Ray's Reviews > Termination Shock

Neal Stephenson is still a genius, and there are always so very many interesting factoids one can learn from reading a tome like Termination Point.

However, don't expect much of a plot in the conventional sense. This climate change speculative fiction has a lot of interesting things to say about the fall of America (although not as good as the first half of his previous book Fall), and of course the unique scientific take on how geo-engineering with a giant sulfur gun could be the answer to environmental disaster is a hell of a Big Idea premise. Then there's the global politics of it all, the somewhat coherent story of India going to war with Texas while China secretly manipulates, which happens to be from point of view of Netherlands royalty.

But besides whether or not one finds 700 pages of that a bit of a slug... Something feels off. Perhaps being too socially conscious these days prevents me from enjoying things, like I never minded the libertarian ethos of Cryptonomicon back in the day, but there's some awfully weird political subtext I currently can't seem to get over. It's a book about how fossil fuels have destroyed the planet, which is undeniable, and yet there are so many off lines about how it's the Greens who are the problem and won't let anyone make real progress. That the European far right going from climate denial to a pro-geoengineering stance overnight would be a good thing. And the moral of the story is basically to trust an oil billionaire to innovate out of this worldwide problem.

Don't get me wrong, it's fascinating. But it's been a long time since Stephenson wrote the excellent epic Anathem and the outstanding Americana satire Snow Crash. Perhaps he's best at tech thrillers now, not social critiques. I'm still ever curious to know any of his near-future predictions about the state of the country and the world, just can't say it quite works in this particular book.