33. Michael Crichton:

 

State of Fear

written: 2004

(563 pages)

 

read in July 2014

verdict: ** OK

 

Choosing Michael Crichton (1942-2008) as our next author should have been a safe bet, since we have read almost all of his books and we enjoyed each and every one of them, especially the ones dealing with science and technology, like Prey, The Andromeda Strain and Sphere. We had heard that for his controversial view on global warming in State of Fear, Crichton had received very mixed reviews, even going as far as hate mails, so in order to get our own view on the controversy, we simply needed to read this book.

 

The story starts with a gruesome death, as expected with Crichton. Then during the next chapters, several characters which would become crucial to the story are presented and developed. So far, so good. That is just the way we know and love Crichton's story-telling.

 

The topic was captivating enough: billionaire philanthropist George Morton finds out that his money is used by shady companies to bring about engineered natural catastrophes in order to make the world aware of the dangers of global warming. Soon he has to go into hiding, which leaves his attorney Peter Evans and his assistant Sarah Jones in charge to stall further money donations and, aided by FBI agent Kenner, they try to expose and prevent the terrorists from unleashing these catastrophies.

 

The idea was brilliant and controversial: the "bad guys" are a group of fanatic eco-terrorists, sponsored by a self-styled philanthropic organisation who, in their zealous effort to prevent global warming, actually manufacture themselves catastrophies like tsunamis or iceberg-melting in the Antarctic. And here probably lies the problem most critics had with the book: that the bad guys are not only the usual suspects, namely big companies polluting our world, but also eco zealots who are hellbent on "saving the planet" and do not shy away from sacrificing human lives or even doing more damage to nature only to prove their point. We actually liked this turn of events and high-five to Crichton for having the guts to show that every side can spawn nutters who do horrible things in the name of supposedly good intentions.

 

The fast-pace action and change of locale was very interesting, even though the accumulation of life-threatening situations into which the author thrusts his protagonists are more than a bit over the top. They are trapped for hours in a crevice in the Antarctic, almost get eaten by cannibals and even targeted by lightning, to name but a few. We would have preferred a bit more realistic scenarios, which still would have been adventurous enough to make the story interesting.

 

Still, for all this, why didn't we entirely like the book? It's because Crichton deviates from his usual thriller writing into the realm of proselytizing. We couldn't help but feel that he had an axe to grind with the scientists or with Greenpeace or whomever. He really felt the need to bring home his outlook on global warming (or, more generally, on "fashionable causes") and not only explain himself, but trying to make the reader see and accept his point of view. In order to do this, several of his characters fall into endless monologues preaching their views on this topic. It's ok to write such a speech maybe once or twice in a key scene, but the book would have been only half the volume if he had left out all these rants. It really marred the fun for us, so much so that in the end, we were really annoyed by it. We would have expected from our favourite science thriller writer that he knows such speeches never amount to anything: you only batter in open doors with those who share your opinion, quite possibly annoying them, and harden the view of those who do not share your views, creating an ever-widening gap between the two.

 

To sum it up, it was not a bad book, not a bad plot, but it could have been so much better without the preaching and this is the main reason the book only receives an OK from us.