State of Fear
Michael Crichton’s latest novel, STATE OF FEAR – just out in paperback – supposes that radical environmental groups help aid their causes by spreading fear. They accomplish this by becoming terrorists who control the weather with complicated technology, all to create “natural” disasters to make the public think global warming is happening far faster than reality has it.
So they create an earthquake here and a flash flood there. They can even assassinate people by causing a lightning storm to track intended victims through their cell phones. A lawyer and a government agent head up a small group of people out to thwart the group’s plans, which leads them on a dangerous adventure around the globe, culminating – and this is timely – in one mother of a tsunami.
Somehow, all the science talk (and this is a book riddled with factual footnotes and charts) proves fascinating, forming a bridge between the fast-paced action scenes in which Crichton excels. Treading on TWISTER territory with its focus on extreme weather (but minus the goofy cheese, thankfully), STATE OF FEAR is not his best, but it is rather enjoyable.
[...] 3. FIFTY DEGREES BELOW by Kim Stanley Robinson FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN was one of the best science fiction books I’ve read since his previous effort, THE YEARS OF RICE AND SALT. Climate change enthusiasts who got put off by Michael Crichton’s FOX News-style STATE OF FEAR should give it a try. [...]
[...] MOST DISAPPOINTING BOOK Michael Crichton’s STATE OF FEAR. A riveting good action adventure novel that treats hardcore environmentalism as a fundamentalist religion would be a great read. Too bad Crichton didn’t write a book like that. Instead, he chose to include page after page of graphs and make all his characters about as deep and as nuanced as shirt cardboard. [...]
[...] But NATURAL SELECTION is focused on science, not sex. The Ivy League-educated Freedman is obviously a smart guy, with the proof being on the page in passages dealing with the ins and outs of manta rays and the ecosystem of the deep. But the text is missing the sheer zing of a Peter Benchley, a Michael Crichton, a Steve Alten – all of whom the work apes. For it to be as fun as those, it would require some trimming. At half the length, it’d be double the book; as it is now, it’s simply decent. –Rod Lott [...]
[...] CRICHTON’S NEXT IS … WELL, ‘NEXT’ HarperCollins has announced Michael Crichton’s next novel following 2004’s STATE OF FEAR. Titled NEXT, it’s the story of an unemployment line employee who screams the titular word whenever she’s done helping one person and is ready to aid another. Or maybe it’s about a family being pursued because of their genetic makeup. I can’t find the press release. But it comes out Nov. 28 and you can pre-order it here. [...]
[...] OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS: • GRAVE DESCEND by John Lange • STATE OF FEAR by Michael Crichton • WOMAN by Richard Matheson [...]
[...] PIMPING FOR CRICHTON NEWSGASM was all over the alternate-reality-game-style website for Michael Crichton’s new book, NEXT. The site is up there with the best as far as cutting-edge promotion goes, and I love the monkey/barcode cover. Now let’s hope Crichton manages to pull his head out his money-stuffed ass and deliver a book more akin to GRAVE DESCEND than STATE OF FEAR. Ugh. STATE OF FEAR – shudder – I didn’t need to bring the specter of that book into my consciousness. Now the bad-science nightmares will start all over again. [...]