State of Fear
First edition cover
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| Author | Michael Crichton |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction, Techno-thriller, Dystopian novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
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Publication date
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December 7, 2004 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 641 (798 in special paperback ed.) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 56759026 |
| Preceded by | Prey |
| Followed by | Next |
State of Fear is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton 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 twenty-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. 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.com and #2 on the New York Times Best Seller 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.
State of Fear is, like many of Crichton's books, a fictional work that uses a mix of speculation and real world data, plus technological innovations as fundamental storyline devices. The debate over global warming serves as the backdrop for the book. Crichton supplies a personal afterword and two appendices that link the fictional part of the book with real examples of his thesis.
The main villains in the plot are environmental extremists. Crichton does place blame on "industry" in both the plot line and the appendices. Various assertions appear in the book, for example:
Numerous charts and quotations from real world data, including footnoted charts which strongly suggest mean global temperature is, in this era, lowering. Where local temperatures show a general rise in mean temperature, mostly in major world cities, Crichton's characters infer it is due to urban sprawl and deforestation, not carbon emissions.
Crichton argues for removing politics from science and uses global warming and real-life historical examples in the appendices to make this argument. In a 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology he expressed his concern about what he considered the "emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science—namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy."
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