52 pages • 1 hour read
Michael CrichtonState of Fear
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Media Manipulation
State of Fear characterizes the media as a mechanism spreading misinformation and outright lies about global warming, climate science, and environmentalism. Media, in this case, includes everything from the news, to scientific publications, to propaganda posters, to public events. As the book presents it, media is deceptive and ruled by an agenda, just like the energy industry and the university research machine.
At times, media messages are a sham. A good example is the B-reel shot at the headquarters of the Vanutu litigation team. Media spokespeople—the talking heads of newscasts—are essentially presented as inept. Watching the news report of the flash flood in McKinley State Park, in which an anchor attributes it to global warming, Evans asks, “So he’s just full of shit?”, and Sanjong concurs “Right. And so is the press release” (362). At other times, media players overtly massage information to fit it to their ends. Research findings are consistently presented as malleable: The truth is what the media declares it to be, rather than incontrovertible fact. An early example of this is the argument between the Icelandic scientist Einarsson, who calls Drake’s request to alter the wording of his scientific paper something that “twists truth,” while Drake says it is “[m]erely a suggestion” (43).
State of Fear does more than passively build these charges against the media into its plot, however. Instead, it overtly raises them, through the ideas Kenner and others express, but most directly through Professor Hoffmann’s conversation with Evans at the NERF conference. Hoffmann deems the media manipulation a vast “politico-legal-media complex” (456), meant to keep society in a state of constant fear.
Ironically, Crichton utilizes journalistic methods and forms throughout the novel. State of Fear is filled with references and graphs, sourced as thoroughly as journalism is expected to be. Finally, despite the fact that the novel could be called a thriller, much of its tone is editorial. Kenner, Sanjong, Drake, Jennifer, and others expound their points of view, with the intent of convincing others. Crichton participates in this practice via his Author’s Message, the Appendixes, and the Annotated Bibliography. In this sense, State of Fear might be characterized as investigative fiction as much as it could be called an eco-thriller. Overall, the book’s adoption of a journalistic approach alongside its condemnation of the media suggests that the right use of media to convey the right message can have a positive impact.
Socratic Debate
Despite the firm conviction State of Fear expresses in its polemics, Crichton is aware that everything surrounding the possibility of climate change—from the science underpinning it to decisions about what actions to take—is open to debate. To tread a fine line between acknowledging a range of viewpoints within this debate and insisting upon the urgency of its own perspective, State of Fear uses the literary device of Socratic-style debate, passages of dialog in which characters spar back and forth.
Debates in literary works have a long history. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato used dialog as the main method for presenting his teacher Socrates’ ideas in the numerous texts he wrote. For Plato, sharing ideas through a debate written in characters’ dialog served as a dynamic, lively way of presenting complex philosophical concepts that might have seemed overly dry and hard to follow if written in straightforward prose. There is also a rhetorical advantage to presenting a polemic in the form of a dialog. By giving characters with perspectives other than your own the opportunity to voice their opinion, it makes the eventual presentation of your own argument seem more fair and reliable.
Crichton’s approach in State of Fear is similar. Having done extensive research on climate change and related issues, he could have simply written his argument—that prevailing opinions on these issues are misguided—in the form of an essay. Instead, he limits the direct presentation of his own voice to the Author’s Message and other supplementary material at the end of the book. For most of State of Fear, the arguments about the improbability of global climate change are presented indirectly, when characters like Kenner and Sanjong engage in debates with Evans, Drake, and others. For example, one conversation between Sanjong and Evans proceeds this way:
‘Were you aware that [Antarctic ice] has been melting for the last six thousand years?’
‘Not specifically, no.’
‘But generally, you knew that?’
‘No,’ Evans said. ‘I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘You thought that the Antarctic melting was something new?’
‘I thought it was melting faster than previously,’ Evans said.
‘Maybe we won’t bother anymore,’ Kenner said (195).
This method allows Crichton to engage in the debate on climate change through the vehicle of his fiction. The device of the debates in dialog folds readers in, making the points Kenner, Sanjong, and others raise more believable. However, if the technique is effective, it is in large part because these characters produce a seemingly endless supply of facts, research, and graphs to back up their points. Characters representing alternative points of view are not given the opportunity to provide evidence to support their ideas, in the case of Drake, or come out looking like buffoons, in the case of Ted or Ann. The impact of State of Fear’s argument, in this sense, rests on its introduction of straw men into its debates.
The Politicization of Science
Politicized science is a concept Crichton mentions in State of Fear’s first Appendix. He argues that “the intermixing of science and politics is a bad combination, with a bad history,” and that what passes as knowledge ought to be “disinterested and honest” (580). “Disinterested” in this sense means independent, unbiased, and motivated only by the truth.
Examples of politicized science—and attempts to resist it—are touched on throughout the novel. Drake’s argument with the scientist Einarsson in “Akamai” is an early example. Drake explicitly asks Einarsson to adjust the wording of his article on Icelandic glaciers to make it sound like his research shows glaciers are retreating, when in fact they are advancing, as the theory of global warming would predict. Drake downplays the implications of his request, calling them simply a “suggestion” (43). Einarsson, on the other hand, says the request would make his research into a “lie” (43). The stark contrast between their points of view dramatizes the stakes of politicizing science. Characters throughout State of Fear are not surprised by the idea that the petroleum industry would be interested in obscuring research that supports the theory of global warming. Yet to see individuals—and those involved in environmentalist organizations, no less—suggest bending research to suit their agenda is shocking.
Einarsson’s response to Drake’s demand exemplifies Crichton’s idea of disinterested science: “How the information is used is not my concern. My concern is to report the truth as best I can” (44). The results of science, as he understands them, are independent from and not responsible for how they are used. Drake himself acknowledges this point of view as “noble” but not “practical.”
As the novel goes on, there are further examples of the politicization of science, including the attempts of the Vanutu lawsuit litigation team to package science to be most emotionally impactful to juries. What unites these examples is the fact that money and power are the forces that pull at what passes as knowledge and fact: Einarsson feels threatened by Drake because NERF (and Morton, effectively) is funding his research, and the Vanutu team is working toward a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, for example. By the close of the novel, the ideal imagined by Crichton is an “open-ended or open-minded” and “blinded” research funding (572). The new type of environmental organization Morton wants to found professes the same ideals.
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