Termination Shock is a science fiction book written by American author Neal Stephenson. It was published in 2021. The story takes place in a future that is close to our time, where climate change has greatly changed human society. The book follows a plan to use solar energy to help fix climate change. It talks about how this plan affects different countries and people around the world. These topics are common in a type of science fiction that focuses on climate change.

Plot

The book describes a solar geoengineering project created by T.R. Schmidt, a billionaire from Texas who works in the oil industry. Schmidt builds a launcher near the Texas-Mexico border to release sulfur into the air. This method, called stratospheric aerosol injection, aims to cool Earth by reflecting sunlight into space. This process mimics the cooling effects caused by volcanic eruptions, such as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which released sulfates into the atmosphere. Schmidt’s plan has uneven results, benefiting low-lying areas like the Netherlands, Venice, and the Maldives, but causing drought in the Punjab region.

The main characters include Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia, the Queen of the Netherlands and granddaughter of Queen Beatrix; Rufus Grant, a part-Comanche person who hunts wild hogs; and Deep "Laks" Singh, a Sikh from Punjab, Canada. Saskia and Grant become involved in Schmidt’s plan, while Singh travels to the Line of Actual Control on the China-India border, where Chinese and Indian volunteers fight using non-lethal martial arts. After gaining fame for his victories, Singh is injured by Chinese directed-energy weapons.

At the same time, the Chinese government watches Schmidt’s geoengineering efforts and uses psychological warfare, cyberattacks, and deadly tsunami bombs to encourage European governments to support geoengineering. This leads Saskia to step down as queen and join a group of smaller nations that support geoengineering, becoming known as the "Queen of the Netherworld."

In the story’s climax, Singh is sent by India on a secret mission to destroy the Texas launcher, as India’s monsoons were delayed by Schmidt’s plan. Singh is stopped by Rufus, who acts to protect Saskia, who is hiding inside the launcher’s underground tunnel.

The book’s title refers to the idea that if a solar geoengineering project is suddenly stopped, it could cause rapid warming, a phenomenon called a termination shock.

Reception

Omar El Akkad, who reviewed Termination Shock for The New York Times, said the book was "both very creative and realistic," and described it as a response to serious problems in the world while also trying to change them. Reason magazine noted that the book focuses on small changes people might make to deal with climate change, and called it an effort to explain the challenges of climate change clearly rather than as a group of big, hard-to-solve problems. The Chicago Review of Books called the book "compelling" but said it only slightly shows Stephenson's talent for writing stories about imagined futures. Publishers Weekly described it as "very smart, strange, darkly humorous, and full of creative ideas." The Sunday Times reviewed it negatively, saying Stephenson's view of the future of climate change felt more like "a slightly smug, nerdy kind of fun." Francis Fukuyama compared Termination Shock to The Ministry for the Future, a 2020 book about climate change written by Kim Stanley Robinson.