Another theme that White Noise shares with DeLillo's earlier novels is the social impact of technology, particularly its most devastating products-atomic weapons and poisonous waste. Gary Harkness, the narrator of End Zone (1972), discovers a disturbing fascination with the language and "theology" of nuclear war. End Zone foreshadows White Noise both in its parody of disaster novels and in its protagonist's ambivalence about technology and its consequences. Similarly, Ratner's Star (1976) blends mathematics and Menippean satire to mount a scathing critique of scientific authority, exposing it as an elaborate form of magic that neither consoles nor contains the fear of mortality it conceals. In these earlier novels, as in White Noise, science engenders a deep and dangerous alienation from nature. DeLillo has returned to these themes in his most recent novel, Underworld (1997), which meditates on the intertwined relationship between waste and weapons.

DeLillo's next three novels, Players (1977), Running Dog (1978), and The Names (1982), offer variations on the terrorist thriller, in which bewildered protagonists seek solace in cathartic violence. Players adumbrates White Noise not only in its superbly rendered dialogue and its depiction of the sedative effects of television (see the excerpt reprinted on pages 342-43), but also in its sharp portrayal of contemporary marriage. Like Jack Gladney, Lyle and Pammy Wynant, the bored protagonists of Players, are at once tranquilized and terrorized by the institutions with which they are inextricably involved.