In a two-part novel, the American author deals with the topic of the climate emergency and imagines how the planet can be temporarily cooled.
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It’s hot, it’s very hot in Houston, Texas. However, the storm caused the temperature to drop to 45°C. Choc terminal dives from the first pages into a world that is very close to ours, into an everyday life full of heat waves and hurricanes. author of‘Diamond Agefrom Virtual Samurai and from Kryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson has decided to deal with the subject of global warming, its consequences and its political issues for the first time. The Cli-Fi (climate fiction) does not come from today: be it JG Ballard, Norman Spinrad, Jean-Marc Ligny or even Kim Stanley Robinson NYC 2140 (Bragelon) and The Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020, untranslated). The major novel, published in two parts in Albin Michel’s Imaginaire collection, plays on the broad vision of the geopolitical implications of global warming and is geo-engineered.
Things get off to a rather chaotic start in Houston: a jet is diverted to Waco Airport due to weather conditions and crashes amid wild boar and alligators. On board are Frederika Mathilde Louisa Saskia and her associates, who are rescued by Rufus, a loner harmed by the horrific disappearance of his daughter and dedicated to destroying the swarms of wild boar. “I’m the Queen of the Netherlands,” Saskia told him. I’m here on a secret mission to save my country.” Sea level rise is a matter of life and death for the Dutch. The ruler came to Texas to meet a billionaire fast-food chain boss, TR Schmidt, who also invited emissaries from Venice or Singapore, regions of the world facing the same problems.
We need to cool the climate, that’s the eccentric billionaire’s way at will, with a geoengineered solution. The Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines in 1991, which released 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, sparked fruitful scientific observations. “The next two years resulted in beautiful sunsets and a global drop in temperature.” TR Schmidt’s complex, called Pina2bo, aims to do the same thing as a volcanic explosion, but on a smaller scale. By injecting sulfur dioxide directly into the stratosphere with continuous shots, he believes he can lower the world’s average temperature. If this invention is at the heart of the novel’s reactor, it more broadly addresses the responsibilities of governments in the face of climate change risks. The catastrophe will shake the Netherlands despite its defenses. Bushy, Choc terminal should not only be forward-looking. He waltzes with three atypical and whimsical characters: Saskia the Queen (who doesn’t spit on a love affair), TR Schmidt the billionaire (who reminds us of the heads of high-tech companies who love to play sorcerers’ apprentices) and Laks ( went to Punjab to improve in a traditional form of Sikh martial arts called Gatka. All three pursue a relentless quest. The narrative is labyrinthine at times, but Neal Stephenson likes to develop the situations and the interactions between the protagonists. In the end, a futuristic and suspenseful thriller that goes far in depicting what awaits us.
