I find it most interesting how the author so very assiduously avoids any mention of plasma, or anything made of plasma, or anything that has plasma noticeably in it. The closest he gets is controlling electrostatic fields.
This is remarkable because 99.99...% of the universe is 100% plasma. It takes a very willful sort of blindness not to notice it, not even to dismiss it as uninteresting.
The author is not alone in this. Astronomers have traditionally avoided any mention of plasma, despite that it is about all they can look at, only planetary bodies excepted.
I think the reason is similar to physicists' long avoidance of solid-state phenomena. Murray Gell-Mann famously called it "squalid-state physics", and disparaged people who worked in it. The mathematics was considered intractable.
Plasma dynamics has even more intractable mathematics. It is humbling to physicists used to mastery. Navier-Stokes equations are no picnic at the best of tines, but plasma dynamics makes them a footnote: neutral-fluid equations. I think it must be this shame that turns most physicists away.
"Pay no attention to the plasma behind the curtain!"
I think of generation after generation of students steered quietly and carefully away from natural interest in this stuff so hard to study, and so hard to predict. I am awed by those who overcome the ingrained distaste of their mentors and take on solar physics.
We could say that God is a plasma physicist who has been known to dabble in beetle ecosystems.