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 together into a cohesive whole. In the last couple chapters the three "main characters" are finally tied together in the same location. Prior to that you're totally in the dark as to why you keep jumping

Termination ShockIt's the near future and climate change is intense. Daytime temperatures in Houston routinely exceed 45 C (~115 F) and people are struggling to survive. Feral swine roam the countryside, and voracious alligators swim upstream searching for cooler water. Sea level rise is starting to inundate low-lying areas, and people are considering extreme measures.Termination Shock is another hard sci-fi novel by Neal Stephenson. The story follows several groups of people as they travel the

2022 reads, #6. DID NOT FINISH. So after somewhat guiltily trashing Neal Stephenson's most recent novel, 2019's unreadably tedious virtual-reality morality tale Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, then feeling even more guilty when it eventually became the most popular book review I've ever posted here, out of the 1,532 of them I've now written, I was excited to learn last autumn that the author finally had another new book coming out soon, which I had hoped would give me a chance to finally redeem myself

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 passed thousands of acres of desert transformed into open-air ag factories, irrigated by water diverted from dams four times the size of the big pyramid at Giza. We skirted or traversed some 7 current reservations and countless lands previously promised to and then taken back from the people who already live...

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 flogging the pace almost to death) and a really strong finish (like, so good, I was really annoyed about the middle slog all over again, because clearly, this tome could have flown high the whole damned t...

Absolutely brilliant! I've been a long-time reader of Stephenson. The level I've liked his books has gone up and down depending on the release. Termination Shoc has the best elements of his work to date and I found it to be the upper echelon of my favorites of his novels (Cryptonomicon, Snow Crash, Anathem, Reamde). No spoilers below.Stephenson's ability to connect a variety of vastly disparate nodes into a comprehensive whole is unprecedented. Lots has been of the dramatic intro to the book (qu...

(...)Complexity and connections: that’s what this book is about. Our planet is complex and connected, politically, financially, culturally, genetically, historically, and as a weather system.But the book is also about an important disconnection: the disconnect between people and reality.For starters, there’s the disconnect between “elite cultural and diplomatic circles” and reality. While Termination Shock acknowledges the problematic political course the USA has been on for quite some time – th...

I just finished Neal Stephenson's new novel Termination Crash. It started out pretty good, but then got real slow and plodding. It picked up around page 250 (out of 706), and then an awkward sex scene at about 280. In fact anything dealing with sex in this book was awkward in the way a teenage is talking about sex is usually awkward. Then is got slow again. It picked up in the second half, and the last 100 or so pages were real good. The story takes place in a not too distant future where concer...

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 other words, we learn about the climate setting and how it impacts decisions that drive the story but we don't actually see much about how those decisions then impact the climate.The setting is legitim...

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 Ministry for the Future, too, in that it has not only an interesting and deep cast of characters over a relatively decent amount of time, near-future, but that the science comes out as a character of its

Can a fan of Neal Stephenson comment here and let me know if this is a prime example of his writing and where it would rank amongst his best works? If it's in the top 5 or 10, I have no shame in saying I won't bother reading anything else by him.Termination Slog, I mean, Termination Shock, is a book by Neal Stephenson that will unfortunately be available in stores near the end of November. It's a 700+ page novel about characters that aren't very interesting, trying to stop climate change. Obviou...

Seveneves was my first Neal Stephenson (and my all-time favourite) novel.I picked up Termination Shock expecting more of the same.Ouch.I love Stephenson's deep rambling tangents when they're adding to a story I love. I never fell in love with Termination Shock. It's a vague story, with a lot of philosophising about the things that might happen. There isn't much urgency. It's hardly thrilling.In Seveneves, humanity is given two years to survive and our best scientists come together to save the sp...