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For anyone interested in a near-future sci-fi look at how sulfur as a form of geoengineering might play out, check out out Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson[

For anyone interested in a near-future sci-fi look at how sulfur as a form of geoengineering might play out, check out out Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson[0]. The title[1] refers to what happens when you suddenly stop an effort like that... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_Shock_(novel) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Maintenance_and_termination_shock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering#Maintenan...

siwatanejo 3y ago
I'm still kinda surprised that no novel from Neal have become films or TV shows yet.
- zwily 3y ago
  There’s been talk of a Seveneves movie or mini series for years….
  - adzm 3y ago
    Snow Crash has passed hands a few times as well.
  - epivosism 3y ago
    The final 1/3 of the book would be an amazing role-playing scenario. When you think about it, it's almost designed that way. The underground area, the floaters, the various "classes" of people we meet, their interesting combinations...
    - Vecr 3y ago
      I think the final 1/3rd of that book is actually a horrible situation to actually be in. "Someone else's dream" for sure.
      - epivosism 3y ago
        Have you played Dungeons and Dragons? It's not supposed to be fun as a place to really live, living in a land harassed by monsters, demons, no security, etc. It's an interesting scenario to explore creativity and conflict in difficult situations.
        Vecr 3y ago
        Sure, but imagine if a D&D setting was an actual world that somehow survived long enough to start implementing countermeasures (remember the last 1/3rd of this book is set thousands of years in the future, so reasonably analogous). If the Player Characters decide they don't want to bother with a problem, it would have to be solved with other methods, like massive use of defoliants (think agent orange) and pesticides, bunker buster bombs (think MOP, if deliverable with enough precision), and as a last resort, dropping massive thermobaric weapons to destroy entire cities, possibly repeatedly, and then setting up miles wide demilitarized zones in a circle around the incident zone with kill-on-sight orders and automated turrets and tracking systems, if feasible with the tech available. Obviously a few Player Characters can't handle everything, so it would be reasonable common as an ordinary person to find out the next city over no longer exists and they have just been drafted to man the "human side" of the newly created DMZ.
        epivosism 3y ago
        You're right, I had assumed some kind of general peace for the resettlement of the surface of the planet. Given that, there would be some lawlessness, but at least no orbital strikes/nukes. I was more thinking about various types of agents from the people living in space, all infiltrating each other, traitors to their own types, double agents, weird combinations etc. Plus mysterious people nobody can place - who turn out to be agents from the submarine/hot air balloon groups. And vice versa. The land is now mostly open and clear, right? So there will be new populations, settlements being started down on the surface. A resource race, with possibly high-tech stuff lying around, relics from the lost civilization! Player characters could start off as an alleged group of "explorers for sites for new cities" put together by a newly established base - but actually one is trying to divert them away from the hidden holy site of the mineshaft people, where he came from, the other is a spy from a lost faction of the brain people who are outlawed in space now, another is trying to fulfill a 5000 year family promise he received from his father, that when he could, to go to a certain place and say a certain prayer, etc. There is just huge diversity of backgrounds and tech, and a large, unexplored environment potentially full of strange treasures!
epivosism 3y ago
Read counts: Snow Crash (3) The Diamond Age (1) Anathem (2) Cryptonomicon (3/4) Baroque cycle (2/3) Seveneves (2) Reamde (2) The rise and fall of D.O.D.O (9/10) Fall or Dodge in hell (1/2) Termination shock (1/3)
- jojoo 3y ago
  Are the fractions ongoing efforts or did you drop it? re-reads for me: Diamond Age (4) (I'm an educator), Cryptonomicon (2), Baroc cycle (2) However i plan to re-read Anathem in paralell with my second re-read of Russels A History of Western Philosophy. Really looking forward to this one.
  - epivosism 3y ago
    Unfortunately I can't get as into the later ones, so those are me giving up

siwatanejo 3y ago

I'm still kinda surprised that no novel from Neal have become films or TV shows yet.

zwily 3y ago
There’s been talk of a Seveneves movie or mini series for years….
- adzm 3y ago
  Snow Crash has passed hands a few times as well.
- epivosism 3y ago
  The final 1/3 of the book would be an amazing role-playing scenario. When you think about it, it's almost designed that way. The underground area, the floaters, the various "classes" of people we meet, their interesting combinations...
  - Vecr 3y ago
    I think the final 1/3rd of that book is actually a horrible situation to actually be in. "Someone else's dream" for sure.
    - epivosism 3y ago
      Have you played Dungeons and Dragons? It's not supposed to be fun as a place to really live, living in a land harassed by monsters, demons, no security, etc. It's an interesting scenario to explore creativity and conflict in difficult situations.
      - Vecr 3y ago
        Sure, but imagine if a D&D setting was an actual world that somehow survived long enough to start implementing countermeasures (remember the last 1/3rd of this book is set thousands of years in the future, so reasonably analogous). If the Player Characters decide they don't want to bother with a problem, it would have to be solved with other methods, like massive use of defoliants (think agent orange) and pesticides, bunker buster bombs (think MOP, if deliverable with enough precision), and as a last resort, dropping massive thermobaric weapons to destroy entire cities, possibly repeatedly, and then setting up miles wide demilitarized zones in a circle around the incident zone with kill-on-sight orders and automated turrets and tracking systems, if feasible with the tech available. Obviously a few Player Characters can't handle everything, so it would be reasonable common as an ordinary person to find out the next city over no longer exists and they have just been drafted to man the "human side" of the newly created DMZ.
        epivosism 3y ago
        You're right, I had assumed some kind of general peace for the resettlement of the surface of the planet. Given that, there would be some lawlessness, but at least no orbital strikes/nukes. I was more thinking about various types of agents from the people living in space, all infiltrating each other, traitors to their own types, double agents, weird combinations etc. Plus mysterious people nobody can place - who turn out to be agents from the submarine/hot air balloon groups. And vice versa. The land is now mostly open and clear, right? So there will be new populations, settlements being started down on the surface. A resource race, with possibly high-tech stuff lying around, relics from the lost civilization! Player characters could start off as an alleged group of "explorers for sites for new cities" put together by a newly established base - but actually one is trying to divert them away from the hidden holy site of the mineshaft people, where he came from, the other is a spy from a lost faction of the brain people who are outlawed in space now, another is trying to fulfill a 5000 year family promise he received from his father, that when he could, to go to a certain place and say a certain prayer, etc. There is just huge diversity of backgrounds and tech, and a large, unexplored environment potentially full of strange treasures!

epivosism 3y ago

Read counts: Snow Crash (3) The Diamond Age (1) Anathem (2) Cryptonomicon (3/4) Baroque cycle (2/3) Seveneves (2) Reamde (2) The rise and fall of D.O.D.O (9/10) Fall or Dodge in hell (1/2) Termination shock (1/3)

jojoo 3y ago
Are the fractions ongoing efforts or did you drop it? re-reads for me: Diamond Age (4) (I'm an educator), Cryptonomicon (2), Baroc cycle (2) However i plan to re-read Anathem in paralell with my second re-read of Russels A History of Western Philosophy. Really looking forward to this one.
- epivosism 3y ago
  Unfortunately I can't get as into the later ones, so those are me giving up