« Service Protesting | Main | Immigration This Week »
April 21, 2006
State (not climate) of Fear Part 2
I finished State of Fear by Michael Crichton and although I liked it for the most part and found it to be a good send up of limousine liberals and environmentalists, it had two major flaws. The first is mainly a stylistic problem, as the villains have apparently never watched a James Bond or Austin Powers movie. On two separate occasions the protagonists are left to die by E.L.F. members in various death traps when they could just as easily been shot. On one other occasion they are left completely unguarded with a chance to overpower the foolish individual guards who stupidly come into the prisoner rooms by themselves. One of the death traps is a lightning generator straight out of a Bond movie. The villains even leave the lightning room after a short monologue because apparently it was too much trouble to wait five minutes to watch the lightning kill off the only people in the world trying to stop their evil plans. I felt like channeling Scott Evil
Scott Evil: But what if he escapes? Why don't you just shoot him? What are you waiting for?
DR. Evil: I have a better idea. I'm going to put him in an easily-escapable situation involving an overly-elaborate and exotic death.
Scott Evil: Why don't you just shoot him now? Here, I'll get a gun. We'll just shoot him. Bang! Dead. Done.
Dr. Evil: One more peep out of you and you're grounded.
Aside from that the plot was way too straightforward.
The second major flaw is typical Crichton flaw where he channels Ayn Rand and goes on long rants about a particular issue. His bad guys were a bit different than his previous novels, but they are still always from shadowy large entities. This time, instead of a government or corporation he uses a non-profit. Whether it is the Japanese taking over the US, the perils of nano-tech/AI, or airline deregulation, Crichton always has a character rant about his pet issue if the book is set in the present day. In this one it is the scientist Kenner who says the fears of global warming caused by humans are exaggerated and not backed up by consistent real world scientific data. That I could handle and think has a lot of truth to it, but Crichton overdoes it and, like his previous books, never has the courage to present an equally well informed antagonist. Of course the scientist from MIT will know more about the science of climate change than some drunken TV actor. Maybe I notice this more because I tended to disagree with the ranters more in his earlier books, but he never puts up two equally matched characters against each other. Although he lays the polemic on a bit thick at times, the constant challenge to the conventional wisdom on global warming is very refreshing.
This book had a second ranter in it as well. Although I agreed with a lot of what this ranter had to say about risk analysis and the media tendency to exaggerate potential threats, while ignoring real ones, I found it highly ironic that Crichton would bring this up. Crichton has made a career out of exaggerating threats that never come to pass and has the nerve to criticize what he calls the media/political/legal complex for doing the exact same thing. All of the books I have read by Crichton set in modern times have been based on exaggerated fears of the Japanese buying up America or airplanes falling out of the sky or nanotech robot swarms eating people.
Anyways the bad guys in this book are environmental terrorists (specifically E.L.F. terrorists) trying to cause environmental catastrophes to increase awareness of so called human caused global warming. Hmmm, environmental terrorists changing the weather and causing giant tsunamis may count as an exaggerated threat, no? The thing is environmental terrorists are a real threat from the real life E.L.F. members to Ted Kaczynski. The only problem is that they are not 'tsunami destroying all of Los Angeles' big of a threat or even the same level of threat that Muslim terrorists pose.
Crichton hints at many flaws in modern environmentalism and to a lesser extent the media, with its attachment to loose correlations as a substitute for hard science. He could have gone farther and talked about how environmentalism is a substitute religion for many people: a mythical pure Eden that man corrupted, purification rituals, prophetic writings, demonization of people outside the movement as sinners, and of course, a final judgment day in the future to punish man for his sins, but he wrote the book, not me.
Like most Crichton novels set in the present this one is stronger on technical details than it is on character. The main character, Peter Evans, is a cipher there mainly to observe the actions of the people around him. The hero Kenner is a bit interesting at times as is set up as fairly mysterious in the beginning, but he becomes a bore as the novel goes on. Most of the villains were faceless threats and the only semi-interesting bad guy is an actor who plays the president on TV and is a vocal environmentalist full of misinformation. The rich philanthropist George Morton who is converted by Kenner is interesting at times, although the mystery surrounding his car crash was extremely transparent as was the rest of the plot. The only thing that could have surprised me about the crash was if it turned out the way it first appeared. The only really interesting characters were minor ones such as the pigeon speaking, double crossing helicopter pilot who only lasts for part of the last act and the local island rebel warlord who has even fewer lines. The plot has flaws as well since there is little suspense and I was not surprised by any of it.
The strongest point of State of Fear is Crichton's strongest point in all his present day novels, his love of geeky technical details. The hypersonic cavatators were very cool, the tidal wave simulator that made a brief appearance was a good addition, and the bad guy's poisoning method was original. Not one of Crichton's best, but it had its good parts.
Here is a post I did about State of Fear a year ago and that I just reread after writing the rest of this post. That post made the point about large organizations being sources of evil and had references to Crichton's fear mongering and his contrarian nature.
Posted by Pete at April 21, 2006 07:49 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.petetheelder.com/mt-tb.cgi/789
Comments
Did you really read Crichton expecting some kind of quality literature? I didn't think so. I'll read a Tom Clancy every now and then, but only as a way to let my brain rest while reading.
Posted by: Jeff at April 21, 2006 01:14 PM
I expected better than this. Some of his early work is quite good such as the Great Train Robbery, which has interesting characters and good plot twists. This had the most predictable plot of any of his novels I have read so far and except for the mysterious poison and some of the techincal geek stuff there were no surprises and I even had a decent guess in the right direction with the poison. His work seems to be declining over time and did not think Prey, his previous novel, was that great either. He might do well to do a historical novel again.
Posted by: pete at April 21, 2006 04:12 PM