Michael Crichton
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0066214130
Michael Crichton’s newest book is basically one long anti-environmentalist screed. The story is about an eco-terrorist plot to create disasters in order to drum up support for environmental causes, and the main character’s efforts to find out who and where the plotters are, and stop them. (Interestingly enough, the main point-of-view character isn’t really the”main” character in terms of the story action.)
But about that “screed” part… the anti-environmentalist “lecturing” by the “mouthpiece” character (who is the real main character) isn’t so much inaccurate as it is incomplete. Like many anti-environmentalists, Crichton presents the questions about environmental theories as evidence that the theories are not true, rather than as evidence that they’re not proven. Worse, the “mouthpiece” character is, in the words of another character, “a major and unrelenting asshole” who “brings out the worst in everybody” – including the reader. In fact, there weren’t any characters I actually liked, although one secondary character began to show some promise toward the end of the book. Too little, too late.
On the other hand, it’s an interesting plot, and Crichton’s writing in general slides down the gullet pretty easily. And the information presented by the “mouthpiece,” along with the supporting footnotes and bibliography, provides (in my opinion) some good food for thought for environmentalists. It does no good to deny the fact that some of the theories taken as gospel by environmentalists have not actually been proven; simply denouncing inconvenient information merely makes the denouncer look like a closed-minded fool. Of course, lack of proof doesn’t mean that enviromentalists’ concerns might not be true, but it does mean that environmentalists can not – and should not – deny the fact that more rigorous testing and investigation is needed.
All in all, though, it’s sometimes a tough read, what with the mouthpiece hectoring nearly every character – as well as the reader – every few pages. Samuel Goldwyn once said, “if you want to send a message, use Western Union.” Crichton probably could have benefitted from that advice.
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