From Neal Stephenson—who coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash—comes a sweeping, prescient new thriller that transports listeners 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.

“Stephenson is one of speculative fiction’s most meticulous architects. . . . Termination Shock manages to pull off a rare trick, at once wildly imaginative and grounded.” — New York Times Book Review

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.

Listening Length

22 hours and 54 minutes
Author

Neal Stephenson
Narrator

Edoardo Ballerini
Audible release date

November 16, 2021
Language

English
Publisher

HarperAudio
ASIN

B09556Y79B
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Termination Shock Neal Stephenson One man

Termination Shock Neal Stephenson And what are the consequences

Termination Shock Neal Stephenson more visionary thrillers


	Termination Shock	Fall; or, Dodge in Hell	Seveneves	Reamde	Anathem	Cryptonomicon

Product details

Listening Length	22 hours and 54 minutes
Author	Neal Stephenson
Narrator	Edoardo Ballerini
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com Release Date	November 16, 2021
Publisher	HarperAudio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B09556Y79B
Best Sellers Rank	#1,665 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #9 in Technothrillers (Audible Books & Originals) #28 in Hard Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) #40 in Technothrillers (Books)

Customer reviews

5 star		57%
4 star		29%
3 star		11%
2 star		2%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Maximumbob

I thought of the Star Wars guy, “it’s a trap!”

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2021

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The book starts, sort of, with a man hunting hogs.
Which would be a clever way to get me, a person hostile to the whole climate change thing, off guard; because I love hunting hogs.
Then he spins off into the meth gators, which leads the narrative into that crazy hunter-thompson-esque craziness that it never totally abandons.
In spite of myself, I liked this book.
I like TR, a Texan like myself. I like the fact that he just jumps in and does something to solve the problem instead of trying to take away my livelihood.
And fwiw, I’m re-examining how I think about climate change.
So, yeah. It WAS a trap.

87 people found this helpful

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Barry Melius

Chastised for a decade of unreadable drivel Stephenson lives up to the promise of his earlier work

Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2021

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The best and brightest of the author's fans have been ground down to a few hardy older ones with good memories. Repeatedly his recent work has not done justice to that talent. Finally some of the multitude of literate, well written reviews by disappointed fans must have penetrated Stephensons protective shell because in Termination Shock he finally puts out a book worth reading. He appears to have put aside whatever it was in the past that has come across as the self serving and indulgent ramblings of an ego out of control and instead serves up a good story, wrapping the reader in his plausible near future world so seamlessly that time spent reading seems to enter that mildly time dilated state that only the best writing from the best talent can approach. Can he do it two times in a row? The talent is there.

151 people found this helpful

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Jeremy Smith

More like a Neal fanfic than a Neal book.

Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2021

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I am a big fan of Neal Stephenson's, having read all of his books, most of them multiple times. What worries me is that I have almost no desire to re-read this one (or his last book, Fall). In both cases I think it's because I'm so sad at what might have been. No spoilers here.

I can't escape the feeling that I was reading a fanfic. All the Stephenson hallmarks are there: a realistic sci-fi future; cleverly extended tech based on what already exists; tons of geology and references to terrain (I think I saw the word "alluvial" at least twice); traveling around the world; and of course the Pacific northwest. (side note: I just realized this might be his only book with no hackers in it - maybe that's the problem.) But all of his funny prose, his subtle social commentary, his insights into how a complicated piece of tech works...all that is gone and replaced by pale copies.

For example:
-We all know how a gun works - you don't have to spend 30 pages explaining how to make a big one work. We definitely don't need a tour of it where the two most interesting characters just listen to other people talk.
-Calling the USA a mess and a hapless laughingstock on the world stage may be true, and more so a few decades into the future, but if your book doesn't give any examples then you're just taking cheap shots.
-The most interesting character, explained from the first pages as being good with drones, never does anything cool with drones.
-Chekhov's corollary: if you spend all of acts one and two setting up a powerful country's secret, shady and scary military prowess, then in act three you had better make them do something. And if you spend the entire book making an antagonist character likable and we become sympathetic to their cause, why wouldn't you let them interact in any real way with the other interesting characters?
-etc.

People complain that Stephenson can't write women. I'm not one so it's hard to argue one way or the other. But the main female character, a smart and tech-savvy Dutch royal, doesn't get anything interesting or fun to do! All she does is go around listening to other people talk about stuff, so she's just proxy for a narrator. I thought it was going to be much cooler, since in the first couple of pages she crashes a jet in Texas. So yeah, he dropped the ball on his only big female role here. The other women in the book were just ladies-in-waiting so they didn't do anything interesting either.

People complain that Stephenson can't write endings. I used to disagree vehemently with this, as I loved the endings of most of his books, especially the ones people complained were bad. But first with Fall, and again here with Termination Shock, I found myself thinking with a hundred pages to go that there's no way that he is going to wrap this thing up in any way that is interesting, comprehensive or satisfying. I'd have settled for one of those three but got none. Neal, most of your fans love the fact that you write big books, because it means you can pay attention to tying up all the cool ideas and loose threads! Make this book twice as long, and it would have been five times as good.

I blamed DODO being bad on his co-author, and I blamed Fall being bad on being too ambitious with cool ideas. But maybe he just doesn't write good books anymore.

128 people found this helpful

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ChopinBlues

This is FICTION

Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2021

Haven't read the book yet, so I'll reserve judgement, but simply responding to Meletanmuse's review, the one titled "Terminally fatuous":

I suggest you look up the definition of the word "fiction"

65 people found this helpful

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Plausible, well researched, and interesting

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2021

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What if a few billionaires really, really took climate change seriously? Instead of flying private jets, enjoying beachfront real estate, and mouthing pieties, what if there were a few that sincerely believed that the Earth was about to become an uninhabitable flooded fire ball due to CO2 emissions, and actually decided to do something about it?

That's basically the core premise of this book: A small cabal of "elites" -- billionaires, the scions of ancient noble families, and the Queen of the Netherlands, among some others -- take it upon themselves to try and fix the world's climate, ostensibly to prevent the sea level from rising and swamping their real estate holdings. They are facilitated by the fact that the US government and legal system have basically collapsed under their own weight, and by the fact that the world's other major powers seem to support their efforts, though typically in a clandestine way, and sometimes in an inscrutable way that's open to various interpretations. (You might read this as them keeping their options open.)

Problem is, there are many who definitely don't support those efforts. And this includes some serious heavy hitters. Conflict ensues.

As cli-fi goes, this book is fairly realistic. Instead of hitting you with a dozen different engineering projects, there's really only one -- and it's one of the solutions that offers the most bang for its buck, so Stephenson has done his research. That climate engineering project is conceptually and practically simple, and can be launched today by just about any billionaire with a few hundred million to burn -- which seems far more likely than (a) the notion that any fractious government will get around to doing such things, and (b) the notion, presented in Kim Stanley Robinson's "Ministry for the Future," that terrorists supported by a rogue bureaucracy's black-ops arm will bomb a few planes and get what they're after.

In all, I thought that it was clever, plausible, and interesting.

20 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Meletanmuse

Terminally fatuous

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 15, 2021

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Mr Stephenson is capable of intelligent well- informed prose, and on occasions this is what we get in parts of this book. Regrettably, the rest is a great disappointment.
The plot is a rather untidy whirlpool into which sundry unconnected objects bob for a brief period and then drown in their own fatuousness.
This is a bad book that conveys a bad idea, namely that you can fix a dysfunctional complex system ( the Earths atmosphere) by changing one variable. To simplify the burning issue of our time by such reductionist thinking argues a surprising failure to grasp the scale of the problem. Complex systems commonly operate in positions of equilibrium. Change one variable and you may recover by resetting. Change two variables and the equilibrium position is likely to be very difficult to recover, and a new equilibrium occurs. That equilibrium would almost certainly be hostile to current life.
I am puzzled why Mr Stephenson implicitly proposes a course of action that could make a grave problem very, very much worse. This seems irresponsible and very poor timing.

37 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Loving it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2021

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I think this is a return to form for the author. His mix of witty prose with excellently educational and entertaining info-dumps is back. If high literature is what you are after, look elsewhere, but if you like learning new things whilst enjoying an engaging story then carry on. You get to learn about "the line of actual control", wild pig hunting, the practicalities of landing a jet, automating the functioning of an enormous gun, fighting with a stick, the Dutch monarchy, and that's before you start on all the stuff about climate change and rising sea levels.
I would say that tonally and structurally the book most closely resembles his previous book Reamde, so if you saw that as a fairly ripping yarn, then you should enjoy this one too.

9 people found this helpful

P. Powell

So so. No big ideas here.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 20, 2021

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It was OK I guess. I felt like I was plodding through endless amounts of backstory about each character and the actual action was somewhat thin on the ground.

My favourite thing usually about NS novels is the exposition of big ideas. Here there is really one idea and it seems to almost hang in the background. The book can't seem to decide if the book is set in a post-climate disaster or not. Sometimes the setting verges towards post-apocalyptic and sometimes it feels very normal.

I feel that the climate science could have been a lot deeper and more complex. The LAC stuff was interesting, but I it felt as if that part of the novel didn't really intertwine with the other.

The final action sequence was fun. I guess it felt like a bit of a trawl to get there.

7 people found this helpful

P. G. Harris

Techno-thriller in climate change clothing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2022

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In a near future world, a petrol station entrepreneur, TR Schmidt, in a US where central government has ceased to function has developed and built the technology which he believes can bring short term mitigation of global warming. One of the guests from countries in danger from rising sea levels he invites to view his technology is Queen Fredericka of the Netherlands.

Elsewhere in the States, a veteran of America’s overseas wars, with a wildly mixed heritage makes a living exterminating feral pigs. His profession hides his self-acknowledged Ahab-like hunt for the giant boar which killed his daughter.

High in the Himalayas, a Canadian Sikh joins a largely non-lethal conflict between India and China over the “Line of Actual Control”. This is the disputed border left over from the Sino-Indian war of 1962, with the situation being complicated by the melting of glaciers leading to new territory being exposed. The fighting is a clash of martial arts, Kung-fu and similar styles on one side, the Punjabi-Sikh Gatka on the other. This historical dispute fought using ancient methods is shown to the world through 21st century social media.

These are the main points of view in Neil Stephenson’s climate change novel, although, I would probably describe it as more of a techno-thriller which uses climate change as a backdrop. As the novel progresses, and the characters (inevitably?) converge, it increasingly becomes a straightforward will he/won’t he, can they stop him action yarn. The treatment of the results of climate change is largely confined to a really big picture view of the effects of rising sea level. Mid way through there is a major disaster, but we see little of the results, its purpose within the story is to move the plot along not to explore the impact on those affected.

The emotional heart of the novel is Queen Fredericka, or Saskia as she is informally known. The engine of the story is however TR Schmidt. He represents a reaction to climate change similar to that espoused by George W Bush. The solution to climate change will be found in the invention of new technologies. This is perhaps the central question thrown up by the book, will a green solution be sufficient, or will humanity need to invent ways of engineering the climate in order to transition to a non carbon economy. TR, while being an old style entrepreneur, who projects a good ole boy image is very much a disruptor in the mould of silicon valley tech leader.

This characteristic of TR gives rise to one of the three main doubts I have about the book, areas about which I find myself equivocating. The climate change solution he implements seems incredibly simple, indeed simplistic. He gives no consideration to the possible side effects, and indeed, neither does author Stephenson. Is this a believable portrayal of a disruptor, seeing taking action as preferable to delay, in the knowledge that there will be unforeseen consequences, or is it rather lazy plotting. Whatever the answer, the fact that Stephenson concentrates on the geopolitical consequences rather than adds weight to this being a techno thriller rather than climate change novel.

Secondly, a major global power commits a hidden act of war against the other countries, with presumably devastating consequences for one of them. The leaders of that country are fully aware of what has happened and yet no action results. Furthermore the only consequence which Stephenson focuses on is the impact on one of his major characters. On one side, this raises the interesting question of smaller nations being vulnerable without the benefit of US protection. On the other, it feels a little unsatisfying that a massive event such as that described is so blatantly a plot device.

A third more minor quibble is that the relationship between the queen of the Netherlands and her daughter, which involves a very frank discussion of the former’s sex-life, while entertaining, doesn’t really ring true. But then, I’m not an early middle aged woman with a teenage daughter so I’m probably not qualified to comment.

While I had some quibbles with the book, I did thoroughly enjoy it. Why wouldn’t I? It’s a Neal Stephenson novel, it’s entertaining, witty, erudite. It has a world encompassing plot, it ties together the past and the future, and he just loves engineering - digital, chemical, civil, mechanical.

One person found this helpful

Djgos

I'm conflicted....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2022

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The following wasn't easy to write, as Neal, one of my favorites, is a superb writer, and this book is crammed with more ideas than most writers got into a career.

Neal is a great writer and I'm particularly a fan of The Baroque Cycle, but this book doesn't feel right to me. It feels like it was written by Kim Stanley Robinson - not by Neal.

Perhaps it's just a natural meeting point for the two, but it feels a bit too much like parts of the Science in the Capital trilogy and especially Ministry of the Future.

Also, apart from the initial Texas section, Lak's initial story and one or two other bits, there are a lot of not especially interesting sections which bored me. And, tbh, even the good sections felt a bit flabby and overdone.

One person found this helpful

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