Summary
In today's segmented America, Michael Crichton's new novel State of Fear might seem to be just reading for red states. Granted, a character resembling Martin Sheen - Crichton's character is a prototypical Hollywood liberal who plays the president in a television series - meets an appropriately grisly fate. But blue states, too - no, especially - need Crichton's fable about the ecology of public opinion.
State of Fear, with a first printing of 1.5 million copies, resembles Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged - about 6 million copies sold since 1957 - as a political broadside woven into an entertaining story. But whereas Rand had only an idea - a good one (capitalism is splendid), but only one - Crichton has information. State of Fear is the world's first page-turner that people will want to read in one gulp - a long gulp at 600 pages, counting appendices - even though it has lots of real scientific graphs, and footnotes citing journals such as Progress in Physical Geography and Transactions - American Geophysical Union.See the full content of this document
Extract
Environmental Novel Blends Fiction, Fact
CRICHTON'S SUBJECT is today's fear that global warming will cause catastrophic climate change, a belief now so conventional that it seems to require no supporting data. Crichton's subject is...
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