State of Fear, Question of Truth

May I just begin by saying, after reading about 250 pages of State of Fear … this novel is ridiculous! I’ve never read anything by Michael Crichton, and tend to steer clear of the cheap action-packed novels, pretty much any book with the words “gripping” or “thrilling,” but having said this, I thoroughly enjoy the story. The novel compiles one crazy event after another, killing people flippantly and in the strangest ways (the paralysis death and the lightening deaths being my favorite). I realize we are supposed to be focusing on the issues of science with this one, but I figured I’d just get all of that out of my system before delving into the topics of “fact” and fear. Seriously – ridiculous!

I was thoroughly impressed at Crichton’s ability to use “fact” in such an effective way, in such a convincing way. It is clear he has done his research, with his constant name-dropping of programs and organizations, to the point where I had to stop myself from googling Morton or Evans just to make sure they didn’t actually exist. His brief but informative descriptions of places, people, or organizations were also incredibly well written – for example, when describing Evan’s firm building, he says “They were a forward-looking, socially aware firm” (90). This is such a great short description of a place, a description that basically tells the reader exactly what they need to know about the building, the people, the work the firm does, etc. This speaks more to the literary styles he employs rather than the science he is speaking of, but the descriptions and language are so compelling and help shape the novel, a nice delivery of such an interesting story. He paints disaster and catastrophe in beautiful ways.

Someone already has brought up the quote comparing this book to The Da Vinci Code, which is actually something that I was thinking about while beginning to read this novel. While that book caused people to actually doubt their own faith, this book definitely could cause a person to doubt the science around them – especially with the knowledge that the only information we will ever have on anything major (in medicine, environmental sciences, etc.) we receive relying on those who research and expose it. Keeping this in mind, convincing yourself that any of this information is a hoax, a scam to cause people to change their behavior, collect money, create more surplus of supplies, whatever, is so easy even without novels like this to guide the doubt. I mean, beyond the numerous footnotes and references, there are about four pages of charts midway through this novel!

This reminds me of when we were talking about Nexium (pretend I put in a trademark symbol here). Not that Crichton ever said any of this information is true, or that he is stating true facts or potential hoaxes, but this is the basic sort of idea of misinformation, and what really is “truth”? The makers of Nexium, or any drug really, can trademark words, able to state whatever it is that they want about their drug or service, and as long as there’s a little symbol after the statement, it can literally say whatever they want. Much like in the story when they talk about the global warming hoax, it is possible to put out anything and label it as “semi-truth”. It’s a plausible thing – in fact, my parents were on the global-warming-doesn’t-exist train for a while, the information we get about that was so confusing and strange when it first started coming out (that I remember hearing about it, not when it was first discovered). This book demonstrates the manufacturing of truth.