Specifically, frozen in time in the middle of the COVID 19 pandemic. The book is set perhaps 10-20 years in the future (I didn't catch the exact date if he mentioned it), but it's almost as if culture and technology are frozen in time. However, when reading this book, I'm constantly annoyed and distracted at certain things. The Diamond Age remains my all-time favorite book, and I've read Cryptonomicon more times than should be allowed by law. AND it's written by one of my favorite authors. Instead, it seems to try to simply explore the incentive systems at play, and the relevant engineering problems, social problems, and international game theory as to how this would actually work out. It's a novel about a libertarian Muskesque billionaire undertaking a solar geoengineering project to cool the Earth, and the attendant geopolitical consequences of such a project, which does not attempt to simplify or promote any particular viewpoint on the matter. It's dense speculative fiction about a pressing topic. On paper, Termination Shock is a book that I should really enjoy. I'm mostly wondering if others feel the same way.
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