The first installment in Neal Stephenson’s Bomb Light cycle, POLOSTAN follows the early life of the enigmatic Dawn Rae Bjornberg. Born in the American West to a clan of cowboy anarchists, Dawn is raised in Leningrad after the Russian Revolution by her Russian father, a party line Leninist who re-christens her Aurora. She spends her early years in Russia but then grows up as a teenager in Montana, before being drawn into gunrunning and revolution in the streets of Washington, D.C., during the depths of the Great Depression. When a surprising revelation about her past puts her in the crosshairs of U.S. authorities, Dawn returns to Russia, where she is groomed as a spy by the organization that later becomes the KGB.

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?

While undergoing a routine medical procedure, multibillionaire Richard “Dodge” Forthrast is pronounced brain dead and put on life support. Long ago, when a much younger Dodge drew up his will, he directed that his body be given to a cryonics company now owned by enigmatic tech entrepreneur Elmo Shepherd. Dodge’s family has his brain scanned and its data structures uploaded and stored in the cloud, until it can eventually be revived. In the coming years, technology allows Dodge’s brain to be turned back on. An eternal afterlife --- the Bitworld --- is created, in which humans continue to exist as digital souls. But this brave new immortal world is not the Utopia it might first seem.

Military intelligence operator Tristan Lyons approaches Melisande Stokes, an expert in linguistics and languages, about translating some very old documents, which, if authentic, are earth-shattering. They prove that magic actually existed and was practiced for centuries. But the arrival of the scientific revolution and the Age of Enlightenment weakened its power and endangered its practitioners. And so the Department of Diachronic Operations --- D.O.D.O. --- gets cracking on its real mission: to develop a device that can bring magic back, and send Diachronic Operatives back in time to keep it alive…and meddle with a little history at the same time.

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature threaten the intrepid pioneers until only a handful of survivors remain. Five thousand years later, their progeny embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown…to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

Explores and blends a diversity of topics, including technology, economics, history, science, belief, and philosophy.

In this high-stakes thriller, a wealthy tech entrepreneur gets caught in the very real crossfire of his own online fantasy war game.