Entry 11: Cli-Fi or Environmental Fiction
Termination Shock: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (2021)
Apologies: long novel, long review
At over 700 pages, this novel meanders while establishing its characters and setting up the action. If you enjoy deep immersion in a story, allow this one to wash over you; the resolution is deeply satisfying, well worth your investment of time. The world-building here mostly relates to technology, which seems plausible and science-based. Stephenson’s world isn’t so different from ours; characters reference events we’re familiar with, such as the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Covid-19, which here has evolved into Covid-27.
In America, perhaps 20-30 years in the future, our quirky roster of characters include:
Saskia (properly known as Frederika), Queen of the Netherlands, who makes a crash landing in Waco, Texas, during a hurricane. Widowed, with a 16 year old daughter, Saskia is wry, funny, game — and refreshingly down to earth. Normal. She’s inherited a figurehead role, loaning her public face to humanitarian crises and ribbon cuttings. The plot carries her along, leaving the one interesting choice she makes — to abdicate her throne — revealed so matter-of-factly, we learn of it as a fait accompli.
Rufus (Red) Grant, an American, ex-military, a man who has carved a niche for himself as an exterminator of the wild boar wreaking havoc throughout Texas.* He’s a member of the Comanches, a tribe that embraces those of mixed race, for membership as a Comanche isn’t so much a genealogical identity as a state of mind. The Comanches perfected the art of performative warfare, inspiring terror…. until their enemies sussed how to render them toothless. Stephenson suggests that what ails America is precisely that it has become a place where these macho Comanche poseurs are seen as aspirational. This America enjoys technological advantages, but infighting has diluted its political power. It’s a global laughingstock, a mess. Red is not a mess — he’s a focused, levelheaded, determined guy, one who quietly perseveres until his goals are accomplished. Sure, he has a streak of bad-ass in him, but he’s not a showboat. He is the decent American. He is, in fact, our hero.
T.R., a billionaire maverick who sets events in motion. As America fiddles while the climate burns, T.R. undertakes a technological scheme on his own cognizance to rescue the environment by building a giant gun that shoots sulfur into the atmosphere and scrubs excess C02 from the air. He borrows tropes from every MBA ever: move fast and break things; disrupt the status quo; seek forgiveness, not permission. As to unintended consequences… mavericks build airplanes while flying, right? Sitting back and complaining is no way to solve problems. T.R. is all action. But climate change is a global concern, not just an American one — and in the global hierarchy there are winners and losers. And losers don’t always take things lying down.
Laka, early twenties, a Canadian Sikh from British Columbia. While the Sikhs abhor violence, Laka is an expert in gatka, a mixed martial art. He’s built like a quarterback but light on his feet. When he arrives in the Himalayas, fighting Chinese volunteers at the Line of Actual Control, he uses gatka skills to re-take territory on behalf of India, in the process becoming an internet phenom known as Big Fish. His friend Pippa, an Australian videographer, has studied the art of performative warfare, and helps catapult Laks into the social media stratosphere. After China unleashes a secret weapon that liquifies parts of his brain (similar to Havana syndrome), the Indian Army rebuilds Laks into a bionic man. He accepts a secret mission that allows the characters to converge as the plot races to its conclusion.
Willem, advisor to Queen Saskia, is the consummate diplomat, highly skilled at putting everyone at ease. Amusingly, his nemesis, a Chinese spy named Bo, appears wherever Willem is. Willem constantly deflects Bo’s attempts to recruit him, while pondering Bo’s timely warnings.
Can the climate be saved? Are bureaucracies (the U.N.?) equipped to overcome global inertia, power-mongering, and bickering? Are scientists? Entrepreneurs? What about unintended consequences? Stephenson invites us to ponder these issues without lapsing into preaching. Readers come to identify with Rufus, who sorts it out in his mind in a way that appeases his morals and values. He may be a cowboy, but he disdains the black hat, the white hat, and the khaki hat altogether. He is The Lone Ranger. He admires people working in community, but experience has taught him how to wait patiently and earn trust, how to admit when he doesn’t know something, and how to fight hard for those he loves. In Rufus, the performative aspects of the macho Comanche are subsumed by true grit and substance. He is, Stephenson suggests, the manly ideal America should aspire to.
Reading Phillip Pullman’s Fairy Tales From the Brothers Grimm, I stumbled on “The Singing Bone” which begins with the following: “In a certain country at one time, many people were concerned about a wild boar that was churning up the farmers’ fields, killing the cattle, and ripping the life out of people with its tusks….The king announced that anyone who could kill or capture it should have his only daughter for wife.” Aha.
**** Highly Recommend
2. The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) - This deserves a nuanced review to do it justice, but having read it previously, it’s not fresh in my mind. It is, however, a masterpiece. *****Highest recommendation.
More Cli-Fi examples: Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek (Essays); Highly Recommend. Walden by Henry David Thoreau (Essays); Dune by Frank Herbert