The Ministry for the Future of Slightly Confusing Narrators

I recently finished Kim Stanley Robinson’s near-future climate science fiction novel “Ministry for the Future” (affiliate link), and immediately bought a hardback copy of it to give to a loved one since I couldn’t share the ebook. It had been on my reading list since publication last fall, but the recent unsurvivable heatwave in Jacobabad, Pakistan and severe heatwave on the west coast of North America increased my sense of urgency to read it. Ezra Klein called it the most important book he read in 2020, in an interesting short thread (which links to an interview with KSR, as well):

Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future" is the most important book I read this year. It's near-future fiction about the world climate change is creating, and how it will change us, and we will change it.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) November 30, 2020

It felt like an incredibly important read once I got into it, but I initially found it quite confusing. The book shifts narrators almost every chapter, and it’s not always obvious who is who until quite a bit of context emerges in a given chapter, which I found a bit frustrating. When I switched to listening to the audiobook (affiliate link), I found that they’d chosen to have different voice actors – 11 in total – read the various chapters.

Since I couldn’t find a “key” to the chapters online, I figured I’d make one. I wrote down who I think each chapter is, to the best of my reading and listening ability. I had a hard time identifying a couple of the named voice actors, but I think the chapter list will help a lot with reading comprehension on the book itself. I tried to keep the list as spoiler-free as I could, but I still don’t recommend reading the rest of this post before you get to the relevant chapter in the book.

The chapter names are the character’s name when known, with their accent, or just a description of the accent. I tried to hit the right balance of “enough to place the character” but “not so much that I spoil the chapter.” Some of the accents are very broad – if anyone can place “African woman”‘s accent more precisely, for example, please do leave a comment.

“Exposition Guy” I originally called “Climate Exposition Guy” because many of the chapters he voices are full of Climate Facts, but then he ends up being the narrator for a number of other expository chapters as well. He also voices most of the riddle chapters; I only included spoilers (behind a click) for the couple where the answer wasn’t stated explicitly in the chapter. I’ve also included a few spoiler-ful thoughts on the novel at the bottom of the post; I’ll also leave a comment that folks can nest any spoiler-y discussions under.

Chapter List

1. Frank (American accent)
2. Exposition Guy – Riddle
   Click for riddle answer

   the sun
3. Exposition Guy (American accented man)
4. Mary (Irish accented woman)
5. Indian man
6. Exposition Guy
7. Frank’s friend, American accented man
8. Exposition Guy
9. Mary
10. Older-sounding Indian man (geo-engineering pilot)
11. Exposition Guy
12. Exposition Guy
13. Frank
14. Libyan Doctor
15. Badim’s Assistant
16. Exposition Guy
17. Smarmy and Gruff English-accented dialogue
18. Frank
19. Spanish-accented man? Fishing boat captive
20. Exposition Guy
21. Posh English man
22. Exposition Guy, glaciology edition
23. Frank
24. Exposition Guy
25. Mary
26. Frank
27. Mary
28. Exposition Guy
29. Glacier Pete
30. Exposition Guy
31. Exposition Guy
32. Mary + Dick (Australian-accented man)
33. Child of Kali
34. Badim’s Assistant
35. Refugee – Arabic accented man
36. Exposition Guy
37. Libyan Doctor’s Daughter (Emna or Hiba)
38. Smarmy and Gruff English-accented dialogue
39. Sarcastic American man
40. Exposition Guy
41. African woman
42. Janus Athena
43. Exposition Guy – Riddle
44. Glacier Pete
45. Mary
46. Exposition Guy – Riddle
47. Frank
48. Libyan Doctor’s Wife
49. Exposition Guy
50. Mary
51. Exposition Guy
52. Indian man (different from 5 and 10)
53. Exposition Guy – Riddle
54. Mary
55. French woman
56. Mary
57. Glacier Pete + American woman narrator (maybe voiced by the same person as Janus Athena?)
58. Spanish woman
59. American woman
60. Mary
61. Exposition Guy
62. Swiss German woman
63. Mary
64. Exposition Guy
65. African woman (different character than 41)
66. Riddle (woman narrator)
    Click for riddle answer

    carbon atom
67. Exposition Guy
68. Mary
69. Exposition Guy
70. Exposition Guy
71. Badim’s Assistant
72. American man
73. Exposition Guy
74. Frank
75. Exposition Guy
76. American Navy servicewoman
77. Exposition Guy – Riddle
78. Badim, I think? not 100% sure on this one
79. Frank
80. Spanish farmer woman
81. Mary
82. American man
83. Russian woman / Tatiana’s friend
84. Mary
85. Narrator Medley
86. Mary
87. American man
88. Exposition Guy – Riddle
89. Mary
90. Smarmy and Gruff English-accented dialogue
91. Mary
92. Syrian refugee woman
93. Glacier woman (same as 57, American accent)
94. Mary
95. Exposition Guy – Riddle
    Click for riddle answer

    the Earth
96. Mary
97. Exposition Guy
98. Badim’s Assistant
99. Smarmy and Gruff English-accented dialogue
100. Mary
101. Hong Konger narrator
102. Mary
103. Hawaiian narrator
104. Mary, and Badim’s assistant (Trudi)
105. Syrian refugee woman
106. Mary

Narrators

Here are the voice actors, plus who I think they voice, to the best of my guessing ability – several of them use fairly thick accents in their readings which make it hard to compare to the samples I found of other recordings where they speak in what is presumably their own accents.

1. Jennifer Fitzgerald Mary
2. Fajer Al-Kaisi ?
3. Ramon de Ocampo Sarcastic American
4. Gary Bennett Exposition Guy + Riddles
5. Raphael Corkhill Smarmy English man
6. Barrie Kreinik Unsure – her other samples also have an Irish accent but her voice is quite different from Jennifer Fitzgerald’s.
7. Natasha Soudek Janus Athena, and Glacier woman
8. Nikki Massoud Arabic-accented woman, probably plays both the Libyan doctor’s wife and daughter
9. Joniece Abbott Pratt African woman
10. Inés del Castillo Spanish woman?
11. Vikas Adam Several of the Indian narrators, I think

If you have corrections or better descriptions for any of the chapters, please feel free to comment or email me (leigh at this domain name). I’m particularly curious if anyone is able to ID the voice actors in various chapters, though it’s more of a desire for comprehensiveness than necessary to decode the chapters 🙂

My thoughts on the book (contains some spoilers)

• There aren’t enough frumpy middle-aged women science fiction protagonists and I really liked Mary as a character.
• Shout out to Frank working hard on his PTSD with EMDR, and honestly being kind of a mess throughout the whole book.
• I groaned as soon as I saw the word “blockchain” as an inveterate blockchain/cryptocurrency skeptic, but I think the “carbon coin” idea is one of the more plausible and interesting cryptocurrency ideas I’ve heard of.
• I appreciated that Janus Athena’s non-binary identity was acknowledged but in a casual, normalized way.
• The Hong Kong chapter broke my heart – the book went to press last October just after the pro-democracy protests there ended.
• Poor Glacier Pete 😢.
• I was stoked to learn that the core premise of the book – an agency specifically tasked with acting on behalf of the rights of future generations – is rooted in present-day climate litigation premised on the core idea of intergenerational equity. Fascinating stuff.