Neal Stephenson. Termination Shock. Morrow, 2021.

Readers of this blog know that we are fans of Neal Stephenson. His forte is to imagine scenarios in the not too distant future (sometimes connected with the past) with technology that is “out there” but more realistic than typical science fiction. Termination Shock has that, but it is much more reminiscent of Tom Clancy than Stephenson’s other work.

Let me illustrate. The Hunt for Red October involved numerous people from various places around the world. The focus was on a submarine with a new technology for propulsion. This technology, in theory, made Red October faster and quieter, virtually impossible to detect. There was a critical political element and both the military and intelligence services got involved.

On the surface, Termination Shock is like that, too. Only here, instead of a conflict between or among nations, the conflict is initially against global warming. A wealthy Texan, T. R. Schmidt, a.k.a. T. R. McHooligan, has purchased desert land in West Texas along the Rio Grande and has developed a system that he thinks will alleviate rising temperatures on the earth. Stephenson imagines that the world has gotten hotter and that sea levels are rising.

From what we understand, people worry about melting ice caps needlessly. Ice floats on water. It is less dense. Melting sea ice would not affect the water level of the oceans any more than melting ice in a glass of water would cause the glass to overflow. Our understanding between those who worry about sea levels and those who do not is how much water would come from land sources like melting glaciers and if that would make any significant difference. (See our review of Inconvenient Facts).

If sea levels rise, one country that could seriously be affected is the Netherlands. Indeed, one of our main characters is Frederika Saskia (“call me Saskia”) Queen of the Netherlands. She is invited along with some people from various other countries to witness T. R.’s plan. A side business of oil drilling often is sulfur extraction. The Dutch royal family also is a major stockholder of Royal Dutch Shell Oil.

We also meet Rufus, who hunts feral pigs, which have become a nuisance in Texas, as a pig exterminator. He gets hired by T.R. and crosses paths with the queen. He is an army veteran who looks African-American, and he does have that ancestry, but he is also an enrolled member of the Comanche tribe.

There is Bo, an Chinese acquaintance of Willem, an advisor to the Queen. Bo is probably some kind of spy. Willem is partly Dutch but his family comes from Indonesia so he has Malay and Chinese ancestry as well. Indeed, by showing how ethnically diverse some individual are, this book reminds us how much more we have in common with one another.

A person who seems outside of the plot for much of the story—a common technique in Clancy tales—is Laks. He is from British Columbia (Stephenson could not keep away from the Pacific Northwest entirely!) but of Sikh ancestry. One could say he was the other kind of Indian, not like Rufus. He has gone to India and become skilled in gatka, a traditional stick fighting martial art from the Punjab and perfected by the Sikhs.

As usual, Stephenson is clever without being precious. Laks goes to the China-India Line of Actual Control. They do not call it a border. There has been a truce and the line between the two countries can fluctuate. According to Stephenson control is determined by nonlethal martial arts. (There had been no casualties along the line for many years when some deadly skirmishes broke out in 2020.) Laks is very clever with the gatka until Chinese Havana-Syndrome technology slows him down.

T.R.’s method of cooling the earth is clever and reasonable. He periodically sends rockets into the air to release sulfur in the high atmosphere. The effect is similar to the cooling effect caused by a large volcano eruption. He calls his program Pina2bo for obvious reasons (see Mt. Pinatubo).

This is something that other nations watch. Does it affect their weather? If so, what will they do about it? Australia and Europe like it. India claims it is negatively affecting its monsoon cycle. With all its coal-fired power plants and industry, China is looking for something to get them off the hook. In this tale, Chinese imperial designs are directed towards the Indonesian half of New Guinea (a.k.a. Irian Jaya), where T. R. and Dutch investors have a large copper mine.

I thought it was interesting that T.R.’s rockets are propelled by a mixture of sulfur and methane. That is similar to the model rockets my high school rocket club used which had fuel of sulfur and carbon powder. I was happy to learn from this novel that in the near future, hobbyists still use Estes rockets, the maker of fueled model rockets back in the sixties.

I found it interesting that China was quite involved in this story. When I was working in China, the government would seed clouds to cause it to rain. That was seen as a way of alleviating air pollution. (Where I was, the sky was yellow, not blue, on many days.) It is not much of a stretch to imagine something similar to cool things down.

One difference from Tom Clancy is that the United States government has little to do with this story. T.R. is in a remote area in Texas, so his rockets do not interfere with any airplane flights. While not post-apocalyptic like The Road, Termination Shock speculates that the United States was “once like an omnipotent hyperpower” but now seemed “like a beached whale.” (96)

In the long run, though, it is not so much that the American government is powerless, it is simply that there is still more freedom and creativity in America than just about anywhere else. T.R. is left alone—at least by his own government. Without going into spoiler mode, this novel reminds us that there are some things that only the government can do. It has a scale that individuals do no have when it comes to protecting life, liberty, and property.

Speaking of whales, there are a few allusions to Moby-Dick which are fun. At one point Rufus, out on the West Texas range, takes care of a mustang that had once been tame. He called it Peleg after one of the ship owners in Moby-Dick. But everyone confuses the name with Pegleg. Even when he explains the name is from Melville’s novel, people still think of Pegleg because Captain Ahab had a peg leg.

Rufus compares himself to the harpooners in Moby-Dick. They have to be good a throwing harpoons just as he has to be good at shooting wild hogs. For example, he observes this about the novel:

For all the complicated operations described in the book, the basics were simple as could be: they rowed out in a boat so that a guy could chuck a spear into the whale. Guys who were good at chucking the spear made bank. Boat-rowers were a dime a dozen and had to supplement their measly income by going home and writing huge novels. (26)

Rufus kills his “Moby Dick” at the beginning of the story. In his case, we mean a 600-lb. wild boar that killed his daughter. What would Ahab have done if he had caught the whale? What if the novel started that way? Rufus, then, is recognized by others for his accomplishment. Ahab is recognized, too, but not in the same way.

While Stephenson’s novels are often very creative, many of his stories leave a lot of loose ends. Cryptonomicon, for example, was very creative and made readers use their imaginations. But its plot just kind of wound down. Termination Shock wraps things up pretty well. Sure, maybe we would like to find out more about the Dutch royal family, but Termination Shock certainly illustrates that any serious or realistic human attempt to affect the weather presents many unintended consequences. I suppose, one could say that about science in general…

P.S. Since writing the above review I read two articles that may shed a little light on Termination Shock and where Stephenson was coming from. One article noted that Elon Musk owns a large parcel of land in Texas on the Mexican border. He certainly could be a figure that inspired T. R. Another noted that only one city in the world has more Sikh residents than Vancouver, B.C. That makes Laks’ story all the more likely. J. B.

Other Works by Neal Stephenson reviewed here:

Quicksilver
The Confusion
The System of the World
Interface
Fall
Zodiac
Seveneves
The Diamond Age
The Big U
Everything and More (sort of)