State of Fear by Michael Crichton

~~State of Fear by Michael Crichton~~

My rating: ***

It doesn’t take much effort on anyone’s part to do a bit of browsing and come up with solid proof from top scientific journals, coalitions and organisations that almost everything said about global warming is nothing other than hyped-up-for-monetary benefits speculation. Or, as Crichton puts it, its a politico-media-legal conspiracy to create an unceasing State of Fear in the general public.

Since I was completely sold out to the basic premise, this 700 page long romp turned out to be both entertaining, incisive and informative as the author rolled his concerns and facts in an extremely believable adventure-thriller format. Contrary to a very common criticism that’s slapped on every thriller’s face–to State of Fear even more relentlessly– is the “caricature-like”, “co-incidental”, “cardboard” characters but to me its outright hilarious to even imagine some detailed character study amidst the frenetic, tension-filled, fast paced, plot-driven narrative that SOF boasts of. Yes, they can be larger than life and vanish into thin air towards the end, but clearly if you want pages of dialogues of self-doubt or “inner” feelings, you clearly have picked a book from a wrong genre.

As the story of a philanthrophist who suddenly becomes suspicious whether his good intentioned and generous donations are being actually used for welfare or baselessly elaborate lawsuits, Crichton’s tried to experiment with the structure a lot in the first 200 pages, and the results, I daresay, aren’t always pleasant.

As stated out in the blurb, the first few chapters chronicling detached transactions of colossal machinery, cables and equipment are highly uninvolving and having a barrage of these freestanding sequences right at the start is indeed a big put-off. I am clueless as to why Crichton didn’t think of interspersing these static information-heavy chunks with the main storyline as that really would have gone a long way in making this otherwise fantastic book accessible to thousands of unforgiving readers who slam the book shut if they haven’t warmed up to the characters enough in the first 100 pages.

Even more frustrating is the constant putting-off of the actual conflict in the dialogue (e.g.”You’ll see”, “Just wait and watch”, “I’ll make you understand later… now just do as I say”)in these first 200 pages which make you wince and cringe, and which also means that the book takes longer-than-expected to take off. But once it does, it goes into such a freewheeling, wholesomely enjoyable mode that it leaves you wanting for more.

The graph reaches its crescendo not once or twice, but thrice as the protagonists (in particular, the philanthropist’s lawyer and secretary) and their side-kicks valiantly try to muffle three elaborate attempts by the eco-terrorists–melting icebergs, generating hurricanes and a tsunami. Each of these three missions are so crisply written and the sense of place, time, action, urgency and anxiety are evoked so accurately, I was gasping for breath on all three occasions.

But of course, to convey his concern and seriousness towards the whole issue of this “state of fear” we live in everyday, there are some very serious and plausible arguments between the characters, insightful footnotes, references, graphs appendices (especially Appendix 1–which takes a stab at the eugenics phenomenon in the last century, and a very effective one at that) — all conveying the utmost sobreity and genuine intentions of the author this time around.

The undercurrents of not following conventional wisom blindfolded, not believing everything that the tabloids and news channels throw at us everyday, the desperate need for an honest science and the dire consequences of amalgamating it with politics are all strong ones and if one can look beyond the narrative hiccups of the first few pages, adjust one’s biorhythms just a tad bit more and stick to it, I am sure this book will leave one feeling entertained and to some extent, educated.

So stop reading those unnecessary sensationalist Deception Points and godawful Atlantis Founds and rush to buy this mature and topical adventure thriller NOW.