Termination Shock
A Novel

I read this latest ultra-near-future story of science fiction by Neal Stephenson on a road trip through the American West. We drove under smoky skies and through swirling wildfire ash. We whipped through thousands of acres of desert transformed into open-air ag factories, irrigated by water trapped......more

Termination Shock is described as a "techno-thriller about climate change," but I'm not sure it fully delivers on its promise. It is, for one, mostly not thrilling. And while it is certainly about climate change, Stephenson used climate change issues more as a conduit for the rest of the story--in o......more

Well, it was a surprising three star read for me. This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021. Vivid and compelling beginning, slog of a middle (at 700 pages that clocks in at hundreds of eye-crossing pages with lots of things happening to many characters in ways that feel disparate while flog......more

Neal Stephenson writes Cli-Fi! Of course, what this means in layman's terms is that an author with a penchant for a LOT of research and a brave heart just slammed a close-to-home ecological disaster onto our table and has said, read it and weep. It's very valid to compare this novel to KSR's The Mini......more

A 700 page short story or perhaps a collection of short stories. I'll try to explain without revealing the "plot" such as it is. I mean that it's a short story in the sense that there's not what I would call a real or interesting plot here. There is a jumble of ideas, but they never really come toge......more