251: Kim Stanley Robinson: A Novelist Imagines a Livable Future
No Small Endeavor with Lee C. Camp
Lee Camp
4.8 • 555 Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2026
⏱️ 53 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is no small endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life. |
| 0:07.0 | It was literature that was my religion. It was the one system that gave me my sense of meaning and values. |
| 0:16.0 | That's acclaimed science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. |
| 0:20.0 | When I write my novels, I want people to end those novels feeling better than when they began them. |
| 0:27.1 | That's a kind of calling. |
| 0:29.0 | Today we're discussing his recent work, The Ministry for the Future, a fictional mashup of non-fictional hard science and political economy. |
| 0:37.3 | The novel requires that we ask ourselves |
| 0:40.3 | what responsibility we have to future generations, in a world of inexorable climate change |
| 0:47.0 | driven by human action, and what the not-so-distant future might look like. |
| 0:52.5 | That would be my definition of utopia, not a final perfect society, but just things getting better. |
| 0:58.5 | All coming right up. |
| 1:00.4 | Hey, friend, if you didn't know, I started a newsletter a while back that comes out every two weeks. |
| 1:05.3 | I have been delighted to hear from so many of you about positive response to the newsletter. |
| 1:09.9 | We call it the No Small |
| 1:11.8 | Endeavor Notebook, where I riff on themes and topics related to our podcast, giving you additional |
| 1:17.6 | material for thinking and doing in your own quest to make sense of what it might mean to live a good |
| 1:23.6 | life. Join us by going now to Know Small Ende endeavor.com and sign up there. Again, go to |
| 1:29.6 | no small endeavor.com to sign up now for our free No Small Endeavor Notebook newsletter. |
| 1:38.7 | I'm Lacey Camp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life. |
| 1:46.4 | Ministry for the future is upended my life. |
| 1:49.4 | When it came out in 2020, I was a well-regarded and successful science fiction writer. |
| 1:56.3 | But then ministry came out and boom, it made a splash. |
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