Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

This is a modern version of the classic utopian novel. The author zeroes in on one area they want to change. They propose drastic changes to enter their utopia. They assume everything else will proceed as planned and other areas will only improve for the good. It is comical how many parts were just missed or projected wrongly in old books.

This book starts with a massive heat wave in Indian. It is more than people can handle. People are dying. Indian is decides to act on its own and use geo-engineering to cool the earth. The rest of the world has agreed to reduce carbon, but they are slow to do it. The Ministry for the Future is an organization that is supposed to help drive the earth towards the future. However, eco-terrorist groups seem to have a bigger impact. They assassinate business and political leaders they don't like. They use weapons to take out military bases and polluters. They magically manage to stop before they get too carried away. (They must have some amazing will-power that other revolutionaries have not.) The world then creates a new carbon currency to help reduce emissions. This also encourages massive geoengineering efforts that in the end lead to actual reductions in emissions. The human population becomes increasingly equitable and hardly anyone has kids, with the human population declining significantly.

This Utopia is easy to pick apart right now. The terrorists group would either get out of control or get squashed. It is almost impossible for a terrorist-led revolution to stop at just the right place. The same goes with geo-engineering. Things could quickly get out of hand and lead to an accelerating ice age. Focussing on carbon alone may also miss many other areas of global impact that are much harder to manage. Even human population declines due to external events (like wars and disasters) often result in post-event baby booms equalizing the population. Good thing that this is a book rather than government policy.

Earth Revisited

Earth Revisited by Byron Alden Brooks

A man from the 19th century wakes up in 1992. He is in a different body with a different woman (Helen) that reminds him of his early love, Theresa. Helen tries to nurse him back to health, thinking he is delirious. The world he lives in is a spiritualist socialist Utopia. There is no war. People live by Christian virtues, but there are no churches. There are interesting new technologies like a "tone telegraph". The book got more modern technologies wrong than it got right. It also spent a long time exploring the spirituality of the Utopian world. 

The Truth Machine: A Speculative Novel

The Truth Machine: A Speculative Novel by James L. Halperin

The novel is also available for free download from the author's company website. This starts from the period it was written in the 1990s and gradually moves forward in history. It primarily follows some college friends. One goes to be billionaire business leader. Another becomes president of the United States. There are various international conflicts and technological advances. Things didn't pan out exactly as the novel projects, but it did seem to get general vibes pretty well. 

The eponymous "Truth Machine" is the technological goal of the novel. Crime had become bad in society. Strict "two-strikes" laws were implemented to execute repeat offenders. This helped reduce crime, but it also led to execution of innocent victims. This was justified because this saved lives that would be lost due to violent crime. However, people wanted something better. Thus the truth machine. If there could be a technology that could identify the truth with 100% accuracy, we could reduce crime and false incarcerations. The genius strives to do it. Investors end up combining his company with another one that includes an unscrupulous guy.  They make plenty of money with other "big data" products as they are working on the truth machine. Unscrupulous guy shows him code that could help accelerate development of truth machine. Techie guy has photographic memory and can't not remember it. He is stuck because he would need to certify nothing bad happened in development of truth machine. He struggles to work on alternate approaches. After somebody that he thinks is innocent is put to death, he decides he must release the truth machine. He incorporates code similar to what he viewed. He also adds a special override just for him so that machine can be certified. However, unscrupulous guy knows he has used it and makes him sign off half of revenue from product and give him an override also. Eventually techie kills unscrupulous so he won't get killed. This haunts him internally. However, truth machine helps lead to world peace and a future world government. Decades later, he finally fesses up and goes to trial. He eventually is allowed to be free - if he agrees to treatment that takes away his super-intelligence. 

The novel reminds me of Fountainhead. It is trying to expose a worldview and contains climatic trial where the protagonist fights against the system. It poses some interesting exploration of how the world could be if everyone told what they believe to be the truth. It also explores the challenge of relying on technology. Can we ever be sure that it is totally accurate?

The Blazing World

The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish

A royal from the normal world travels to the "blazing world". There she learns about the society and culture, along with scientific explanations for natural phenomena. Many of these explanations seem very wrong today, but it was a nice experiment at the time. This is a great forerunner of science fiction works and is a very entertaining read today.

Working Backwards

Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by Edward Bellamy

Someone from the late 1800s suddenly finds himself in the 2000. He marvels at the society that looks so different from the time he left. The society had ditched capitalism and adopted a socialist structure. The government runs everything. Everyone does the work they are able to do and gets a similar wage. They still have the ability to choose how they want to spend their earnings. In spite of (or perhaps because of) these societal changes, the society seems otherwise very much like the old society, but with some advancements. Retail looks more like an "amazon showroom". One goes to a retail outlet where a clerk helps you. However, he does not influence your decision. He does assist you in getting almost immediately delivery of your goods. The book is very Utopian. The 1800s person questions the functioning of this socialism, but those concerns are just brushed away. Things simply "work".

News from Nowhere

News from Nowhere by William Morris

Somebody falls asleep only to wake up in a new libertarian communist world. There are no laws, no cities, nothing that would impede anyone from doing what they wanted. However, people desired to work. Women would still bear children. However, they may decide to leave to be with a different partner at any time. It was tough to tell if it was advocating a libertarian or socialist arrangement. It seemed to be a bit of both. There were also touches of science fiction.

Walden Two

In Walden Two, B.F. Skinner outlines a modern "Utopia". A perfect society is created through social engineering. People are trained to not have "hard" feelings towards each other. They also are required to work, but have the option of choosing what they do. There is a mixture of "hard" and "soft" labor, with the manual labor required by everyone and used as a form of exercise. People have to pass a medical physical to be admitted. (Oops! That will not be allowed to pass muster today.) They also have a basic form of eugenics, with the unfit encouraged not to reproduce. (Another thing that will be regulated out.) Children would be raised by society, rather than families. Young people are encouraged to marry and have children at a very young age. However, they do not often have too many children. They are not encouraged to have bonds to their particular children. The work week is very short because people are all dedicated to efficient, productive work that they enjoy. People make use of all the latest innovations to make work more efficient - and then spend more time in personal pursuits. The society is slowly replicated in other Waldens (Walden Three, etc.) The pace of growth is deliberately slow as to not experience growing pains. It is also specifically part of the modern world.
The book uses some of the visitors to Walden Two to voice objections. Some of the visitors are just not convinced. They believe that Frazier, the "founder" has just created himself as another dictator. (The book was written shortly after World War II). They even accuse him of deifying himself - a claim that he acknowledge is somewhat grounded in truth. He does not deny religion, but sees science as a similar, great power. Tehy also object to Frazier's denial of freewill. The primary narrator, however, is convinced and decides to go live in Walden Two.
Science is seen as a savior that can eliminate all hardships. Behavioral engineering will allow people to live productive lives without experiencing harmful emotions or bad experiences. In theory, it sounds great. However, a half-century later, science is still not up to the task. With many supercomputers we can now predict the weather a week into the future with accuracy a little better than random guessing. As for behavioral sciences, scientific advances seem to help us understand how little we understand. I doubt we could engineer a few willing participants to behave in the utopian fashion. Add in the necessity of dealing with rebellious, unwilling participants and actively hostile "outsiders" and you are set for an impossible task. It makes for a nice dream, but is no where near practical.

Glass Bead Game

Castalia is an "intellectual utopia" that exists here on earth a few hundred years from now. The intellectual "elect" get to spend their life studying whatever they so desire. (Many often teach - perhaps this is why the government is willing to fund them.) One of the things they do is play a "Glass Bead Game", a sort of high powered pan-intellectual event. (We hear a lot about it, but don't see many of the details.)

The novel has a few sections. It starts with a justification of the novel, which sets up the values of the futuristic society. This society is an intellectual Utopia where educational elite play the "Glass Bead Game" as a great intellectual exercise. It then proceeds to the main story, the biography of Joseph Knecht from early childhood to his rise as the glass bead master. Then, it fairly seemlessly transitions to the "well known" history of the master as he left the position and the entire "Order". After this section ends with his death, the final section of "posthumous writings of Knecht" begins. This section seems to be the author's dumping ground of earlier approaches for the story. These poems and stories contain some of the same themes as the main novel (and even have the same character), yet carry them out in different means. Did Hesse just dump his original drafts here?

It is always interesting to see "future" situations rooted so firmly in the past. In this novel's future, the Catholic church still maintains a primary position in the intellectual lives of the world. The European countries still exist pretty much as they have. But, there is also the intellectual hermit colony that the novel focuses.

Hesse's ideal world is influenced by both western and eastern thought. It also displays a high level of intellectual bigotry. The arts and creativity are heavily muted. The great masters of the past are respected, but little new output is created. The study of "music", however, is very important, and served as the root of the new "enlightenment." (Despite all the time passed, it seems the intellegencia from 17th-19th century Europe remains the focus of most people's intellectual pursuits.)

The Castalians seem to be real intellectual bigots. They look down on others (even when they say they don't). They are also highly obsessed with their own little trivialities, while not willing to respect those of others. Things like crossword puzzles were viewed as huge time wasters in the past. However, their glass bead game is viewed as a great intellectual endeavor. While they try to be "nice" to the rest of the world, they have set themselves so far apart from it, that they really cannot relate. They have created what is essentially an intellectual religion.

The setting of most of the book could easily be a medieval monastery. Women and modern technology are almost entirely absent through the main portion of the book. Near the end, the author apparently realized this and introduces a few women and has Joseph take off in a car. (For a novel that is supposed to take place in the future, this is seriously rooted in the past. World-building is not one of Hesse's strong points.) He also has him exit the "order" which has become too intellecutual snobbish and unfulfilling. (Perhaps he realized that readers would become disgusted with his intellectual bigots and would need an alternative.) While the ending of the story does do something to help improve the book, the "posthumous writings" destroys the goodwill. The character is just too perfect to be believable, while the events are too contrived, and don't seem to be in any "real" world.