State of Fear

State of Fear

Author	Michael Crichton
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Sci-Fi, Techno-thriller, Dystopian novel
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	December 7, 2004
Media type	Print (Hardcover, Paperback)
Pages	640 pp (first edition, hardback), 567 pp without bibliography and appendix
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 attempt mass murder to support their views. The book contains many graphs and footnotes as well as two appendices and a twenty page bibliography.

Crichton, who spent 3 years studying the theme, included a statement of his own views on global climate change at the end of the book, saying that the cause, extent, and threat of climate change is largely unknown and unknowable. He warns both sides of the global warming debate against the politicization of science. He provides an example of the disastrous combination of pseudo-science and good intentions, in the early 20th-century idea of eugenics. He finishes by endorsing the management 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 and #2 at the New York Times Best Seller list for one week in January 2005.

Plot summary

The novel takes place in 2004. The title refers to allegations that political, legal, and media elites deliberately induce a state of unreasonable fear in the general population to keep themselves in power. The key issue in the book around which the villains create this state of fear is the existence and causes of global warming

The protagonist is an environmentalist lawyer named Peter "Herun" Evans. Evans is a junior associate at a large Los Angeles law firm that represents many environmentalist clients (although they also have clients in corporate industry). Evans' is described as someone who eagerly accepts all conventional wisdom about global warming. He's also described as something of a wimp who has lukewarm relationships with women. Evans' chief client is a billionaire philanthropist (George Morton) who donates large sums to environmentalist causes. Evans' main duties are managing the legal affairs surrounding Morton's contributions to an environmentalist organization, the National Earth Resources Fund (NERF).

Morton becomes suspicious of NERF and its director, Nicholas Drake, after he discovers that NERF has misused some of the funds he has given the group. Soon after, Morton is visited by two men, John Kenner and Sanjong Thapa, who appear on the surface to be researchers at MIT, but, in fact, are international law enforcement agents on the trail of an eco-terrorist group, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The ELF is attempting to create "natural" disasters to convince the public of the dangers of global warming. They have no qualms about how many people are killed in these events and they ruthlessly assassinate anyone who gets in their way (their preferred methods being the venom of a rare Australian octopus and "lightning attractors" which cause their victims to get fried in electrical storms.) Kenner and Thapa suspect Drake of involvement with the ELF to further his own ends (garnering more donations to NERF from environmentalists so that he can collect a large bonus at the end of the year).

Morton pulls his funding from NERF and has Evans rewrite the contract so that Drake can't access the money except in mediocre amounts. This earns Drake's wrath resulting in strained relations between Evans and the partners at his firm (Drake is a major client of the firm. He accuses Evans of being a spy for corporate industry). Soon thereafter, Morton dies in a car accident under mysterious circumstances. Following Morton's last instructions, Evans teams up with Kenner and Thapa on a globe-spanning trip to thwart various ELF disaster schemes. Also along for the ride is Morton's beautiful assistant, Sarah Jones. Evans is intimidated by Sarah because of her beauty and because she possesses a self-confidence Evans lacks. By the same token, Sarah also finds Evans attractive, but is put off by his lack of bravado.

The group travels to various locations to thwart the ELF's schemes: first, the detonation of several explosives in an Antarctic ice shelf to release an enormous iceberg, then the use of special rockets and filament wire to produce a man-made lightning storm and flood on a crowded national park. During his travels, Evans finds his convictions about global warming challenged by Kenner and Thapa who present him with reams of data suggesting that global warming may not be happening at all, may be insignificant if it is, and may not be caused by human activity. Evans' convictions are further shaken as he observes the ELF trying to manufacture disasters that will kill thousands of people, discovers that Drake is directing these terrorist acts, and narrowly escapes several ELF assassination attempts. He also begins to shed his wimpy demeanor and grows more enamored of Sarah after he saves her life on several occasions.

In the finale of the story, the group travels to a remote island in the Solomons to stop the ELF's "piece de resistance", a tsunami that will inundate the coastline of California just as Drake is winding up an international press conference on the "catastrophe" of global warming. Along the way they battle man-eating crocodiles and cannibalistic tribesmen (who feast on a prominent environmentalist TV star that Drake sent along to spy on them). The rest of the group are rescued in the nick of time by Morton who resurfaces. It turns out that he faked his own death to throw Drake off the trail so that he could keep watch on the ELF's activities on the island while he waited for Kenner and his team to arrive. The group has a final confrontation with the ELF team on the island during which Evans kills one of the terrorists who had tried to kill both him and Sarah in Antarctica. The rest of the ELF team on the island is killed by the backwash from their own tsunami which Kenner and his team sabotage just enough to prevent it from reaching California. Drake and his cohorts are arrested. Evans and Sarah finally admit their feelings for each other. Evan quits the firm and goes to work for Morton with his new (unnamed) organization, which will practice environmental activism as a business, free from deceit and manipulative paranoia.

Major themes

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 earn votes, ratings and donations respectively. This idea is represented in the novel by the conspiracy to create artificial disasters and fabricate evidence supporting global warming.

According to this viewpoint, 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 claims 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 alleged example was the banning of low cost refrigerants such as Freon-12. In that case, the fear was the destruction of the ozone layer but, Crichton claims, the millions who starved due to spoiled food were never accounted for.

Characters: Peter Evans, Morton, Drake, Sarah, Jennifer Haynes, Kenner, Bradley,

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:

Akamai

• Paris Nord, France (May 2nd)
• Pahang, Malaysia (May 11th)
• Shad Thames, London (May 21st)
• Tokyo, Japan (June 1st)
• Vancouver, BC, Canada (June 8th)
• Stangfedlis, Iceland (August 23rd)
• Los Angeles, CA (August 23rd)
• Beverly Hills, CA (August 24th)
• Century City, CA (August 24th)
• Culver City, CA (August 24th)
• San Francisco, CA (October 4th)
• Point Moody, CA (October 5th)
• West Los Angeles (October 5th)
• Holmby Hills (October 5th)

Terror

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

Angel

(no new locations)

• Los Angeles, CA
• Century City, CA

Flash

• City of Commerce, CA (October 9th)

Snake

• Diablo Canyon, AZ (October 10th)
• Flagstaff, AZ (October 10th)
• McKinley State Park, AZ (October 11th)
• Auroraville, AZ (October 11th)
• Van Nuys, CA (October 11th)
• Sequoia National Park (October 12th)
• Oakland, CA (October 12th)

Blue

• Brentwood, CA (October 13th)
• Westwood, CA (October 13th)
• Santa Monica, CA (October 13th)

Resolution

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

Vanutu

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

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 Kenner or Connor?"

Literary significance and criticism

This novel received strong criticism from climate scientists,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} science journalists^[6][7] and environmental groups^[8][9] for inaccuracies and misleading information.

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." 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.^[10] After some controversy within the organization, AAPG has since renamed the award the "Geosciences in the Media" Award.^[11]

Use in politics

Despite it being a work of fiction, the book has found extensive political use by global warming skeptics. For example, United States Senator Jim Inhofe, who once pronounced global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", made State of Fear “required reading” for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which he chaired from 2003-2007, and, in September 2005, called Crichton to testify before this committee.^[12]

References

External links

• Slate review of book
• Official site from Michael Crichton
• Answers to Key Questions Raised by M. Crichton in State of Fear – Pew Center on Global Climate Change
• Novel on global warming gets some scientists burned up – Seth Borenstein, Seattle Times

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