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December 09, 2004
State of Fear
Bryan Curtis in Slate has an insightful critique of Michael Chricton’s latest novel State of Fear that makes many of the same points I made earlier. State of Fear (which could be the name Chricton chose for any of his novels) is about environmentalists who wreck havoc on consumers through weather changing machines. Chricton does his homework and has a good sense of what his readers will care about. He also is willing to tackle a wide range of subjects and has fairly memorable plots with very forgettable characters.
However, the Curits errs on thinking that Chricton is “right wing.” He seems more like a conservative to me and by conservative I mean someone who does not like change. He did not like Japan becoming more powerful in the eighties in Rising Sun, he did not like the growth of new technologies in Prey, etc.. Curtis writes, “But Chricton's books have suffered as his right-leaning politics have come to the fore. Titles like Rising Sun, Disclosure, and Airframe (about the mendacity of the electronic media) were naked political screeds designed to land him on the op-ed page.” I have not read Disclosure, but Airframe at least is hardly a right wing polemic and is much more about the aeronautics industry than it is about the media. It does make the media look bad in some parts, but the reporter in the story does a fairly good job of fact checking before running a story. The book makes union thugs some of the major bad guys, but it does the same thing with corporate executives who are the main villain Chricton uses in many books. The book is also very clear in predicting that the deregulation of airlines championed by many converatives (not Chhricton reactionary style conservatives) is going to cause commercial jets to constantly fall from the sky. Like many of Chricton’s other dire predictions this has not happened yet.
Update: Peter Robinson in the corner has a post with related views on Chricton's fear-mongering including examples I forgot like Westworld, The Andromeda Strain, and The Terminal Man.
UPdate #2: John Adler of the corner says that Chricton is only a contrarian and argues aginst whatever scientific/corporate/political fad is up and coming.
Posted by Pete at December 9, 2004 10:45 AM
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