, or the long personal road that led to her remarkable discoveries, Simard wears her heart on her sleeve in what is effectively an autobiography of her work and life. The opposite of a staid, scientific telling, she manages to convey her shock of realization as each insight about what might be happening between the trees of the forest occurs to her, and the thrill of discovery as her carefully planned and executed experiments validate her hypotheses. As well, we experience the raw emotions of her personal challenges, including the aggressive pushback from powerful interests within the government and industry timber groups, especially as a woman in a male-dominated industry.

Interesting to note is that this pushback was not because she was trying to stop logging – she wasn’t, coming from generations of family invested in forestry. Her findings simply pointed to the need to shift to a more nuanced strategy than the clearcutting and monoculture replanting that long held sway. Her goal all along was to convince the timer industry that a more sustainable approach would not only be good for the forests, but also more profitable for the industry over the long run. But, as has seemingly forever been the case, people convinced of the righteousness of their point of view are seemingly willing to hold their ground, unwilling to consider what they feel they know with certainty. The physicist Carlo Rovelli expresses this myopia perfectly in his book on the quantum revolution in physics, Helgoland (my review linked to at right)

I believe that one of the greatest mistakes made by human beings is to want certainties when trying to understand something. The search for knowledge is not nourished by certainty: it is nourished by a radical absence of certainty. Thanks to the acute awareness of our ignorance, we are open to doubt and can continue to learn and to learn better. This has always been the strength of scientific thinking – thinking born of curious, revolt, change. There is no cardinal or final fixed point, philosophical or methodological, with which to anchor the adventure of knowledge. (156, Helgoland)

So compelling, in fact, has been the story of Simard’s dramatic discoveries overturning decades of accepted – really, unquestioned – scientific certainty, and her gradual expulsion from the Canadian forestry service and then rebirth as a professor and researcher, that she became the basis for one of the main characters in Richard Powers’ gorgeous novel The Overstory (my review linked to at right).  I had already read Powers’ novel a few months before discovering Simard’s book in a review in the New York Times Book Review, and without having heard about the link to Simard’s work; but it immediately became evident that even if there was not an explicit connection, it was at the very least a shocking coincidence.

In a sense, I must admit that having read Powers’ novel first, some of the surprise of discovery was taken away when then readying Simard’s work. Powers writes so compellingly of trees and the deeply interconnected nature of the forest and also its fundamental place in human life, and had so clearly done the research to undergird his novel, that by the time I came to Simard’s book I took the extent of the interconnections in forests for granted as true – nonsensical, in fact, to imagine otherwise.

This is not to say that Simard’s book is not worth the read in the wake of Powers’. Simard’s description of the path of her discoveries – beyond also providing insight into the physical reality that makes it possible – is a joy to read, particularly as her editors did not quash her enthusiasm, and the rawness of her telling. We discover the passion that led her to postulate and then demonstrate experimentally an ever more startling string of discoveries, knowledge that has completely altered human understanding of forests, and shown how they can be managed in a sustainable manner, one not only less damaging and destructive to the forest, but also to humankind.

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Other notes and information:

 

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Leave the World Behind" by Rumaan Alam

Leave the World Behind (2020)
Rumaan Alam (1977)
242 pages

everything [had] held together by tacit agreement that it would. All it took to unravel something was one party deciding to do just that. There was no real structure to prevent chaos, there was only a collective faith in order. (62) 

When the project of civilization begins to unravel in Rumaan Alam’s novel Leave the World Behind, the “collective faith in order” proves as insubstantial as it sounds. And yet his characters cling desperately to their faith in the permanence of that order – maintaining the same willfully blind conviction in it that had allowed them to pursue their quotidian existence largely ignorant of the tenuousness of the ties that bind our present-day world together.

The story opens with Amanda and Clay driving out to the far end of Long Island with their two teenage children for vacation. Their Airbnb rental, a beautiful house nestled deep in the countryside, lies beyond the reach of cell phone service, but does have a Wi-Fi connection to keep the TV and everyone’s phones linked to the outside world. An outdoor pool and hot tub, beautifully situated between the house and the surrounding woods, beckon to the family after the long car ride, and they quickly settle in for a relaxing time away from their busy New York City lives.

Just a day in, however, a late-night knock disrupts the family’s newfound tranquility: at the door are GH and Ruth, who claim to be the owners. They say they’ve come from the city because of a blackout that occurred as they were returning home from the symphony. Not wanting to return to their fourteenth-floor apartment in a city that had descended into darkness, they had decided to drive directly to their country home, hoping their renters would allow them to stay until things returned to normal; once Amanda and Clay establish that the couple are indeed the home’s owners, they have little option but to invite them in.

Though the lights somehow remain on at the home, all connection to the outside world has been lost, with only a last notification on Amanda’s cell phone hinting at the broad extent of the blackout. The remainder of the story plays out over just the next day and a half, with time crawling by for the characters as a sequence of odd events and a lack of concrete information leave them swinging wildly between crippling panic attacks and irrational hopes. It is these last, in fact, that seem most disturbing, persuasively validating an aphorism I once heard that hope is the last resort of fools and dreamers. For, even as inexplicable but increasingly terrifying events accumulate, the powerful illusion of the structure of civilization as indestructible profoundly colors the thinking and decision-making of the characters, slowing their acceptance of both the new order that has descended out over the horizon, and its ramifications for their immediate circumstances and actions.

It is the power of this illusion of civilization’s stability that Alam explores through his characters to devastating effect. By leaving unclarified the details of events in the outside world, the focus becomes on their reactions, individually and collectively, to the situation. Facing an unknown disaster, of proportions and implications they cannot bring themselves to take seriously, they struggle to give up their profound belief that civilization – and their lives as they have known them – will not soon resume again, just as they had left them.

Alam’s portrayal of his characters’ inability to contemplate the end of the kind of lives and world they have known seems frighteningly convincing. Those caught in the chaos of the city would surely be quickly disabused of any belief in the imminent return of stability; but for those isolated and uncertain of what is happening, he paints a persuasive picture of the powerful allure of baseless hopes and wishful thinking.

As readers, we are only given a bit more clarity than the characters about what has befallen the world beyond this house at the isolated tip of Long Island; Alam provides cryptic hints of distant crises, but also alternative scenarios that could be playing out. By not providing a specific, detailed account of the slide toward apocalypse that the world undergoes, he not only keeps our focus on and identification with the experience and reactions of his characters, but also precludes us from dismissing the global events with an oh, that could never happen wave of the hand. Instead, he forces readers to confront the possibility that some combination of accidents and misunderstandings, of mistakes made and risks taken, could all too easily slip our world over into an accelerating descent into disarray – that, as one character concludes, the world truly has “no real structure to prevent chaos,” as one character concludes.

I’ve read commentary that suggests that the significant rise in popularity over the last decade of apocalyptic and dystopian fiction, such as Alam’s novel, represents a reaction to feelings that the world is beset by too many problems, that the future is bleak. The implication has sometimes been that this is simply a phase that populations have historically sometimes gone through; I wonder, however, if such a dismissal isn’t really a bit of a failure of imagination.

To think in the year 999, in Europe, that the world would end on New Year’s Eve clearly seems a parochial vision built on feverish beliefs. Today, however, with our world so deeply interconnected economically and socially, and weapons of tremendous power distributed so widely, is it not a concrete possibility that some relatively small combination of mistakes and misunderstandings could run civilization off the rails? Not, perhaps, in an existential sense, but in the sense of extensively disrupting the lives we – particularly in the developed world – are accustomed to today?

Though Alam captures perfectly the emotional rollercoaster his characters experience, and I find his (admittedly cryptically described) descent of the world into chaos all too plausible, there are inconsistencies in the story that stand out. One is the timing of the arrival of GH and Ruth; based on their description of events, they left New York City after the black-out hit, and drove at least a few hours from the Bronx out to the end of Long Island – and yet, just moments before they knock on the door, Clay had been watching TV, including “pausing a moment on Rachel Maddow” (31), without having seen anything about the largest city in the country suffering a black-out. Another oddity is that although the characters, desperate for news, stare obsessively at their unresponsive phones and keep turning on the TV to verify the blue screen of no-signal, no one ever tries a radio, the seemingly most likely source of information in an emergency.

These quibbles aside, however, Alam has created a captivating story in Leave the World Behind, convincingly portraying the mounting fears the characters experience in the face of profound uncertainty of what is happening in the outside world. Isolated from much of what is familiar to them and forced together with people they first met only hours before, they struggle not only to react appropriately to the deepening threat, but also to shake their desperately held belief that all will inevitably return to normal.

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Other notes and information:

I chanced on a particularly impactful reading experience for the novel that I highly recommend: I started reading it just before my family and I went on a vacation to a relatively isolated spot (if not nearly so secluded as in the story), and it settled so deeply into my subconscious that I repeatedly found myself wondering if, out there beyond my horizon as we were walking in the woods or along an empty beach, or sitting in the pool, the world was ending and I just didn’t know it yet…

   

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I recently watched the move The November Man, a spy thriller starring Pierce Brosnan and Olga Kurylenko, which had the song Ticking Bomb by Aloe Blacc playing during the end credits. The song seems written for an apocalyptic novel like Leave the World Behind, and, in fact, when I went to YouTube to hear the full song, I found it associated with a spate of recent apocalyptic and dystopian style movies. All further indication, I suppose, of present-day reader and viewer appetites for apocalyptic fare.

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Helgoland" by Carlo Rovelli

Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution (2021)
Carlo Rovelli (1956)
233 pages

Since quantum theory’s formulation and elaboration during the first half of the 20th century, it has had a remarkable run of success. Its predictions have been validated to ever higher levels of accuracy by increasingly complex experiments, and its developments have dramatically deepened scientists’ understanding in a wide variety of fields. More concretely, its practical applications have had a revolutionary impact on many of the devices in our daily lives, from the improvement of even the most mundane home appliances to the development of an ever-expanding bonanza of technical marvels.

And yet, despite all this success, the physical interpretation of quantum mechanics has remained an enigma, with a number of its predictions – and the experimental results that have confirmed them – contradicting our deeply-rooted intuitions about how the physical world behaves.

While many physicists over the years have narrowed their focus onto the technological opportunities quantum mechanics has offered, others have been unwilling to ignore the theory’s enigmatic consequences for our understanding of the fundamental nature of reality, and so have sought explanations for its bestiary of confounding implications. This latter group, according to physicist Carlo Rovelli in his book Helgoland, can roughly be divided into two camps: those who postulate mind-bending theories that maintain our physical intuition at a cost of introducing seemingly unverifiable features, and those who postulate equally mind-bending theories that require us to set aside our physical intuition. Given the strangeness of the observed phenomena, either path requires a bold imagination.

In his book, which has the subtitle Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution, Rovelli summarizes the theoretical development and experimental validation of quantum mechanics, as well as the enduring debates over its interpretation. He then outlines his own theory for what quantum mechanics reveals about the fundamental nature of the world, and describes its surprising consequences, before concluding with a captivating exploration of the striking similarities of his proposed explanation to understandings in other fields.

The book opens with the story that gives it its title: Werner Heisenberg’s stay during the summer of 1925 on the North Sea Island of Helgoland. Heisenberg came to the island seeking a quiet, isolated spot in which to develop a theory that could explain Niels Bohr’s surprising formulas describing properties of electrons. Bohr’s equations accurately predicted aspects of the observed behavior of electrons, but also indicated that an electron can only take on discrete orbits around the atom, making quantum leaps to go from one orbit to another. The concept that nature could be discrete at some fundamental level rather than continuous, though now seriously entertained, at that time represented a tectonic shift in physicists’ views of reality.

Unfortunately, Bohr’s equations gave no hint as to what force or forces could explain his shocking results, and it was this question that Heisenberg wrestled with during his sojourn on Helgoland. Rovelli writes that Heisenberg eventually had

the idea. An idea that could only be had with the unfettered radicalism of the young. The idea that would transform physics in its entirety – together with the whole of science and our very conception of the world. An idea, [Rovelli] believe[s], … that humanity has not yet fully absorbed. (8) 

Helgoland, in fact, represents Rovelli’s attempt to help readers “absorb” the fundamental shift quantum mechanics seems to require to our understanding of the world.

Heisenberg’s idea, as Rovelli describes it, was to shift from trying to “find the force capable of causing the bizarre behavior of electrons” (8) – that is, how an electron makes quantum leaps – to writing formulas that fully describe the observed phenomena of the electron, such as the light it emits when it moves. Ultimately, the equations Heisenberg developed described the behavior of the electron more fully than Bohr’s formulas could, but did not at all resolve the question of how the described behavior occurred.

Rovelli provides an introduction to Heisenberg’s formulation, and its subsequent development into quantum mechanics by Heisenberg as well as others associated with Bohr, and describes some of the numerous experimental results that have supported it. He also reviews the struggle over the interpretation of the theory, at the heart of which lies Heisenberg’s decision to let go of the search for how the observed behavior occurs and focus instead on formulating a description for what is observed. This debate continues to the present day, and has been explored in a string of books, such as Adam Becker's recent What Is Real? (my review linked to at right).

Central to these debates has been a particularly unnerving aspect of quantum theory, one that has been backed-up by many experimental results: the locations of tiny particles appear to be probabilistic. Rovelli notes that, in response to this, some physicists have developed interpretations of quantum theory that maintain our intuitive, deterministic expectation for the physical world; in so doing, however, they end up relying on unverifiable structures such as multiverses (see, for example, physicist Max Tegmark's Our Mathematical Universe, my review linked to at right) or hidden (indeterminable) variables.

Ultimately, Rovelli finds these deterministic formulations of quantum theory unconvincing, and he argues that, instead of trying to force quantum theory to match our intuitive desire for a deterministic reality, physicists should be open to new ways of thinking about the fundamental nature of reality. Over the middle section of the book, he describes the interpretation he finds most plausible: that bits of matter cannot be described in isolation, in the sense of being objects having particular properties; rather, objects are defined by their relation to one another.

[Quantum theory] describes how every physical object manifests itself to any other physical object. How any physical entity acts on any other physical entity. … To understand nature, we must focus on these interactions rather than on isolated objects. (75)

 Thus, for Rovelli, the entire physical world is defined by interrelationships between objects, rather than by properties associated with individual objects. In this way of thinking about the world, “everything exists solely of the way in which it affects something else. When the electron does not interact with anything, it has no physical properties. It has no position; it has no velocity.” (79) And the electron is simply a specific example; for Rovelli the same principle applies to all objects, of any size. In this he includes himself, as well as his readers: in his view we, each of us, only have particular properties in relation to other objects that we interact with.

And his theory has several startling consequences, including that for a given object, its properties can be vary, depending on its interrelationships with other objects. In particular, quantum theory leads to the conclusion that “a fact might be real with respect to you and not real with respect to me,” (81) and so that “no universal set of facts exists.” (96) Here, Rovelli uses the word fact to represent property. And lest this sounds a little too much like support for the alternative facts crowd, he brings in the quantum concept of entanglement, due to which, he demonstrates, when two observers view a property of (i.e., a fact about) an interaction between two other objects, they will necessarily observe the same property.

Rovelli notes that the debate over these fundamentally opposed points of view – matter having universal properties versus only having properties based on relationships with other objects – has existed in the context of a broader set of controversies that arose in the twentieth century, in areas such as philosophy and politics.

He describes disputes in the early Soviet Union that were percolating around the same time as the development of quantum theory, and that themselves grew out of philosophical divisions of the early 20th century. In particular, he recounts a falling out between Lenin, who held to the idea “that ‘there is nothing in the world except matter in motion in space and in time,’ and that we can arrive at ‘absolute truths’ through knowledge of matter,” and his former colleagues, such as Bogdanov, who felt that “things are much more subtle than naïve materialism would have it.” (127)

Lenin won these debates, of course, though Rovelli pointedly notes that in the long run, Bogdanov’s prediction “that Lenin’s dogmatism would … prevent [the Russian Revolution] from evolving further [and] render it sclerotic, [proved] prophetic.” (130) Rovelli argues that our deeply engrained physical intuition of the nature of reality have led to a similar sclerosis, one that threatens to hold back progress in physics: “what are these ‘most rooted metaphysical convictions’ of ours, if not what we have become accustomed to believe precisely by handling stones and pieces of wood?” (136) In a plea to not get trapped in our “most rooted metaphysical convictions,” Rovelli asks us to accept that our long-standing convictions about nature may need to be reconsidered.

Turning to a much earlier historical period, Rovelli discovers similarities to his proposal that the physical world is defined by relationships in ancient philosophical traditions that describe our conscious perception of the world as happening through relationships. He references the work of the Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna, who lived in the second century CE, and who claimed, according to Rovelli, that

there is no ultimate or mysterious essence to understand – that is the true essence of our being. “I” is nothing other than the vast and interconnected set of phenomena that constitute it, each one dependent on something else.

Based on this understanding, “there is no sense, argues, in looking for an ultimate substratum.” As with Rovelli’s relational theory of reality, for Nāgārjuna all things exist “only in interdependence with something else.” (152-154) (An engaging and accessible review of the Buddhist conceptions of consciousness and the self, and its apparent validation by recent research in neuroscience and psychology, can be found in Robert Wright’s Why Buddhism Is True; my review linked to at right.)

Of course, Rovelli’s plea that we be open to the possibility that our intuition of nature as deterministic may be incorrect is a bit of a two-way street. Though he certainly seems justified in being unpersuaded by the seemingly unverifiable assumptions of the theories that have been proposed to-date to explain quantum physics in a way that maintains our expectation of determinism, that is not sufficient in itself to decide that determinism must be thrown out. Yes, we should be open to considering understandings of reality that are not deterministic – such as Rovelli’s relational model – and more generally that align with experimentally validated theories that run counter to our fundamental physical intuitions. But physicists’ have often enough before been misled into thinking they had reached the most basic level of understanding, and so a determinist can perhaps still argue, to quote Monty Python, “I’m not dead yet.”

Rovelli concludes his book with a fascinating exploration of recent developments in scientists’ conceptualization of consciousness. He describes the idea of relevant relative information: ‘information’ in the mind that is ‘relative’ – “generated by the interactions that weave the world” (168) – and ‘relevant’ – “its presence or absence influences my survival” (173). In this view, human consciousness is thought to be an encoding – if incredibly, and nearly unimaginably complex – of relevant relative information about our interrelationships with other physical objects.

Noting the parallels to his own relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, Rovelli concludes that: 

Meaning and intentionality are only particular cases of the ubiquity of correlations. There is a continuity between the world of meanings in our mental life and the physical world. Both are relations. (176) 

But, while the similarities are indeed striking, such a relational understanding of consciousness doesn’t seem to require the physical world to also be fundamentally defined by relationships. Rovelli himself makes clear that the view of consciousness as being an emergent property of the complexity of our brain’s relevant relative information processing capability has no direct connection to quantum physics, noting in particular that he doesn’t find the idea that “electrons and protons have a kind of proto-consciousness … persuasive.” (164)

Ultimately, however, whether or not a reader leaves convinced of Rovelli’s proposed view of physical reality as fundamentally tied to interrelationships between objects, Helgoland provides an engaging history of quantum theory and its interpretations, and a fascinating exploration of conscious. As has been the case in others of Rovelli’s works (my reviews linked to below), his sparkling and engaging prose make approachable what is perhaps one of the most challenging fields for lay readers to venture into. And by contextualizing the development of quantum mechanics within the broader history of our evolving understanding of the physical world, as well as the philosophical and political milieu of the twentieth century, Rovelli thrills as well as explains.

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Other notes and information:

As part of his argument in support of the concept that "the qualities of an object are born from the interaction with something else," Rovelli compares it to "naïve materialism, according to which all mental phenomena are reducible to the movement of matter."  He also refers to this as "naïve realism," which he dismisses as "intuitively difficult to reconcile with subjective experience." (184)  And yet, elsewhere in the book, Rovelli claims that it is a mistake to allow our intuitive experience to lead us to believe that there must be a deterministic explanation underlying quantum mechanics, writing: "Our prejudices concerning how reality is made are just the result of our experience.  Our experience is limited." (136)  He seems to be wanting to have it both ways: dismiss our relying on our subjective experience when it contradicts quantum theory, but call upon it to support his proposed concept of objects being defined by their interactions.

Links here to my reviews of other books by Carlo Rovelli:

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir

Project Hail Mary (2021)
Andy Weir (1972)
478 pages

Former software engineer turned author Andy Weir caught lightening in a bottle in his debut novel The Martian, creating a character whose resourcefulness captures readers’ imaginations, as he overcomes a series of problems in order to survive after being left behind on Mars. Like children’s movies that have a rich subtext for adults, Weir’s story provides plenty of exciting action and suspense to attract a general audience, while also allowing engineers and scientists geek out as one of their own becomes a hero by doing engineering and science galore. And, with the main character played in the movie version by Matt Damon, so much the better!

Weir has built his new novel, Project Hail Mary, around another highly resourceful main character, scientist Ryland Grace. Grace, however, finds himself on his own much farther from home than Mars, and comes to discover that he faces much greater stakes than his own survival.

Awakening on a spaceship, he finds he has amnesia, and so no idea who or where he is, or why. As his memories begin to return, however, he comes to realize that he is the sole survivor on a last-ditch effort to find a way to save Earth. Though help arrives for him from a most unexpected quarter, will his memories return soon enough to give him a chance to complete his work?

Grace’s amnesia plays a key role in the story, as Weir has him experience sudden flashbacks that reveal, bit by bit, his own background, and the origins and goals of his mission. The technique can feel a bit artificial, as Grace’s flashback are rather surprisingly opportune and detailed, but it has the advantage of leaving readers feeling the same uncertainties and mysteries Grace himself faces; we only learn the details of the situation as Grace himself does.

Perhaps cynically, one could argue that this approach of repeated flashbacks – through to the end of the story – also brings in a whole set of characters that will make for a more interesting film adaptation of the book. Such a conclusion is reinforced by the extent to which the story’s dialogue has the feel of being written with an eventual screenplay in mind; the one-liners and repartee often seem targeted at a theater audience. It’s not a bad thing, per se, but it does have a tendency to distract from the flow of the story, a bit like the breaks for the laugh-track during exchanges in a sit-com.

More critically, Weir’s novel strikes one significant discordant note when, late in the story, the origins of Grace’s amnesia are finally revealed. The explanation seems so out of character for the Grace we’ve come to know that it feels like a purely manufactured plot device, written in to justify constructing the story around the flashbacks that reveal to Grace his mission and its history.

But, such minor quibbles aside, Weir has again created a rip-roaring tale that is hard to put down once you start – I found myself so eager to find out what would happen next that I had to constantly force myself to slow down as I read it. And the discoveries Grace makes in his desperate mission to save Earth will surely fire the imagination of any reader remotely intrigued by what may be out there among the stars.

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Bits and pieces:

My review of The Martian linked to at right. 

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf

Book Review: "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro

Klara and the Sun (2021)
Kazuo Ishiguro (1954)
303 pages

When imagining future technologies, it can be all too easy to assume that they will function perfectly as they go about improving our lives. The brilliance of Kazuo Ishiguro’s all-too-plausible depiction of our near future in Klara and the Sun, lies in its poignant reminder that, in reality, technological advancements generally have trade-offs – they can bring benefits, yes, but seldom perform as well as expected, and often come with unforeseen consequences.

Ishiguro sets the novel in the United States, some few decades from now. The story opens on a seemingly average block of a nameless city, in a store that sells typical household furnishings – but notably also a line of robots known as Artificial Friends, or AF’s, that have been developed as companions for children of the well-to-do. The title character, Klara, is one such AF; on display in the shop, she awaits being purchased by a family as their child’s special friend.

Given their intended role, the AF’s have been designed with a human form, and with faculties that focus on understanding human emotions and behaviors. Solar-powered, they are also imbued with an almost reverential connection to the sun. Klara, in fact, does not seem to have even the most basic physical understanding of what the sun is, viewing it instead as God-like, a capricious being who can be inadvertently angered, or appealed to for help.

In general, Klara’s a priori programming seems to contain very little physical understanding of the world; what she comes to know is based on her observations and interpretation of happenings within the store, and especially of people and events on the street outside its windows. Though unstated, it appears that this restricted knowledge of the AF’s is linked to their assignment of meeting the psychological needs of children, and so fulfilling their role as companion. It becomes clear, however, that this limitation also leaves them prone to the same magical, mystical thinking that humans often display when confronted with unfamiliar phenomena.

The need for some children to have such AF’s in the first place appears to be a direct consequence of the other major technological innovation of the novel: wealthy parents have the option of having their children undergo an unexplained medical treatment that significantly enhances intellectual capacity. Such children are referred to as lifted, and they receive their K-12 education at home, from virtual tutors, remaining largely isolated from other children until they go to university. For a child of this lifted cohort, their AF becomes an ersatz confidant and friend.

Through both of these marvels, Ishiguro explores the challenges of products designed to meet the insatiable consumer desire for new technology. Klara is the latest generation AF as the story opens; better than what came before, apparently, but also a model that had suffered from a design flaw in early versions, leaving an enduring stain on the entire line. Not surprisingly, when a newer, more advanced model suddenly appears in the shop, parents and children alike gravitate toward it.

And, more disturbingly, it becomes clear that the medical procedure for ‘lifting’ a child is not without risks. The potentially grave side-effects of the treatment leave parents who can afford it with a heart-rending choice between risking their child’s health and providing them the best possible future opportunities. Ishiguro’s imagined procedure makes manifest the present-day negative psychological impacts that can arise for children pressured into all-consuming resume building activities and advanced academic programs.

Along with the direct implications of these technologies on individuals, Ishiguro touches on the revolutionary aspects for society of having a class of medically enhanced elite: they inevitably rise to the top, as businesses naturally prefer such individuals for their talent, and the education system focuses on them to meet the needs of business. The free-market economy doggedly follows its merciless logic.

Ishiguro has, in fact, created a world sliding inexorably toward the kind of dystopia historian Yuval Noah Harari warns of in his 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. As I note in my review of Harari’s book (linked to at right), he foresees that the already underway “biotech” and “infotech” revolutions “could restructure not just economies and societies, but our very bodies and minds.” (7, Harari) Biotech advances will provide wonderous physical and mental enhancement, but remain affordable only to some few. And, when combined with advances in artificial intelligence that could eventually make most jobs “irrelevant,” will inevitably lead to ever more dramatic and irreversible levels of inequality, and so fundamentally undermine our project of civilization.

Such a world, of increasing economic and social pressures on families, is what Klara must navigate when she is eventually purchased to be the companion to a young girl, Josie. Though Klara is revealed to have a particularly powerful inquisitiveness about humankind, and so comes to develop an increasingly profound understanding of human behaviors and motivations, she struggles to make coherent sense of the conflicting needs, desires and compromises that motivate the actions of Josie and those around her. Can she navigate these complicated family dynamics and overcome her limited understanding of the physical world well enough to help Josie on her difficult path to adulthood?

In Ishiguro’s remarkable story Klara and the Sun, he focuses not on the wonders of the technologies he introduces; their potential benefits are easy enough to imagine. Rather, he forces readers to confront the inevitable imperfections and unforeseen consequences of such technologies – for individuals, and society at large. Within the aggressive grasping for more-and-better so deeply embedded into the structure and function of our present-day, consumer-driven, productivity-fetishizing society, can we stop long enough to ask whether the potential benefits are worth the inevitable – if often times studiously ignored – risks?

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Other notes and information:

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Have you read this book, others by this author, or even similar ones by other authors? I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts.
Other of my book reviews: FICTION Bookshelf and NON-FICTION Bookshelf