It takes a lot to make the readers believe that fiction is fact. For some reason, a lot of fiction authors have sounded convincing in the recent times. For instance, nearly all readers were convinced about the authenticity of Dan Brown’s theory in The Da Vinci Code. Authors are coming up with novels that are so close to reality that you are convinced to agree with whatever is told. Extensive amounts of research on the topic too is made to believe the idea is very convincing.
State Of Fear is like that too. The theory and research supporting it is so convincing that conventional ideas are questioned and hesitance is thrown to the winds. What makes it worth reading is just two words - Michael Chricton.
The Story May contain SPOILER
An eco-terrorist group well shielded by environment protection organizations are out to man-make some natural calamities, to prove the effects of global warming and to generate huge amount of funds towards research. A realistic bunch of knowledgeable scientists along with the associates of one of the funding companies try to stop these events from happening. While they are busy stopping well planned attacks in different parts of the globe, the eco-terrorists are not just aware of their presence, but trying to kill them all off mercilessly. Will all or any of these events take place and how many do survive is what the rest of the book is about.
Critique
I will try to categorise my opinions based on two things-personal reading experience and as a general reader. As a personal reading experience, this book could not have been more ill-placed as I had recently read Dan Brown, who has followed the same pattern in not just 1 but all of his books. So the chain of events was a bummer.
Also, Sidney Sheldon’s latest novel ’’Are you afraid of the dark’’ was again about man-made natural calamities. It makes you wonder, if all these guys meet up for cocktails and discuss some great book ideas and two of them happened to choose the same story with minor variances. I wish authors get more experimental and not just cash in on their reputation to write the same stuff. As a general reader, this book maybe very long for a lot of them. Its about 700 pages of the story and not all of it is exciting.
Some of it is Dan Brown style argumentative conversations between characters, making revelations about the plot.(I really hope I don’t read anymore novels in this style...I have had it!!) Also, the book gets a little ’’drony’’ at times, asking the readers to look into graphs to discuss an issue. Although these are simple linear graphs, it spoils the fun of the magical story reading. It gives a very text-bookish feeling to the whole thing.
The author is constantly quoting and referencing real journal papers which makes u wonder if he is trying to prove a point for real. My reading also happened to coincide with the real-life Asian quake caused tsunami and incidentally, there is a similar situation in the book. I then realised what could be the outcome if such a thing is to happen for real.
Author background and critique
Michael Crichton’s background is very varied and interesting. He is a Harvard Medical school graduate, who switched gears to become a film-writer and then an author. Its widely known how popular his books/movies are (Jurassic park, congo etc). One thing I found out about the author is years prior to writing his book, he gives speeches about a said topic and tries to get feedback from people on what they think. He then embarks on 2-3 years of research on the topic and then writes the book. Its very evident he has done this in State of Fear.
He has quoted several professors and scientists’ names and their published papers, all of which can be found in the reference section. The e-version of the book comes with the 3 ’’Test’’speeches that he made, which are interesting. I even managed to read abstracts from several quoted papers. Some of them look interesting, but may not be so for more people.
Finally...my take on reading this book......hmm...skip it if you aren’t too much into data analysis and are looking for a true fictitous story-time. In case you like mind-games and ’’What-if-it-were-true’’ arguments, you will like this book.