State of Fear

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State of Fear
Author Michael Crichton
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Sci-Fi, Techno-thriller, Dystopian novel
Publisher HarperCollins
Released December 7, 2004
Media Type Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages 640 pp (first edition, hardback)
ISBN ISBN 0-00-718159-0 (first edition, hardback)

State of Fear is a 2004 novel by Michael Crichton published by HarperCollins on December 7, 2004. Like most of his novels it is a techno-thriller, this time concerning eco-terrorists who threaten the Earth. The book contains many graphs and footnotes as well as two appendices and a twenty page bibliography.

Crichton included a statement of his own views on global climate change at the end of the book, affirming that the world is heating up, but arguing that the causes, consequences and benefits or harms of this change are unknown. He warns both sides of the global warming debate against the politicisation of science, and gives a horrifying example of the disastrous combination of pseudo-science and good intentions, in the early 20th-century idea of eugenics. He finishes by endorsing the preservation of wilderness and the continuation of research into all aspects of the Earth's environment.

The novel had an initial print run of 1.5 million copies and reached the #1 bestseller position at amazon.com.

Contents

[edit] Major themes

The protagonist is an environmentalist lawyer, Peter Evans. Throughout the novel, Evans' views concerning the facts surrounding global warming are frequently challenged by other characters as he repeatedly thwarts terrorist activities initiated by a radical environmentalist group.

Crichton's second and, arguably, more important theme has been lost in the discussion of the book's contrarian view of global warming. Late in the novel, a minor character introduces the ideas that modern governments, media and fundraising organizations use fear to control the opinions of their citizenry and therefore get votes, raise money and get ratings. The current discussion of global warming is simply the latest in a chain of unscientifically verified threats including diseases caused by silicone breast implants and the threat of cancer from power lines. This is the State of Fear alluded to by the novel's title. The character attributes this effect to the interplay among political actors, attorneys, and the media, all of whom are said to engender fear in the general populace to their own advantage. Crichton juxtaposes the irrational "State of Fear" to a rational cost-benefit analysis. As examples he points out that DDT was effectively banned as an unproven carcinogen yet its replacement caused the deaths of both chemical handlers and millions of third-world people killed by malaria because the replacement was more toxic to humans and less effective against mosquitoes. Another example was the banning of low cost refrigerants such as Freon-12. In that case, the fear was the destruction of the ozone but the millions who starved due to spoiled food were never accounted for (although since Freon-12 was mainly an automotive refrigerant, it is debatable whether any starvation can be attributed to its discontinuation).

[edit] Locations

Many of the events in Crichton's earlier novels have stayed within fairly defined areas. Such locations have varied greatly: a deep-sea habitat (Sphere), a remote island off Costa Rica (Jurassic Park), an industrial complex in the Nevada desert (Prey), or 14th century France for instance (Timeline). In State of Fear the action is global in scope. The following are the book's settings, broken down by act, along with dates first introduced in the year 2004:

[edit] Akamai

[edit] Terror

  • Punta Arenas, Chile (October 5th)
  • Weddell Station, Antarctica (October 6th)
  • "The Shear Zone", Antarctica (October 6th)
  • Brewster Camp (October 6th)

[edit] Angel

(no new locations)

  • Los Angeles, CA
  • Century City, CA

[edit] Flash

[edit] Snake

[edit] Blue

[edit] Resolution

  • Gareda, Solomon Islands (October 14th)
  • Resolution Bay, Gareda (October 14th)
  • Pavutu, Gareda (October 14th)
  • Pacific Basin (October 15th)

[edit] Vanutu

Vanutu is a fictional island in the novel. The name bears a striking resemblance to Vanuatu.

[edit] Allusions to Rising Sun

The characters of and the student-mentor relationship Peter Evans and John Kenner bear many similarities to that of Peter Smith and John Connor in Michael Crichton's earlier novel Rising Sun; even their names are similar. At one point in the book, one character even confuses John Kenner's name with Connor: "And somebody you are spending time with, a person named Kanner or Connor?"

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

This future history novel received strong criticism from scientists [1], [2] and environmentalists [3] for alleged inaccuracy, pointing out factual errors in the book. However, it was given praise as being even-handed and rationally minded by global warming skeptics and opponents of environmentalism.

Despite being fiction, the novel received the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) 2006 Journalism Award. AAPG Communications director Larry Nation told the New York Times, "It is fiction, but it has the absolute ring of truth."[4] The presentation of this award has been criticized as a promotion of the politics of the oil industry, and for blurring the lines between fiction and journalism. [5] After some controversy within the organization, AAPG has since renamed the award the "Geosciences in the Media" Award. [6]

As pointed out in meteorologist Jeffrey Masters' review,

[F]lawed or misleading presentations of Global Warming science exist in the book, including those on Arctic sea ice thinning, correction of land-based temperature measurements for the urban heat island effect, and satellite vs. ground-based measurements of Earth's warming. I will spare the reader additional details. On the positive side, Crichton does emphasize the little-appreciated fact that while most of the world has been warming the past few decades, most of Antarctica has seen a cooling trend. The Antarctic ice sheet is actually expected in increase in mass over the next 100 years due to increased precipitation, according to the IPCC (although recent findings by NASA call this result into question). Additionally, Crichton correctly points out that there has been no rise in hurricane activity in the Atlantic over the past few decades (a point unchanged by the record four hurricanes that struck Florida in 2004).

Also, Peter Doran, author of the paper in the January, 2002 issue of Nature, which reported the finding referred to above that some areas of Antarctica had cooled between 1986 and 2000, wrote an opinion piece in the July 27, 2006 New York Times in which he stated "Our results have been misused as 'evidence' against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear" [7].

Fred Barnes, in Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush, states that George W. Bush "avidly read Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear, whose villain falsifies scientific studies to justify draconian steps to curb global warming....Early in 2005, political adviser Karl Rove arranged for Crichton to meet with Bush at the White House. They talked for an hour and were in near-total agreement. The visit was not made public for fear of outraging environmentalists all the more."

[edit] External links

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