Termination Shock
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4.0 • 56 Ratings
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- $32.99
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- $32.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Bestseller!
From Neal Stephenson — who coined the term "metaverse" in his 1992 novel Snow Crash — comes a sweeping, prescient new thriller that transports readers to a near-future world in which the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.
One man – visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D. – has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as “elemental.” But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?
Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease?
Epic in scope while heartbreakingly human in perspective, Termination Shock sounds a clarion alarm, ponders potential solutions and dire risks, and wraps it all together in an exhilarating, witty, mind-expanding speculative adventure.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
“Neal Stephenson is a landmark author in your life,” George Stroumboulopoulos says. “Once you read him, you are in. He has the ability to create a world that you recognize, are excited by, fear, yet can’t quite make out. In an era of hyper-connective disconnect, Neal’s writing is even more impactful.” With such high praise, it’s easy to see why Strombo chose Termination Shock as his first book club pick. This mind-bending thriller will have you contemplating how far we should go to offset climate disaster. Stephenson begins the tale in a weather-wrecked near future, where Texas billionaire T.R. Schmidt is planning to shoot sulfur into the atmosphere to cool the planet—and he’s not asking permission. A myriad of characters coalesces to either aid or hinder his plan, including a hog-hunting veteran, a Canadian Sikh with identity problems, and even the queen of the Netherlands. With his devotion to scientific details and extensive backstories, Stephenson keeps the story humming along. Narrator Edoardo Ballerini keeps a steady sense of balance throughout the story’s many characters and plot tentacles. There could be a drinking game based on the number of times you’ll wonder, “Wait, could that really happen?” That plausibility is what makes Termination Shock so brilliant.
Customer Reviews
one of the best audiobooks
The audiobook version is superb. The narrator gives each character their own voice and style, to the point that feel I'm hearing the characters rather than a reading.
Disappointed again!
Neal Stephenson wrote possibly my favorite book, Seven Eves, where he traced out an arc of story that was stunning in its scope and imagination. He had a lot of story to tell there and he did it fairly economically. With Termination Shock he clearly didn’t have anything like that much to say and barely told what could be considered a story, yet still took an awful lot of words to do it. He presented a concept and interminable character development, and followed little of it through to any kind of conclusion satisfying or otherwise. Since it’s any audio book it’s easy to lose track of how close to the end you are, so when it abruptly ended just as it seemed to be (finally) picking up the pace a bit I was shocked. When compared to Seven Eves it’s easy to imagine how far he could have taken the story, yet he went almost nowhere.
To be fair this seems to be far more typical of his books with SE being apparently a strange outlier, as I’ve read a fair number of his others and been generally pretty disappointed with them as well for similar reasons. Some I’ve not been able to get all the way through and of those I’ve completed many made me feel like I could’ve better spent that time. Yet then I go back and re-read SE and think maybe I should try again, just because I want more of that brilliance. I won’t try it again.
I gave two stars because the reader was quite good and there was more humor in the story than usual. Otherwise it would have only gotten one.