State of Fear: a novel by Michael Crichton

Fact or fiction? A great read, January 19, 2005****


In this bestseller by Michael Crichton you are taken on a rollercoaster ride around the world as MIT Professor John Kenner, allied with philantropist George Morton and lawyer Peter Evans, strives to avert a series of environmental disasters contrived and executed by environmentalists intent on "proving" that global warming is real and abrupt catastrophic climate change is imminent. To enjoy this book you should forget your views about whether or not global warming is a threat and just go along for the ride.

This is another well-written novel by Crichton, crammed with facts and arguments about the validity of global warming as an environmental threat. Crichton portrays environmentalists as villains who will go to any length to engender support for their cause. A very ironic twist is that the final environmental disaster that the villains are plotting is a landslide in the South Pacific to trigger a tsunami to sweep the western seaboard of the U.S. As I read this novel in the days following the tragic Indian Ocean tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, I found this element of the plot a little too close for comfort.

Crichton is out to disembowel the concept of global warming but you can enjoy this novel without accepting his premise or arguments.