Termination Shock

Termination Shock (2021) by Neal Stephenson is set in a near future of intensifying climate disruption, rising seas, extreme heat, and recurring pandemics. A Texas billionaire has quietly begun deploying sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere from a gun mounted on his property, attempting unilateral solar geoengineering to reduce global temperatures. The novel follows several characters drawn into the geopolitical fallout of this operation, including a Dutch queen piloting her own jet, a Sikh martial artist navigating tensions on the India-Pakistan border, and a feral hog hunter from Texas who becomes an unlikely private security operative. Stephenson is less interested in whether geoengineering works than in who gets to decide whether it happens and what happens when one person or nation acts on behalf of the whole planet without asking.

Signed copy. Signed by Stephenson's on a specially bound-in page by the publisher.

Hardcover. First Edition, First Printing. Octavo, cloth-backed boards. New York: William Morrow, 2021. ISBN: 9780063224162. #10901.
Fine in fine dust jacket.