The planet is becoming increasingly uninhabitable, China and India are at war only using non-lethal hand-to-hand combat and the daughter of king Willem-Alexander abdicates her throne to become queen of the Netherworld.

Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock explores a future earth where a group of low-lying countries, including the Netherlands, are pushing for a solar geoengineering scheme to stop global warming.

The novel begins with the fictional Dutch royal Saskia, a pilot like Willem-Alexander, crashing a plane in the United States. Forced to change routes at the last minute because of excessive temperatures, the queen must make an emergency landing in Waco,Texas.

She’s been invited by a Texas oilman to back a plan to shoot canisters of sulfur dioxide into the air – simulating a volcanic eruption – to reduce global temperatures.

That process, known as solar radiation modification, isn’t science fiction and various forms of it have been proposed to solve the real Earth’s climate crisis. The book’s title refers to a rapid onset of global warming that would occur if the geoengineering would be abruptly stopped.

Real solar radiation modification proposals have generated widespread criticism and the fictional version comes with its own drawbacks. While it would save low-lying places like the Netherlands and Venice, other parts of the world, like India, would face huge drought.

Picking geographic winners and losers proves to be politically controversial, with India attempting to subvert the plans and China using espionage and deadly tsunami bombs to encourage European governments to get on board.

Despite the serious and realistic-seeming nature of the existential problems humanity is facing, the book has plenty of Stephenson’s absurdist humor. China and India fighting along the (real) Line of Actual Control but only using martial arts. Feral hogs have run amok in Texas and Saskia is forced to team up with a hog exterminator to travel safely.

Coming in at just over 700 pages, Termination Shock can move too slowly. The entire premise of the book – solar geoengineering to save the planet – is not mentioned until a quarter of the way in. The first part details Saskia, her traveling companions and Deep “Laks” Singh, a Punjab-Canadian Sikh who becomes famous as a fighter for India.

Dutch problems

Discerning readers in the Netherlands will also note some of the problems with the Dutch details of the book. Saskia is described as living in the middle of an ancient forest (the Haagse Bos.)

Her family is heavily invested in Royal Dutch Shell, which is how the company got its “royal” title except that isn’t how the “royal” designation is given to companies. (Unless William and family also own KLM, KPN and the KNVB.)

If you’re into the ever growing subgenre of climate fiction, you don’t mind digging into a lengthy work and you can overlook some incorrect details about the Netherlands, Termination Shock is an entertaining read.

You can get your copy of Termination Shock at the American Book Center.