What are we reading in September 2022?

Another month,another pile of books

SF/Fantasy
Arthur C Clarke - Against the Fall of Night ✔
Paul Cornell - London Falling✔
C J Cherryh - Brothers of Earth
Philip Wylie - The Disappearance
Mike Carey - X Men - Age of X ✔
from other genres
Helen Clare - Merlin's Magic✔
C S Lewis - The Problem of Pain
Aubrey Beardsly - Under the Hill
Gwen DeMarco - Sophie and the Odd Ones✔

This time around I have in hand Under Fortunate Stars, A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, and Babel. I hope to have The City Inside in my grubby little mitts shortly.

I am going back and forth between two different Madeleine L'Engle collections, The Wrinkle in Time Quartet and The Polly O'Keefe Quartet. The second takes place a generation after the first, but she actually went back and forth between them as she wrote them, and I'm curious to see how they work in publication order. I read the first three Wrinkle in Time books many times as a kid, but have never read any of the Polly O'Keefe ones; I'm very close to finishing The Arm of the Starfish.

SF/F
Into the Narrowdark by Tad Williams
Other
The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
Trigonometry for Dummies by Mary Jane Sterling

>2 Shrike58:
That Babel looks tasty. I'm wishlisting it for later reference.

My sf reading agenda this month contains no surprises. Other than The Adventures of Jules de Grandin (where I've just reached the midpoint), it's all stuff I've been threatening to read for months: 3001, Consider Phlebas, The Cleft.

Oh, and I stumbled on to a thrift shop copy of Men, Martians, and Machines, so that might find its way in to the mix too.

Finished up Under Fortunate Stars. You could call it a routine space adventure, except that seems to be hard to do these day; call it an exercise in giving a new author the chance to entertain me in hopes that they do more interesting work in the future.

September already! I'm starting out with a re-read, The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke.

I don't remember much about the story except it was set in Sri Lanka and it was about an engineering project to build an elevator that could take you from Sri Lanka to the moon or something.

>7 NerdyBookingham:
Your recollection of The Fountains of Paradise is much the same as mine. In my mind it was a diamond thread space-elevator.

>7 NerdyBookingham: >8 pgmcc: I recall religion and politics played a large part due to the precise location. There were other spots on the surface of the earth that could be used for the elevator but the one in Sri Lanka was the most ideal - and just happened to be on sacred ground. To my recollection, this was the major plot point that needed resolution.

I have just finished, and very much enjoyed, The Lost Steersman. As much as I want to immediately continue with The Language of Power, I must force myself to wait as Kirstein is apparently working on books #5 and #6 now and having to wait, (a la GRRM), is less pleasant than knowing I have the book on the shelf to, "get around to one of these days."

Now re-reading Wolfe's A Borrowed Man in anticipation of reading the sequel, Interlibrary Loan.

>79 elenchus: Clarke was living in Sri Lanka at the time.

>9 ScoLgo:
I do not remember too many details but I do remember religion being a key issue.

>9 ScoLgo: A Borrowed Man and Interlibrary Loan both made it on to my TBR list last month. I came across a Gene Wolfe blog and their description of these two books captivated me. But they will have to wait until I finish reading his Solar Cycle sometime next year.

Right now I am reading The Boy Who Would Live Forever. I really enjoyed Pohl’s Gateway series and somehow missed reading this volume when it was first published.

>2 Shrike58:
>5 paradoxosalpha:

Hear, hear re: Babel, I await your reviews / comments with interest. I recently re-read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, it did not disappoint a whit.

Contemplating a start to Gibson's Agency, while working my way through the Folio Society edition of Sherlock Holmes's Selected Adventures and Memoirs.

>9 ScoLgo: A continuation of the Steerswoman series? I've been waiting 18 years for that!

>9 ScoLgo:
>12 Neil_Luvs_Books:

Wishlisted A Borrowed Man. This month's thread is really pricking up my ears, for some reason.

>12 Neil_Luvs_Books: Wow! I haven't thought about the Interlibrary Loan Practices Handbook for years. ILL was my 1st professional position, back in the '80s. Time travel....

>16 rshart3: 🤣

Weird how sometimes those touchstones simply do not work! How does one fix those when they send you to the wrong book?

This is where that touchstone was supposed to take you. As I am sure you already figured out.

😀

https://www.librarything.com/work/21786599

>17 Neil_Luvs_Books: No -- I hadn't a clue that Wolfe wrote a book called that. It really was a blast-from-the-past moment, followed by thinking you must be another librarian. But I will hunt down the book you meant. I like Wolfe, though he has written some that didn't work as well for me.

>18 rshart3: When your main character (and narrator) can be borrowed from a library, the title is quite apt :) I would not read that one without the first in the series though - while it may work, the first gives you a comparison point and background which help with this one. And keep in mind it is his last - so definitely not his best and under-edited but I still liked it. Give it time though - the last pages gets things in order (which is not that unusual but some of the middle can be really rough in this one - thus my under-edited comment).

>17 Neil_Luvs_Books: When you edit a post, suggested touchstones appear in an area directly to the right of the edit window, (it might be elsewhere on devices with smaller screens). Regardless of location, just after the default touchstone, click on the (others) link and look for the correct title in the resulting popup dialog box.

HTH...

I finished reading The Adventures of Jules de Grandin and posted my review, and I've started reading 3001.

Just finished Persephone Station, a space opera, military action, cyberpunky action tale which packs in alien contact, AI issues, LGBTQ aspects, ethical conflicts, and a number of well-realized characters. I enjoyed it a lot. Like many of its kind, a fast read. I wasn't aware of the author (the striking cover is what caught me at first) but I'll watch out for her now.

>6 Shrike58: Restarting Under fortunate stars, my second try. It's due back at the library soon.

Tomorrow will see Inhibitor phase by Alastair Reynolds, for Thursday's book group. First in-person discussion since COVID started.

I'm reading Ancestral Night and it's moving right along so far.

Reading The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson and finding it unrelentingly grim.

>22 rshart3: Persephone station is on my TBR pile. Glad to see your praise for it!

I finished The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer.
4th (final?) book in the Last Survivors series; YA post-apocalyptic/dystopia.

>20 ScoLgo: Thanks! I didn’t know that.

>28 Neil_Luvs_Books: You're welcome. You might also find this thread interesting...

The New How To Do Fancy Things In Your Posts Thread

Well I finished The Space Between the Worlds and the grimness didn't let up, but it is definitely worth persevering with. The protagonist is a "traverser" - someone who can travel to parallel Earths largely because her alternate-selves have all died on those Earths. The mechanics and reasons for the traversing are never really explained in anything other than a hand-wavey way, and there are plenty of loose threads and a rather feeble denouement for the Bad Guy, but that's not really the point of the story. The real story is about power, the resilience of the oppressed, and taking the least-worst option to survive. As I said, it's unrelenting grim and violent but there is a spark of hope at the end.

3001 is going along at a brisk clip, as all of the Odyssey Sequence books do, and I'm about halfway through. I've added Ghost Story to my fiction TBR for this month in observance of the author's recent demise.

Finished London Falling. I love that whole subgenre of detectives,police,magicians etc that are immersed in a magic London.
Also read a very early A C Clarke,Against the Fall of Night,which as the basis of his City and the Stars full novel.
Next up is Philip Wylie The Disappearance,and some trashy but fun urban fantasy when I need a break.

>32 dustydigger: Had you read the Alex Verus series? Not as well done as Cornell but it is London and no police really (well, there are some but they are not the focus) but I find it pretty readable (and with no more Cornell, I need my magical London fix from somewhere) :). I suspect you already know about Rivers of London.

Finished A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking, which I wound up reading because Ursula Vernon is going to be a guest of honor at the local SF convention. I usually don't read YA, but there's no denying that the high concept is very cute. However, YA still really isn't my thing.

Started PKD's Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch in my LOA edition, and immediately recognised (a) there is a lot of objectifying of women by pretty much all the men, even in the opening chapters, and (b) the ready parallel to Gibson's concept of precognition used for marketing / consumer fashion as in the Blue Ant trilogy.

Finished Starfarers, three stories into Exhalation.

>4 seitherin: I thought Into the Narrowdark was great, hopefully you are enjoying it as well.

>33 AnnieMod: Yup. All the Alex verus series.and the Felix Castor books by Mike Carey. And Simon R Green's Nightside stories. Rivers of London,of course.Plus Kate Griffin's Midnight Mayor series. I just love magical London tales.
Also in this genre I would include Charlie Stross Laundry Files books too,even if some are set in such not very exotic or magical places like Leeds! lol.

>33 AnnieMod:, >38 dustydigger:
I recommend The Last London.

>37 Karlstar: I am enjoying it, but slowly.

I am continuing my annual tradition of reading an old Hugo winner by reading Way Station.

I finished A Borrowed Man and Interlibrary Loan the other day. Sadly, ILL started off very intriguingly but really fell apart by the end. I can't really fault Wolfe though as he was at the end of his life, reportedly could only write for about an hour a day due to failing eyesight, and died not long after handing the manuscript over to his publisher. Likely he simply did not have the energy to properly finish the novel. I won't go into the details of Ern E. Smithe's adventures here; there are plenty of online resources that analyze the books in depth. Suffice to say that I am glad to have read them, despite the nearly incoherent later chapters of Interlibrary Loan.

Now reading Shadowland in tribute to the recent passing of Peter Straub. After that I plan to finally get around to The Book Thief. I liked Zusak's I Am the Messenger when I read it over 14 years ago, (I can't believe it's been that long already), so have high hopes for The Book Thief.

I did wrap up 3001 and thus the full Odyssey Sequence, with my review posted. As forecast, I'm now taking a detour from sf to horror with Peter Straub's Ghost Story.

>43 paradoxosalpha: I'm reading Ghost story too!

>44 Sakerfalcon:
I'm only about 50 pages in, but digging it so far. I'm reading a copy of the first edition, which is evidently a distinction with a difference.

>42 ScoLgo: How was A Borrowed Man? Up to Wolfian standards or does it suffer similarly to Interlibrary Loan?

>46 Neil_Luvs_Books: A Borrowed Man was a re-read for me. I think it is quite a good book and I liked it even better this second time around.

At the start, Interlibrary Loan was also quite good; it just felt incomplete. I'm glad I read it, and I will likely read it again. I only wish Wolfe had lived long enough - and felt well enough - to finish. The hardcover is 238 pages so it's a relatively short novel. It felt like there could have been another 75 to 100 pages to fill in all the elements that were introduced in the latter ~1/4 of the book.

>47 ScoLgo: I think Interlibrary Loan is more under-edited than not complete. The last chapter kinda sorta closes it and I suspect that had Wolfe been able to go through normal editing, it would have smoothed the second part of the book leading into the end. As it is, the last 1/4th (or even more) reads almost like a first draft a novel. Still happy we got it though...

Finished the Apex Book of World SF volume 5. As with any anthology it was a mixed bag, but stand-out stories from Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Tochi Onyebuchi and Giovanni De Feo. Recommended for anyone who likes a different perspective on speculative fiction.
Now starting When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill.

Finished with Babel, which I found to be interesting, but which didn't inspire the enthusiasm that I feel for "The Poppy War" trilogy.

Greetings, all! I'm a frequent lurker but infrequent poster here.

Are there any Gordon Eklund fans in the house? I just finished his 1975 novel, Falling Toward Forever. I thought it was fun and pretty well written, with a dash of social commentary. Anyone interested in my review can find it on my 50-Book Challenge thread. Cheers!

>52 anglemark: According to Wikipedia Eklund is still alive. He is 77.

Finished Exhalation and Mixed Magics, about to start Transition by McIntyre.

I'm reading The High Crusade by Poul Anderson. Daft fun, well written. I'm blasting through it and really enjoying the experience.

Just finished reviewing Demons Time Race to the 7th Sunset by Varun Sayal

>54 ChrisRiesbeck: I just picked up a copy of McIntyre’s Transition a couple of weeks ago. I won’t start it for a while. Too many other books in my queue before it. But I am interested to read you review when you finish it.

Have you already read the book preceding Transition? Starfarers I believe? What did you think of that one?

I'm reading Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp

I've just read Expect Me Tomorrow by Christopher Priest.

>53 justifiedsinner: Indeed he is, I even have a book by him published recently. D'uh, I was thinking of Gordy Dickson. Will delete that post and sit with my dunce cap in a corner. Thanks for correcting me!

Just finished January fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky. I liked the idea (playing with Universal Basic Income), but geez some of the characters are in crappy situations.

>57 Neil_Luvs_Books: Yes, I just read Starfarers a couple weeks ago. My wife tried Transition and gave up halfway through because nothing was happening. I decided to give the series a shot because of the positive Leguin blurb. I put my thoughts in Starfarers in an LT review. We'll see if the slow pace of the first book has properly set my expectations for the second book. The second book starts immediately with an alien message but then goes through a lot of awkward recap via a character's internal monologue.

>62 ChrisRiesbeck: that’s a good review of Starfarers. Thanks for posting it. I too picked up these two novels because of Le Guin’s recommendation.

>63 Neil_Luvs_Books: It's a tetralogy.

>64 ChrisRiesbeck: Thanks for the review. I have mass market paperbacks of all four books that I need to get around to reading one of these days. You have helped move them up on the list.

As an aside, McIntyre wrote one of my favorite opening lines in SF... From Superluminal, "She gave up her heart quite willingly." At first glance it seems almost like a throw-away line from a generic romance novel, until one reads a few more paragraphs...

I am reading The War of the worlds

I allowed one of my coworkers to talk me into reading Among Others sooner, rather than later.

>65 ScoLgo: I just read the LT summary for Superluminal. Sounds really interesting.

So many books… so little time. I’ve said this before on LT: I’ve got to retire so I can read all of these great books! 😀

I reread Unquenchable fire this weekend. It's almost impossible to describe but I love it!

I'm currently reading On The Brink by RB Kelly.

>69 Sakerfalcon: Temporary Agency it's sequel is also unique and recommended. I've wondered if these books gave Ted Chiang the inspiration for "Hell is the Absence of God".

>67 Shrike58: I love that book fiercely - it so captures the magic, lonliness and intensity of adolescence for me.

Going a bit retro, re-reading The Past Through Tomorrow. Been a while since I last looked at those stories, they're holding up pretty well, all things considered

>67 Shrike58: >72 SChant: I thought that book was brill. ;)

>67 Shrike58: >72 SChant: >74 ScoLgo: Add me to the fans of Among Others. It and My Real Children are my favorite Waltons.

>75 ChrisRiesbeck: and up: It is a love letter to the genre and its readers without slipping into nostalgia or worse. I loved it. :)

>75 ChrisRiesbeck: I enjoyed Among Others a lot. I haven't picked up any other Walton, though; maybe My Real Children would be a good candidate. Sounds like the kind of thing I would like.

>77 Stevil2001: I have read a few Walton books, (7 or 8, I think...?). Among Others and My Real Children are my top two faves. If it's any indicator of how much I liked them, I borrowed both from Overdrive and then ended up tracking down hardbacks for later re-reading.

Her Small Change trilogy is also quite good, albeit a bit bleak, (WWII Alt-History).

Noting here that this thread was called out in the Sep 2022 State of the Thing ...

>71 justifiedsinner: I've just started it!

>77 Stevil2001:, >78 ScoLgo: I loved Among others and also really enjoyed her Thessaly trilogy.

>49 SChant: I love the Apex Book of World SF series: Yep, a mixed bag, but nicely accessible entree to world SF.

Worcester Public Library's SF Book Club is going to be reading Frederick Pohl's Gateway this month, so that's what I'm going to be reading. :-)

I'm also (still) working my way through 2016's Best of collection.

Reading Stringers by Chris Panatier, even though I missed the book discussion. Good so far.

>73 kiparsky: I think Heinlein’s The Past Through Tomorrow maybe his best work. I have read that collection a couple of times and still really enjoy it.

>83 AmyMacEvilly: Gateway is a book I want to reread. Another classic that I thoroughly enjoyed years ago.

For some reason I've never been moved to read a Jo Walton book, but clearly I need to remedy that soon, given the number of recommendations this month (including from members I resonate with). Thanks!

Finished up Among Others; liked it and I can see why it won best novel for the 2012 Hugo. Walton is a good enough author is that you're never quite sure how reliable the narrator is, and to make it work.

Finished Transition -- which has an afterward about how Starfarers had "a fan club before being written" and the next book would be Expedition -- actually it would be Metaphase. But next for me is Who Fears Death.

I've just finished Beyond The Burn Line by Paul McAuley. Which was great stuff.

Been reading some non-genre stuff this month...

The Book Thief was excellent historical fiction with a supernatural angle. 4.5 stars.

Shadowland. The magical realism and YA characters, (complete with love triangle), didn't really work for me... 2.5 stars.

Ararat An earthquake. Noah's Ark. A demon. Possession. Murder & Mayhem. 2.5 stars. Might've rated this higher if not for the gory parts, (I'm not a fan of detailed descriptions of climbing axes slamming through eyeballs).

The Diamond Eye. Picked this up after having read Signal Moon by the same author. Where Signal Moon had an SF element, this story is strictly historical fiction. Set in WWII and featuring the first-person account of a young Russian woman who becomes an elite sniper for the military. Some violence, (it is war, after all), but it's mostly understated. There are also some romance aspects but again, they are not the main focus of the story. I found both the tale and the main character compelling and will be looking for more Kate Quinn titles in future.

Now finishing up the Fault Lines trilogy with Earthquake Weather. The first two books are pretty much stand-alone stories with very little overlap. This third book was Powers' attempt to combine and conclude the previous two titles. I'd say he was mostly successful.

Next up will be Sunshine.

>80 Sakerfalcon: Thanks for the reminder. I'm pretty sure The Just City was a TOR freebie a while back so I already have the e-book on my devices. Need to get to it soon.

I finished Ghost Story and posted my review. Prompted by nagging from LibraryThing Early Reviewers (from which I got my copy, now no longer "Early"), I am turning to Utopia Avenue for my next novel to read.

>93 paradoxosalpha:

Your provided context for both the "chapter edits" and the real-world attentions of O.T.O. are always worthy of a thumb. I think Ghost Story won't ever be enticing for me, so these sorts of reviews are further welcome in providing just about all I need from the novel. That's not meant as pejorative to either the reviewer or Straub, incidentally: for the vast majority of novels, I intend to read neither the text nor the review!

>93 paradoxosalpha: I've been waiting for you to read Utopia Avenue to see whether I should move it up the TBR stack.

I'm currrently reading Machines Like Me, and all I can say at this point is that Ian McEwan's writing has no subtlety at all, particularly when compared with Klara and the Sun which explores the same ground.

>95 vwinsloe:

I've only finished the first chapter of Utopia Avenue. It's entertaining so far. My Other Reader--who liked it a lot--is feeding me documentary videos to provide extra historical context.

>79 elenchus: Thanks for pointing that out, I'd missed it.

>96 paradoxosalpha:. I've lived that history, so it may resonate with me. I just got pretty turned off by his last couple of books which seemed to be a bit more like YA fantasy.

>98 vwinsloe: his last couple of books which seemed to be a bit more like YA fantasy

I'm not sure which ones you mean. The Mitchell I've read so far has been The Bone Clocks and Slade House, neither of which seemed very YA to me, although both had significant fantasy elements.

(I was alive during the historical period of Utopia Avenue myself, although I was a fairly young child in the US, so not what you'd call cognizant of the British music scene.)

>98 vwinsloe: I quite liked The Bone Clocks but I was disappointed by Slade House.

>99 paradoxosalpha: and >100 pgmcc:. Yes, those are the two I meant. When you are expecting the literary sophistication of Cloud Atlas and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, those two seemed YA in comparison.

Pretty dire reading month for me,only a few SF genre reads,I was comfort reading (what a month September was,on all fronts!) mostly fluff kindle unlimited stuff. I have been checking out a TBR for Spooky October. A Night in the Lonesome October naturally,and Jirel of Joiry is due a reread,the backrounds to Jirel's adventures are undeniably creepy IMO.With my bad eyes my reading time is rather short,so the episodic nature of these two boths are suitable.And Gaiman's Coraline will be a fun reread(...black button eyes...)I also like to do a reread of HPLs The Outsider and a newly added Spooky October reread,Clark Ashton Smith's haunting The Dweller in the Deep
I intend to read some classic short stuff,including Ted Sturgeon's It and Michael Shea's The Autopsy,but for the rest I will be focusing on David Hartwell's famous Dark Descent anthology of horror.
As a wimp,my reading in the horror arena is very small,and very patchy indeed,and mainly weird fiction,ghost stories and the like. I had intended to buckle down to Clive Barker's Books of Blood,but once again chickened out. :0) Dark Descent should give me some suitably creepy reads.I've only read 11/52 of the stories,so I will have plenty of choice.
So thats the plan for October,hope lots of you are going to have a lovely creepy time!

Started Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, a fun little (500-odd pages) story about the devastating effects of climate catastrophe - as if I needed anything more disheartening during the current political turmoil :(

Finished Temporary agency which I really enjoyed. Pollack's strange alternate America is fascinating. Now I'm reading Last call which also presents a skewed version of the world as we know it.

>104 Sakerfalcon: I read Last Call back in July 2011*. I remember it vaguely.

*I have a remarkable memory for when I read a book. (Thanks be to the way I record my reading on LT.)

>103 SChant: Ministry for the Future has been recommended to me by a number of friends. It’s on my TBR list but I don’t know when I am going to get to it.

>106 Neil_Luvs_Books: I'm about 60 pages in and it seems a bit scrappy - jumping about all over the place with no real characterisation so far - hopefully that's just scene-setting and it will settle down into a decent story line soon.

>102 dustydigger:

Jirel is a good October choice! I'm queuing up Mysterious and Horrific Stories, In the Coils of the Labyrinth, and Piranesi on the spooky front.

I'm reading a book I won from EarlyReviewers, Fantastic and Horrific Stories by Arthur Machen. Fantasy and horror from 1894 to 1924. Interesting but kind of plodding tales, a bit too circumspect at times.

>109 Stevil2001: Fantastic and Horrific Stories

I'm a huge Machen fan; I didn't request that one because I probably have all its contents already in other volumes. My favorite Machen stories are "The White People" and "A Fragment of Life," both of which deserve the "circumspect" tag, I suppose. "The Great God Pan" is a touchstone of horror fiction, consciously revisited by writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King to M. John Harrison.

>104 Sakerfalcon: I hope you enjoy Last Call. As I mentioned previously in this thread, I am re-reading the trilogy and am about halfway through the third book at the moment.

>109 Stevil2001:,>110 paradoxosalpha: Machen is wonderful, a classic. Certainly there's not much "action", but no one conjures better the discovery of weird, dangerous forces in our supposedly humdrum world.
Meanwhile, I would recommend A. Merritt's Burn, Witch, Burn, one of the best witch stories around (not for me this Halloween, since I just reread it a year or two ago.)

Read R F Kuang's Babel : an arcane history earlier this month. It's brilliant. Language, translation, magic as an inexact science, all occurring at a parallel Oxford in the buildup to the First Opium War. There is some violence (prelude to war plus imperialism), but not as much as the Poppy War books.

>103 SChant:, >106 Neil_Luvs_Books: Ministry is certainly worth reading, IMO. It starts out pretty dark, but Robinson is a realist looking for a story that offers some hope, and I think what he ends up with is worth looking at. If you want a nice pairing, of course, you could put Termination Shock (Neal Stephenson) on the stack for afters. Also a near-future climate story, but with a lot more whizzing and banging and a lot less concern for realistic solutions..

(Personally I didn't think Termination Shock was Stephenson at his best, but for me that just means it's about eight times better than most of what is being published these days, instead of 12 or 15 - your mileage may of course vary)

>114 kiparsky: Yeah - I generally like Stephenson but bounced hard off Termination Shock and didn't finish it.

>105 pgmcc:, >111 ScoLgo: Finished Last call and really enjoyed it. I've moved right on to Expiration date.

>115 SChant: Interesting. I'm curious, do you recall what it was that put you off it? It had a number of weak points for me, I'd love to know whether you hit any of mine.

>117 kiparsky: To be honest, I didn't really take to it from the start. I was bored by seemingly endless section on the guy who wanders around killing pigs, I found the queen and her cronies pointless, and it took an unappealing turn into Ayn Rand-libertarianism for me when the billionaire tech guy stepped in to save the world (I didn't get farther than page 235 so don't know if he managed it) with his super sulphur dioxide solution! Yes, I know it's a real thing, but the idea of someone taking a unilateral decision without consultation with the rest of the planet comes over as distubingly "James Bond villain".

My current read - The Ministry for the Future - is by no means a perfect take on the same subject but I find its ideas of trans-national co-operation, multiple climate mitigation strategies, and having to use the carrot/stick method to force intransigent states/companies to do the right thing more realistic and more hopeful. No "billionaire-ex-machina" here!