TERMINATION SHOCK
RELEASED 11 NOVEMBER 710 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook
Author Neal Stephenson
Publisher The Borough Press
Looking back on Neal Stephenson’s career, you’ll find he’s never far from a novel that riffs on the high-tech airport thriller. He clearly likes an action scene, a globetrotting plot and – you hesitate to use the word because it’s become so associated with swivel-eyed loons spouting nonsense –a conspiracy.
Despite this, Stephenson remains a science fiction novelist – or perhaps slipstream would be a more accurate description, in that airport thrillers are ultimately designed to reassure. Once events have shaken down, the high-tech airport thriller largely leaves the world as the author found it.