Termination Shock

This is a book about climate change, all hung about on characters. Now Neal is great at learning things and telling them to you, and I’ve enjoyed his earlier works, info dumps and all. I like fantastical characters, like Jack, Eliza and Enoch Root in the Baroque Cycle, but this book… has a lot of ideas and interesting exposition on how a thing could practically happen, but don’t read it for the ppl.

I did mostly enjoy and finish the book but I’m not even sure it is a book, really this should have been a series of long form articles with a lot of the stuff dropped out of it.

Neal Stephenson is a great thinker, and really does put the research into science fiction in terms of projecting what is actually possible into the future BUT I just wish he would… just go easy with the too many fantastical characters which don’t really do a good job of being.. characters. No one is going to read this book for the literary value, its for his ideas, but for the near future of climate ideas you’re better off reading The Ministry for the Future by KSR.

Hear the man speak himself: