Books › State of Fear
State of Fear
897 pages
A globe-trotting, data-heavy thriller that blends cinematic action sequences with aggressive scientific debate.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like being strapped into a roller coaster while a professor shouts a lecture at you over the roar of the wind. It is a relentlessly paced, globe-trotting techno-thriller that hurls its characters from the icy crevasses of Antarctica to deadly remote jungles, all while pausing to deliver aggressive, data-heavy arguments about environmental science. The mood is tense and paranoid, steeped in the cynical belief that media and extreme ideologies manipulate the public for power. The prose is cinematic and utilitarian, heavily peppered with real-world graphs and footnotes that blur the line between fiction and polemic. It will delight readers who crave high-stakes, cinematic action paired with controversial, debate-sparking ideas.
- Mood
- tense
- paranoid
- high-stakes
- frenetic
- Tone
- didactic
- urgent
- cynical
- authoritative
- polemical
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- politicization of science · media manipulation · man versus nature · extreme ideologies · information control
- The writing
- Utilitarian and cinematic, heavily punctuated by technical jargon, real-world graphs, and expository dialogue.
- The arc
- Moves from unsettling, isolated mysteries to a frantic, globe-spanning fight for survival against manufactured natural disasters.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love science-heavy, globe-trotting thrillers and do not mind a heavy dose of controversial, debate-sparking lectures mixed into their action.
Content notes
- violence
- eco-terrorism
- peril
- gore
About the book
State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains many graphs and footnotes, two appendices, and a 20-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. Many climate scientists, science journalists, environmental groups, and science advocacy organisations dispute Crichton's views on the science as being error-filled and distorted.
The novel had an initial print run of 1.5 million copies and reached the #1 bestseller position at Amazon and #2 on The list for one week in January 2005. The novel itself has garnered mixed reviews, with some literary reviewers stating that the book's presentation of facts and stance on the global warming debate detracted from the book's plot.
Description from Open Library.
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