Molecular red cover

Molecular red

by McKenzie Wark

"Of all the 'liberation movements' of the twentieth century, the one that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams did not liberate a class or a gender or a race. It liberated an element: carbon. Today, the 'carbon liberation front' threatens to crash the entire climate system. In Molecular Red, Wark looks for a way to understand, and perhaps even combat, this implacable force. He revisits the work of Alexander Bogdanov--Lenin's rival--and the great proletkult writer and engineer Andrei Platonov. In this reading, the Soviet experiment emerges from the past as an allegory for our time. Moving toward the present, Wark reads Donna Haraway's cyborg critique and science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian utopia as powerful resources for thinking what the carbon liberation front has wrought"

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Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?