About the Book
New York Times Bestseller
From Neal Stephenson--who coined the term "metaverse" in his 1992 novel Snow Crash--comes a sweeping, prescient new thriller that transports readers to a near-future world in which the greenhouse effect has inexorably resulted in a whirling-dervish troposphere of superstorms, rising sea levels, global flooding, merciless heat waves, and virulent, deadly pandemics.
"Stephenson is one of speculative fiction's most meticulous architects. . . . Termination Shock manages to pull off a rare trick, at once wildly imaginative and grounded." -- New York Times Book Review
One man--visionary billionaire restaurant chain magnate T. R. Schmidt, Ph.D.--has a Big Idea for reversing global warming, a master plan perhaps best described as "elemental." But will it work? And just as important, what are the consequences for the planet and all of humanity should it be applied?
Ranging from the Texas heartland to the Dutch royal palace in the Hague, from the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas to the sunbaked Chihuahuan Desert, Termination Shock brings together a disparate group of characters from different cultures and continents who grapple with the real-life repercussions of global warming. Ultimately, it asks the question: Might the cure be worse than the disease?
Epic in scope while heartbreakingly human in perspective, Termination Shock sounds a clarion alarm, ponders potential solutions and dire risks, and wraps it all together in an exhilarating, witty, mind-expanding speculative adventure.
About the Author :
Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . .Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.
Edoardo Ballerini is a two-time winner of the Audio Publishers Association's Audie Award for best male narrator (2013, Beautiful Ruins, by Jess Walter; 2019, Watchers, by Dean Koontz) and the only narrator to be profiled by the New York Times, which called him "A master in his field . . . at the forefront of a new kind of celebrity." He is also a regular voice of "Sunday Reads" for The Daily podcast, reaching audiences of two to four million listeners, and of "Sleep Stories" for Calm, the world's #1 meditation app. Articles on Edoardo's work have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian (UK), Aftenposten (Norway), Il Giornale (Italy), RTE (Ireland), the CBC (Canada), the Week, and the Week UK. His narrations have been named among the best ever by Oprah Daily, Elle Magazine, Slate, Audible, Business Insider, Newsday, The A/V Club, and People Magazine, among others. He is also a two-time winner of the SOVAS Voice Arts Award, and was named a "Golden Voice" by AudioFile magazine, an honorific granted to only thirty-five actors in the magazine's history. Edoardo has recorded classics by Tolstoy, Dante, Kafka, Whitman, Poe, Calvino, Emerson, Jack London, Dostoyevsky, and Camus, along with The Hebrew Bible in its entirety, as well as bestsellers by Andre Aciman, James Patterson, David Baldacci, and Isabel Allende, and spiritual titles by The Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn. His 135-hour recording of Karl Ove Knausgaard's sweeping My Struggle series garnered international attention. Edoardo Ballerini was a series regular in the critically acclaimed Quarry (Cinemax), and has had recurring roles in The Sopranos (HBO), Boardwalk Empire (HBO), 24 (Fox), Elementary (CBS), and Ripper Street (BBC), among other television credits. He has also appeared in several feature films, most memorably as the star chef in the indie cult classic Dinner Rush, opposite the late Danny Aiello, and most recently in First We Take Brooklyn, opposite Harvey Keitel. He is a graduate of Wesleyan University and lives in New York.
Review :
"Deals brilliantly and innovatively with our era's most pressing existential matter--while delivering stratospheric gigatons of carefully engineered delight."
-- "Washington Post"
"Edoardo Ballerini's impressive narrative range is on full display...Other audiobooks like this might be forced to hire a full cast, but Ballerini is beyond capable. He slips from Texan to Dutch to Scottish voices within a few sentences...He juxtaposes his spectacular character work with a rock-steady third-person narration of complicated science data...Listeners will not mind spending 20-plus hours listening to Ballerini."
-- "AudioFile"
"Imaginative and utterly realistic."
-- "Bookbub"
"The rare climate thriller that's realistic...The kind of climate-change fiction we all need."
-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
