I have just finished Michael Crighton’s environmental terrorism novel, State of Fear, and thought I’d share some thoughts about the reading.  I am not one to read the latest thriller that has come off the shelves of Wal*mart and topped the NY Times Bestseller List for XXX number of weeks mostly because I consider a lot of those books to be trite pieces of shit that are only at the peak of that list of crap because they either:

a) appeal to a large number of the populace, usually through shock, fear, controversy, or all three

- or -
b) are written in such a way that a large number of Americans can read it and it has a groovy story to it, meaning that it is dumbed-down for Appalacia and Arkansas and reads like a Britney Spears song.

This one, however, was recommended to me by my good friend Paul Hindin and when he recommends a book, it’s usually worth my time to attempt.   So, I brought it along with me to Australia to give it a whirl.

If a whirl means to spend the first 6 chapters struggling to maintain my place in the book and keep myself from falling asleep, then I’m on a very Tilted-A-Whirl, as the first 1/3 of this book was a bear to plow through.   Now that I’ve finished it, I can go back and those parts that made my brain twist make sense, but it certainly wasn’t a good way to grab a reader and hold their attention; rather, it grabbed my attention for the first 10 pages and strangled me for the next 90.

Once past that rocky beginning, however, the book settled down and I read the remaining pages in 2 days of steady reading, as it was a rather interesting thriller.

The thing that strikes me about this novel as opposed to others of a similar nature is Crighton’s use of references for the statistics and claims his characters make in the novel.   On almost every page where they are debating various studies and scientific details, there is a notation on the bottom of the page and a bibliography entry in the appendix.   It is fascinating to me that he bothered to note his research; of course, many books of this nature have some sort of research behind them to lend credulousness to the story, but to actually cite it in the reading — well, that’s pretty unusual.

The book deals a lot with environmentalism, something that I’m prone to taking a cautious back seat to in the world.   While I’m not a flag-waver for the oil companies of the world, I’m not a seagull-scrubber either, and I have for a long time thought that the aspects of saving the world and preserving economies, ways of life, and conditions of human survivability are more complex than one might imagine at first glance.    To save the whales, you might very well be impovershing some other aspect of the world, to a detriment that may or may not be greater than the end result of the effort.   So many things in the world are inter-related that it is difficult to place pressure on one point and not expect another to pop up.

So, to see this detailed out in a novel (fiction, I’ll grant you, but backed by a lot of solid evidence for its arguments) was refreshing and led to a lot of head-nodding by myself, which probably made me look like a damned fool reading a book and waving his melon at it constantly.

The other aspect that kept me bobbing like a backseat car figurine is the idea that much of the effort in the world by governments, industry, media, and other forces is to keep the public in a perpetual state of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.   Whether or not actual problems exist, the public is made to think that there is always something looming around the next corner, waiting to get them, and inaction is your way of allowing it to happen to you.   This concept, in my mind, has clearly come to bear by the “war on terror” crap that has been shoved down our gullet since 9/11 and will continue to be pushed to the forefront of news stories, opinion writings, government mandates, industry procedures and preparations, and a slew of other edicts issued in the name of keeping the country and our state of welfare safe and protected.

Unfortunately, it is the majority of the masses (many of them members of my own family) who, fully hypnotized by the persistent thrumming mantras around them, are now completely within the power and influence of these media, often without knowing so.   They are staunch Republicans, religious right-wingers, and extremists in their viewpoints, letting no other opinion or angle to the problem or issue at hand dilute their belief of the state of the world.   These are the most dangerous of the population entirely, as they represent a force that cannot be logically reasoned with and will not listen to anything contrary to their position.   They are stronger than Nazis, worse than Kamikaze fighters, and probably present the greatest barrier to the advancement of civilization and the human race.

End of sermon…for now.

The ending of the book left something to be desired, I’m afraid, and will be 2nd mark against it in my evaluation.   While the ending was certainly exciting, it was an extreme letdown from the point of climax and felt much like a slam-bam-thankyou-m’am ending to a long and complex book.    When I saw it was, indeed, the end, I was quite disappointed at the abrupt halt and frown considerably.

All in all, I’d recommend this book if you’d like a cheap thrill for a day or two and want to explore some interesting thoughts and ideas on the global warming/environmentalist movement and the idea that media and government play a much larger role in deciding our personal opinions than one might think.   Indeed, the real value in this novel is the above ideas rather than the actual story itself which is lacking in any real creativity or ingenuity, which is my 3rd mark against the novel, but one I feel is evened-out by the intellectual content of it.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars, 93% for the idea content and 7% for the story itself.