Termination Shock - bookrastinating.com

Antolius reviewed Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Classic Stephenson

4 stars

Content warning Mild spoilers about some topics covered by the book

While his heroes might be horse riding vagabonds or rocket riding scientists, I have a feeling that everything that Neal Stephenson writes is essentially a techno-thriller. With Termination Shock this is true in both the theme as well as the style, and Stephenson again demonstrates his mastery over this hybrid genre.

This time around the topic is the climate crisis, a solution to which is presented in groovy technical details. Story takes place in a near future. It carries over the increasingly plausible and dystopian depiction of US that we've previously seen in Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. Though this time the story is more global, so we get to see other places in more detail. I especially appreciated European locales.

Characters are typically clever, witty or stoic, if a bit stylized (no-one really info-dumps in their everyday conversations like that). Not the most believable bunch, but I liked them.

There are the standard weak points as well. The story drags on a bit, and I lost interest in it after a while. It took me almost a year to finish the book because I dropped it around 2/3 of the way through and it took a vacation for me to pick it up again.

In the end, if you like Stephenson you'll like this book. If you don't there's probably nothing revolutionary here that will change your mind. And if you haven't read much of him so far there are better books to pick up first.

Carl reviewed Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Didn't Go Off The Rails

4 stars

My biggest frustration with Stephenson books of late (#Seveneves, #FallOrDodgeInHell) is that IMO they went way off the rails in the third act. This was a fun read, my first venture into #clifi. This gave me a lot to think about, and I felt it ended well.

Tenured Radical reviewed Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Review of 'Termination Shock' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I wanted to like this more, because I was an early Stephenson fan from Zodiac days, and I still consider Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon to be masterful storytelling. But this? Almost insultingly silly character development, implausible relationships, and a strangely attenuated focus, given the backdrop of the most complex and unrelentingly global problem of our age. If Kim Stanley Robinson's approach to anthropocentric climate change tries to take too sweeping a view (at the expense of character development and human cultural complexity), here Stephenson suffers the opposite failing: too narrow a focus on the relationships around a particular technology, which reveals his increasingly stark limitations as a character-based storyteller. The one character he does manage to make compelling? Well, no spoilers, but I was shocked at the lazy (and infuriatingly bad) conclusion of that particular arc.

Rev. Dr. Sir Wayne Murillo III reviewed Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson

Review of 'Termination Shock' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Neal Stephenson's (@nealstephenson) #TerminationShock is just the fun romp through the psychology of future technologies and problems that we should expect. Stephenson's central question for the work seems to be: when consequences from human alteration of the atmosphere finally catch up with us, how will we deal with it?

Stephenson's answer to that question is interesting. He starts with invasive species (anti-aircraft feral hogs), discusses the wet bulb over 98.6F problem with earth suits, moves to persistent disease (COVID-23 and COVID-27), and addresses the elephant in the room: climate engineering.

Overall, while climate change is at the center if this piece of speculative fiction, the mood is just so absurdist and full of pulpy fun that every page and new idea is interwoven and compelling. If you have been caught in the doom-and-gloom contemporary discourse of climate-induced global collapse, Termination Shock helps you to see a future without reflexively shutting …

Neal Stephenson's (@nealstephenson) #TerminationShock is just the fun romp through the psychology of future technologies and problems that we should expect. Stephenson's central question for the work seems to be: when consequences from human alteration of the atmosphere finally catch up with us, how will we deal with it?

Stephenson's answer to that question is interesting. He starts with invasive species (anti-aircraft feral hogs), discusses the wet bulb over 98.6F problem with earth suits, moves to persistent disease (COVID-23 and COVID-27), and addresses the elephant in the room: climate engineering.

Overall, while climate change is at the center if this piece of speculative fiction, the mood is just so absurdist and full of pulpy fun that every page and new idea is interwoven and compelling. If you have been caught in the doom-and-gloom contemporary discourse of climate-induced global collapse, Termination Shock helps you to see a future without reflexively shutting out horrible truths.

Termination Shock is what happens when climate engineering is no longer maintained and climate shifts even more rapidly. However, because an actual termination shock never occurs in the book, I must conclude that Stephenson's title refers the mental shock of the termination of the status quo as neoliberal structures fall and everything becomes weird.

Also, does anyone remember mention of the Zone of Actual Control in #KimStanleyRobinson's #MinistryoftheFuture?