Category: Fiction

Over the weekend, I read Anne Rice‘s new book Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. Not being much of a fan of goth-horror, I hadn’t read a novel of hers since having read some of The Witching Hour many moons ago. Since reports of her reversion to Catholicism started filling the press, I’ve been eager to read this new book.

The book is not an easy read. Rice tries to write from the point of view of a seven-year-old who just happens to be God Almighty, so between the seven-year-old’s voice and trying to juggle the different modes of Christ’s knowledge, the book is not a spine-tingling page-turner. I give Rice high points for working hard to be orthodox, but I think she would have had an easier time accomplishing her task if she had not attempted to tell the story in the first-person point of view of Christ himself. Perhaps it would have been simpler to have written from the point of view of James, our Lord’s "brother" and depicted here as a thirteen-year-old, either in the first- or third-person.

Rice draws liberally on apocryphal stories told of Christ’s childhood struggles with his divinity. Mentioned are the apocryphal gospels tales of Christ bringing to life clay birds and resurrecting a child he had accidentally killed through his childish inability to control his divine power. While the incidents in the apocrypha are apocryphal, I appreciated Rice’s attempt to show Christ as fully God and fully human. Fully God in that he had divine power; fully human in that he was a child who may, in his childhood, have had to learn how to control it.

Whatever you make of the theological implications and whether Rice was completely theologically-correct, she asks interesting "What if?" questions while still trying to remain faithful to orthodoxy. I would much rather read an honest fictional imagining of our Lord that leaves open the possibility of an orthodox Christian understanding of him than a clearly anti-Christian screed like Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code.

Rice does make some interesting small choices within her story. She uses the older tradition of Joseph being an older (but not elderly) widower who is James’ father by his first marriage, but incorporates the later tradition of extended relations among the Lord’s "brothers" by making the other "brothers" and "sisters" Jesus’ cousins. As a personal preference, not a matter of doctrine, I prefer the later idea of a virginal Joseph because it makes the Holy Family an earthly, human image of the divine reality of the Trinity, but Rice’s picture is just as possible and within legitimate Catholic opinion.

One of the smaller choices I disliked was the idea that Jesus was taught to call Joseph by his name, rather than to call him "Father." Rice presumably chooses this for theological reasons and for dramatic purpose, and it is within the realm of acceptable opinion. Still, I prefer to believe that Jesus called Joseph Abba. It seems to me to fit better within the Catholic understanding of the sacramental understanding of creation. Human beings, because they are made in the image and likeness of God, can be physical, tangible images of divine reality.

All told, I’m glad I read this book. It’s not perfect by any means, either theologically or as fiction, but it is a solid piece of work that goes far in furthering Rice’s goal to take on the challenge of writing a novel about the Jesus of the Gospels instead of a Jesus of popular agenda. I hope that this book is the start in a series about Christ’s life. I would like to see how Rice’s development of Christ’s story matures.

During his life, H. P. Lovecraft was an impoverished writer who at times made ends meet by "revising" (*cough*ghostwriting*cough*) stories for more literarily-challenged authors.

One of them was Zealia Bishop (nee Reed).

She hired Lovecraft to do a number of stories for her based on minimal premises or plot synopses that she provided for him. Unfortunately, she didn’t pay Lovecraft in a timely manner, and he foreswore working for her.

One of the stories he wrote for her–The Mound–is regarded as one of Lovecraft’s best. In it, as in only two other stories (At The Mountains Of Madness, The Shadow Out Of Time), he envisions an entire non-human civilization. Most remarkably, in The Mound we actually get the narrative of a human character who lives in the eldritch society for some time–rather than just an after-the-fact summary of what the culture was like.

 Though much of the tale deals with a hidden, underground civilization, The Mound is set in the town of Binger, Oklahoma. Binger ("Bing-er")–unlike Arkham and other Lovecraft locations–is a real town, just over 60 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, and it is located in the Oklahoma mound country.

The title of the story refers to one of the Indian mounds in Caddo County, Oklahoma. Specifically, it refers to a mound that Zealia Bishop mentioned to Lovecraft in her premise for the story:

There is an Indian mound near here, which is haunted by a headless ghost. Sometimes it is a woman (S. T Joshi, H. P. Lovecraft: A Life, 467).

Pretty thin for a story premise, huh! It’s also one that Lovecraft found really dull–just another ghost story. So he made up a whole non-human civilization and a 25,000-word novella was an explanation for the premise.

In the story, Lovecraft describes the location of "the mound" this way:

[It was] a huge, lone mound or small hill that rose above the plain about a third of a
mile west of the village—a mound which some thought a product of Nature, but
which others believed to be a burial-place or ceremonial dais constructed by
prehistoric tribes. This mound, the villagers said, was constantly haunted by,
two Indian figures which appeared in alternation; an old man who paced back and
forth along the top from dawn till dusk, regardless of the weather and with only
brief intervals of disappearance, and a squaw who took his place at night with a
blue-flamed torch that glimmered quite continuously till morning. When the moon
was bright the squaw’s peculiar figure could be seen fairly plainly, and over
half the villagers agreed that the apparition was headless.

Now, if you look on GPS/topographical maps of the area around Binger, Oklahoma–like the excellent Delorme Oklahoma guide–you’ll see that ther AIN’T NO mound a third of a mile west of Binger. Lovecraft made that detail up.

BUT!

If you call the officials in Binger (as I did) to track down what Bishop may have been talking about, it’s easy enough to figure out the mystery.

It turns out that there is indeed a mound in Caddo County, where Binger is located, that is reputed to be haunted by ghosts. It’s name is . . . (are you ready?) . . . "GHOST MOUND" (Dum! Dum! Dum!).

 Ghost Mound is more than a third of a mile west of Binger (as well as a bit north-see map to the left). It’s also not the only death-related mound in the county. There is also "Dead Woman Mound"–so named because a local found the body of a dead woman there an buried her at the site. Dead Woman Mound, though, is located father north from Binger, and as far as I know does not have ghost legends associated with it. The best evidence I have is that Zealia Bishop was referring to Ghost Mound, with perhaps an admixture of information about Dead Woman Mound.

The thing, though, is that these mounds are real. They really exist. And folks have been visiting them since Lovecraft’s time. In fact, of late they’ve been using GPS devices to go there. Here are the coordinates:

GHOST MOUND: Lat.
35.4025, Long.
-98.61306.
DEAD WOMAN MOUND: Lat.
35.47583, Long. -98.50444.

If I’ve read the sattelite maps correctly, this (left) is a picture of Ghost Mound.

I plan to find out for myself, though.

Y’see, I have friends in Oklahoma City, and the next time I go visit them, I plan to stop off on the way and visit Ghost Mound (and Dead Woman Mound).

Hopefully, I won’t get dragged down to the blue-litten realm of K’n-yan!

If I do, DON’T COME AFTER ME! Spare the world and unguessable horror and LEAVE THE MOUND ALONE!

I’m very much looking forward to Anne Rice’s new novel.

Instead of being an interview with a vampire, though, this novel will be a monologue by the Messiah.

In other words: It’s a story told in first-person narration by Jesus Christ.

In the hands of many authors, that kind of story could be an anti-Christian disaster, but Rice is–or has become–a believer. She’s reverted to the Catholic Church, ended her vampire chronicles, and dedicated her future writing to serving God.

Currently she has planned a trilogy of books on the life of Christ, told from his point of view.

That’s a prospect that–as an author–gives me the willies.

It’s the literary equivalent of climing Mount Everest. How on earth do you pull that off? The potential pitfalls associated with such a project are mind boggling! Even if you get the theology right, striking the right tone and style for first person narration by Jesus is nearly unimaginable–especially for something as long as a novel (and certianly for a trilogy!).

That’s one reason I’m interested in reading the first volume, which is about to be released: I want to see how she tackles so daunting a task.

The book is titled Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and will be released November 1.

In the meantime . . .

READ AN INTERESTING ARTICLE ABOUT RICE AND THE BOOK.

PRE-ORDER THE BOOK VIA AMAZON.

or wait for it to be released on AUDIBLE.COM on November 1.

Incidentally, Rice has moved from her native New Orleans to La Jolla (lah HOY-yah), California, which is here in the greater San Diego area. I wonder if I’ll ever bump into her as a result of interaction with the local Catholic community. That’d be cool.

It appears that Saddam Hussein (pictured left doing his Kevin McCarthy impression) may not only be guilty of crimes against humanity but also of crimes against the humanities!

Turns out he’s a novelist.

He’s already inflicted three novels on the world (published anonymously):

"Zabibah and the King" tells a story of a leader who sacrifices a luxurious life for the sake of his people.

"The Fortified Citadel" described the rise to power of Saddam’s Baath Party.

"Men and a City" is widely viewed as a thinly veiled autobiography, presenting him as powerful and heroic.

Now he has a new novel scheduled to come out. Unsurprisingly, it’s a religiously inflammatory geopolitical allegory:

"Get Out, Damned One" tells the story of a man called Ezekiel who
plots to overthrow a town’s sheik but is defeated in his quest by the
sheik’s daughter and an Arab warrior.

The story is apparently a metaphor for a Zionist-Christian plot
against Arabs and Muslims. Ezekiel is meant to symbolize the Jews.

Interestingly . . .

"Get Out, Damned One" describes an Arab leading an army that invades the land of the enemy and topples one of their monumental towers, an apparent reference to the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center in New York by Islamic militants of
Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

Ezekiel [a Jewish symbol] is portrayed as greedy, ambitious and destructive. Youssef, who symbolizes the Christians, is portrayed as generous and tolerant — at least in the early passages.

GET THE "STORY."

A piece back I blogged about

THE EVIL OVERLORD LIST.

In case you missed it, it’s a list of resolutions that you should keep should you ever become an evil overlord. Things like:

1. My Legions of Terror will have helmets with clear plexiglass visors, not face-concealing ones.
2. My ventilation ducts will be too small to crawl through.
3. My noble half-brother whose throne I usurped will be killed, not kept anonymously imprisoned in a forgotten cell of my dungeon.
4. Shooting is not too good for my enemies.

This weekend I was watching some sci-fi, and it bought to mind a couple of new points for the evil overlord list. I therefore propose the following resolutions:

• My Robotic Legion of Terror (and my Synthetic Vampire Army and anything similar) will not have its command and control so centralized that by blowing up a single ship (or killing the initial vampire) one can disable the whole of the fighting force.
• If I develop a new poison or create a tailor-made diseased designed to kill only my enemies, I will not spend lots of resources developing an antidote for it before deploying it. I will wipe my enemies out while there is still no possible cure in existence for what I plan to inflict on them.
• I will not attempt to satisfy my honor by accepting challenges to duels or other ritualized forms of "to the death" combat with my enemies. My honor will be perfectly satisfied if I just shoot them and get it over with.

Add your own evil overlord resolutions in the combox!

I research things for a living. Knowing where and how to get information–at least within my chosen field–is the warp and woof of my trade.

This has an impact on how I read and watch fiction. F’rinstance: I like the movie All The President’s Men about the Woodward-Bernstein investigation of Watergate. Set in the early 1970s, I’m fascinated by the way the two reporters go about piecing together the story that’s in front of them. It’s fascinating because they have to go to great lengths to get certain pieces of information that you could get in five seconds today (e.g., by doing a search on Switchboard.Com). They also manage to get their mitts on certain info that would be incredibly hard or impossible to get today due to their being subject now to much greater privacy and confidentiality requirements.

If you wrote a story about a similar investigation today, you’d have to change the ways that the reporters go about putting the story together.

Technology has changed the flow of information in society dramatically, and it has and will continue to force changes in how the flow of information is depicted in drama.

Take the episode "Passing Through Gethsemane" of Babylon 5, which I was watching last night. This episode has a lot going for it:

• It features the Dominican monks who were recurring characters on the series.
• It lets one of the Domincans get in a really good poke at those who claim to be "openminded" as a cover for refusing to find a definite belief system.
• It features the only on-screen (or off-screen) administration of the last rites I know of in any mainstream sci-fi TV show.
• It has extensive discussion of religious belief including the strain Jesus was under in the Garden of Gethsemane.
• It has ethical discussion of the death penalty and the sci-fi alternatives there might be for it.
• It focuses heavily on themes of sin and guilt and atonement and forgiveness, including making the point that God can forgive your sins even if you don’t remember them.
• Part of the soundtrack is Gregorian chant.
• It shows monks living up to ideals that are harder than humanly imaginable, but clearly worthwhile.
• And it features Capt. Sheridan and Garibaldi doing something flagrantly illegal that you’d never see Picard and Riker doing in a million years. (Sticking a bag over the head of an alien telepath so he can’t identify a human telepath as she rips a crucial, potentially life-saving piece of information out of his head against his will.)

And all this written by an atheist!

But despite all these great elements, it’s obvious that the episode was written before Google.

Why’s that?

Because one of the Dominicans in the episode–Brother Edward (played by Brad Dourif)–beguns to have a number of really weird and sinister things happen to him. Among them are the appearance of a black rose and the words "Death Walks Among You" apparently written in blood on a wall.

Br. Edward reports this to Security Chief Garibaldi, but despite this fact, the first thing Garibaldi doesn’t do is search Google (or the 23rd century equivalent of Google) for the words "black rose" and "Death Walks Among You."

Any kind of ritualistic clues like that immediately call out for a cyber-search to see if there are any parallels to them.

Had Garibaldi searched on these items sooner, he would have found out what was at the basis of the mystery much sooner, and possibly prevented a crime and saved a life.

Heck, if you search Google today for those items, you’ll find out what was at the bottom of all this.

TRY IT.

In the future, expect a lot more cyber-searches in detective stories.

Art imitates life. (At least to some degree.)

Still a great episode, tho.

One of my interests is the dynamics of fiction. Even though I don’t get much of a chance to write fiction myself, the subject fascinates me, and I seem to have a knack for it. Friends sometimes consult me about plot problems in their own works of fiction and seem to be pleased with the solutions I propose.

It seems to me that there are two basic ways to kill a major character who is one of the good guys in a story.

The first method is the shock killing. This occurs when one has established the major character and unexpectedly whacks him a substantial distance before the end of the story. This is done to freak out and unsettle the audience. When done well, it makes the audience afraid by suddenly crushing out the hope that the character seemed to carry and makes them wonder how the surviving main characters will achieve their goals now that the great hope has been extinguished.

An example of a successful shock killing is the death of Scatman Caruther’s character in the movie version of The Shining. With creepy, evil stuff going on in the Overlook Hotel, the boy in the movie has telepathically summoned Scatman Caruthers, who represents the boy’s best chance to escape back to the world of sanity. Yet when Scatman takes an axe in the chest as soon as he arrives at the Hotel, this hope is ended forever, leaving the audience to wonder what will happen next. How will the boy ever survive?

Another example of a successful shock killing is the death of Qui-Gon Jinn toward the end of Star Wars I (as many flaws as that movie had overall, Qui-Gon’s death was effective).

The problem with the shock killing is that, if the character is too major and too beloved by the audience, it will alienate many of them. As a result, the shock killing is not used that much as it is rather hard to pull off.

More common is what may be called the climactic death  This occurs when the death of the major character occurs at the climax (or a climax) of the story.

For the climactic death to work, a number of factors have to be in place. The death needs to seem inevitable, emotionally weighty, and meaningful. If these conditions are not met, the audience feels cheated, with the death seeming arbitrary (non-inevitable) and frivolous (non-emotionally weighty or meaningless). From these requirements, several plot elements regarding the death tend to fall out:

1. There has to be no other alternative to the death. Though the characters may seek other alternatives only to have them eliminated, in the end the audience must understand that there are no alternatives to the character’s death. Otherwise they will feel that the death was arbitrary.
2. To make the death feel emotionally weighty, it must occur at the climax (or a climax) of the story.
3. Also to keep the death emotionally weighty, it frequently must take time rather than happening in an instant.
4. Since climaxes need to be seen coming a long way off, the audience generally needs to see the death coming in advance, with a building sense of doom as it approaches. (This is a distinguishing characteristic of the climactic death compared to the shock killing.)
5. To make the character’s death seem meaningful to the audience there frequently needs to be a goal that he sacrifices his life to achieve, making his death a heroic sacrifice.
6. Finally, between the usual needs to see the death coming in advance and for it to be a heroic sacrifice, the sequence of events that leads to the death usually needs to be closely tied to the main plot.

An example of a successful climactic death is that of Mr. Spock at the end of The Wrath of Kahn. Here all the elements are met: (1) Spock is the only one who can save the Enterprise, due to his unique physiology. (2) It occurs at the climax of the movie. (3) Spock doesn’t die immediately upon going into the radiation-filled chamber. His death takes time. (4) We see it coming in advance, particularly after all the talk of "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" and then seeing the Enterprise in a situation only Spock can save it from. (5) Spock heroically sacrifices himself in order to save his shipmates. And (6) the main plot of the movie (Kahn’s quest for revenge against Kirk) is what drives Spock to make this sacrifice.

The most spectacularly unsuccessful major character death that I can think of was the original death of Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It violated all kinds of rules: It was an attempt to combine the shock killing with the climactic death, and it totally flopped. Tasha was walking along on an away mission in front of an evil creature, when suddenly the evil creature lashed out and killed her.

It didn’t happen at a climax (violating Rule 2). It happened way too quick (violating Rule 3). We didn’t see it coming in advance (violating Rule 4). It wasn’t a heroic sacrifice to achieve an important goal (violating Rule 5). It seemed arbitrary as the creature could have struck anyone or Tasha could have walked outside its reach (violating Rule 1). About the only rule that it might have obeyed was it was tied to the main plot (i.e., dealing with the evil creature).

The second deat of Tasha (going back in time to save the Federation from a crucial historical misstep) was much more satisfaying dramatically–and went far to redeem the first death (which the new episode confessed was "meaningless")–though in the end they welched on this and decided that Tasha survived her heroic sacrifice.

The most recent Star Trek attempt to kill a major character–Trip Tucker–also failed horribly.

This was a remarkably unsatisfying death. It was nowhere near as horrible as the first Tasha death (’cause it didn’t violate as many rules), but it was bad enough. Here’s why:

• The death managed to honor rules 1-3, and 5. It honored Rule 1 because the episode made it clear to us that in order to save Captain Archer there were no other (clear) alternatives. Further, the self-sacrifice occurred at a climax, satisfying Rule 2. And it took a while, so we got a "goodbye" scene in sick bay, satisfying Rule 3.
• Things get shaky with Rule 4: Whild we were told way in advance that Trip would die, we didn’t see the act of self-sacrifice until moments before he made it. Rule 4 was thus only satisfied in a pro forma way in that the audience was told what would happen but not in a plot-level way by letting the events themselves reveal what needed to happen.
• Rule 5 was completely bungled. Trip didn’t die saving the universe or even the Federation. His motivation for self-sacrifice was much murkier. It wasn’t an act of duty or friendship (though these may have played roles in it) but an apparent attempt to enable the Captain to keep his schedule in order to make an important speech–one that Trip had no good reason to think the future hinged on. This came across as totally stupid.
• Rule 6 was the most egregiously violated. There weren’t sinister anti-Federation forces trying to keep the Captain from making his oh-so-important speech. That would have (despite the implausibility of hinging all of history on a speech) at least tied the forces they were fighting into the goal that they were trying to achieve. Instead, the folks who drove Trip to self-sacrifice were passing, never-before-seen hoodlums who the Captain himself involved himself with and then honked off.

Listen, Star Trek guys: Next time y’all get a series (not any time soon) or a movie (probably ditto) and you wanna kill off a major character, please note the above list before you do so.

It’ll save y’all a lot of grief.

Mark Waid is such a great comic book writer.

A number of years ago they had him re-envision (i.e., "reboot") the Legion of Super-Heroes, which happens to be my sentimental favorite comic book as it was my boyhood favorite. It’s about a group of young superheroes in the 30th century, a thousand years from now.

Waid did a great job, and recently DC asked him to reboot (i.e., "re-envision") it again and he’s doing a great job again so far.

To the left is the cover of the third issue, which focuses, appropriately, on Triplicate Girl.

Triplicate Girl is a character who has the power to split into three. None of her three forms have any other superpowers, so many have viewed Triplicate Girl as a poorly-thought-out heroine.

Not Waid.

In his first re-envisioning of the Legion, he made Triplicate Girl a vital, exciting character who was able to hold her own against much more powerful individuals and make a real contribution to the team. Now Waid’s out once again to show us that Three is a magic number.

In this issue he has a priceless scene between three heroes: Phantom Girl, Element Land, and Triplicate Girl. None of these heroes are from Earth, and none seems familiar with the ancient Earth custom of dating. Nevertheless Element Lad and Triplicate Girl are about to go on a date, and as the scene begins Phantom Girl is coaching Element Lad on how the dating custom works, using a 20th century comic book (Batman) for help.

Problem is: Element Lad is from this really detached, spiritual planet, and he has a hard time grasping how things in ordinary humanlike cultures work.

The scene is so innocent and priceless that I thought that (strictly within the limits of the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law and to encourage you to go out and buy the comic and thus increase its sales) I’d share it with you.

Continue reading “30th Century Dating”

H. P. Lovecraft writes:

THE OLDEST and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naïvely insipid idealism which deprecates the æsthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to "uplift" the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism. But in spite of all this opposition the weird tale has survived, developed, and attained remarkable heights of perfection; founded as it is on a profound and elementary principle whose appeal, if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.

This is from Lovecraft’s monograph Supernatural Horror In Literature, which is considered the seminal 20th century treatment on the subject. In it, he surveys many masters of the macabre in the centuries and decades up to his time.

I don’t agree with him that fear is the oldest or strongest emotion or that fear of the unknown in particular is. I think mankind came into this word (whether you buy evolutionary accounts or not) with a robust set of emotions, no one of which predominates the others.

That being said, fear is a powerful, primal emotion, and fear of the unknown is one of its major expressions.

That is a sufficient reason for horror stories being popular despite the efforts of those who would cramp literature down into just those forms of naive realism that would seek to uplift all readers into "smirking optimism." (Gotta love that phrase.)

God gave the human imagination dragons, whether as symbols of actual or fanciful evils, and as Lovecraft points out in his monograph, the weirdly horrible has haunted human literature since its dim beginnings in primitive folklore. It’s part of the human psyche, and nothing is going to change that.

One of my own theories is that we like such literature for the same reason that kittens and puppies wrestle with each other and that boys play mock combat games: It’s a way of preparing ourselves psychologically when we may have to face horrible dangers, a way of experiencing such situations in a safe way (think: holodeck with the safeties on) so that we will be psychologically prepared for them when we face terrible real-life situations with the safeties off. To prep us for these, we have an inbuilt drive that makes us want to "play" dangerous situations so that we have something to fall back on when we encounter them for real.

When we’re young, we physicalize this through play. When we’re older, we internalize it through literature. But it’s the same phenomenon.

We may never encounter in real life the specific dangers we read about in horror stories or thrillers. Cthulhu is, after all, fiction. But there are things in the world just as evil and–to us as individuals–just as deadly as Cthulhu.

Better to have some experience of such evils in a simulator than to face them cold.

GET THE STORIES.

I have just finished Michael Crichton’s “novel” State of Fear and plan to review it. First a couple of disclaimers:

1. This is a contemporary thriller novel and as such contains a significant amount of cussing, non-described acts of sexual immorality, and a scene of particularly gory brutality towards the end of the book.
2. I happen to agree with Crichton that the theory that global warming is caused by “greenhouse gasses” is junk science, as are many other items of popular junk science that he brings up in the course of the novel. And I hope State of Fear manages to spark a real debate over global warming and enviro-nuttiness.

Now for the review:

Michael Crichton’s “novel” State of Fear is not actually a novel but instead is a piece of propaganda masquerading as a novel. A novel, of course, is a work of literature, a piece of art whereby words are used to evoke aspects of the human psyche and of human experience that transcend the merely ideological.

This transcendance of the ideological is what fails to happen in State of Fear.

According to the novel, there appear to be three kinds of people who believe in global warming:

1. Those who don’t really know much about the science involved and whose attachment to the environmental movement is so tenuous that they can and will be flipped to the other side by the end of the novel,
2. Those who don’t really know much about the science involved but whose attachment to the environmental movement is so strong that they remain shrieking harpies no matter what facts they are confronted with, and
3. Those who know that the science supporting global warming is junk but whose commitment to environmentalist ideology (or something) is so strong that they are willing to cause millions of casualties in order to fake scientific data supporting global warming.

If there are any other kinds of people who believe in global warming, they apparently occur sufficiently infrequently in nature that they do not merit having a recurring character in the book.

Also according to State of Fear, there apparently aren’t any evil big busines types willing to fake environmental data. Sure, many charactes appearing in the pages of the novel talk incessantly about this type of individual, but since no exemplars of this type appear in its pages, they appear to be a myth–like unicorns, centaurs, griffins, or global warmings.

With this ideologically one-sided cast of characters that inevitably results from the above, does Crichton at least succeed in delivering a well-made piece of propaganda, like Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will?

No.

Artistically, the “novel” is a disaster on every level above basic spelling and grammar.

On the top level, there is the plot, which involves a huge, sprawling mess of a story that is so poorly defined that much of the time the reader has a better sense of what is going on when watching The Big Sleep than reading this morass. There is no clearly defined central action, and poorly-drawn characters do preposterous things at the drop of a hat.

F’rinstance:

• What should a young lawyer do when he checks his messages and discovers that he has several calls from the local police department telling him that he failed to show up for an appointment and they will issue a warrant for his arrest if he doesn’t contact them? Should he drop everything to get the matter taken care of? Make sure he doesn’t get distracted by anything else before he does? Nooooo! He should simply leave a message for the detective who called him and then zip off on global assignments he has no qualifications for whatsoever!
• A preening Hollywood actor/activist who plays the president on TV (think: Martin Sheen) wants to tag along with the heroes on a mission of vital global importance in a place so dangerous that death, decapitation, and pre-death cannibalism are real possibilities. No problem! Just have him sign a waiver! Don’t worry that he might actually be a security risk to the mission since you already know he’s working for the other side. Perish the thought that he might simply a bumbling incompetent who would get in the way of your vital mission to save millions! You’ll need him along so you can constantly argue with him about the lack of evidence for global warming and other environmentalist fetishes and make a fool of him at every turn.
• Suppose that you’re an eco-terrorist mastermind. What should you do with people who are getting too close to the truth? Shoot them and be done with it? No! You should send your goons to use a tiny poison critter that you keep in a plastic baggie filled with water to sting them with a poison that will make them paralyzed but not kill them and that will wear off in a few hours. What’s more, you can do this to several people in the same city without any fear that after the toxin has worn off that the victims will tell the police enough to figure out who you are. So confident can you be of this that you don’t even need a clearly defined REASON to do this to people. You can just do it as part of some vaguely-defined attempt to be intimidating or something, without even telling the victims what it is that they are supposed to do or avoid doing in the wake of your goons’ attacks.
• Suppose that you are a rich man who has been supporting environmental causes and who has somehow (FOR NO REASON EVER EXPLAINED IN THE BOOK) come into possession of a set of coordinates of where major eco-terrorist events will be happening–what do you do? Turn the list over to the government? Put it in a safe deposit box which only you and your lawyer have access to? No! You <SPOILER SWIPE> hide it inside a remote control in your TV room, where there is a lot of Asian art including a Buddha statue, then fake your own death in an auto accident so you can go personally face eco-terrorists all by your lonesome on a south sea jungle island despite the fact you are an aging, overweight alcoholic, and just before doing so you cryptically tell your lawyer that it’s an old Buddhist philosophical saying that “Everything that matters is not remote from where the Buddha sits”–seeming to imply (if anything) that the TV remote is NOT where the hidden list will be found.</SPOILER SWIPE> See? It’s obvious, ain’t it?

Below the level of plot is the level of character. How are the characters? Thinly-drawn action adventure stereotypes, with one glaring exception. Unfortunatley, the one glaring exception is the pseudo-protagonist.

Y’see, this novel has an ensemble cast, but the omniscient narrator focuses on one character in particular–a young L.A. lawyer–to use as the lens through which to show us the vast majority of the story, making him the pseudo-protagonist.

Because of his status in the narration there is a need for the reader to at least be able to like him (ideally, you’d want the reader to be able to identify with him, but that’s too much to ask in a novel like this). Unfortunately, you can’t. While every one of his colleagues–whether they are personal assistants to rich men, rich men themselves, or other lawyers–are apparently action heroes, this character is the ultimate momma’s boy.

For the first chunk of the novel he does nothing but walk around, take orders from others, and ask simple questions so that the reader can be given load after load of exposition. He takes no personal initiative in doing anything.

Eventually, the action hero characters he’s surrounded by start noticing what a wuss he is and our glimpses into their internal monologues reveal words like “wimp” and “idiot” as descriptors of this character–who is, you will remember, the main character the omniscient narrator has chosen for us to follow.

In the second part of the novel the character is placed in a potentially life-threatening situation that causes him to experience a collapse into such a passive, sobbing, whimpering wreck that even the omniscient narrator seemingly turns away from him in disgust and temporarily starts following his action-wouldbe-girlfriend until she can rescue him from his predicament.

Just before this event occurs the character is wondering to himself why the action-wouldbe-girlfriend (i.e., the action hero woman who he would like to date) doesn’t “take him seriously as a man”–a moment bound to leave the reader going “Hey! Buddy! No one in the audience takes you seriously as a man either!”

Fortunately, getting his butt saved after his potentially life-threatening experience starts to awaken a glimmer of intestinal fortitude in him, and by the end of the novel he has learned to cuss (a little) and he gets a romantic hug from his action-wannabe-girlfriend, who is apparently transitioning into his action-actual-girlfriend for no good reason.

If the plot and the characters are disasters, how about the dialogue and narration?

They suck eggs on toast.

Some passages are so excruciating that I found myself wondering “Didn’t they give Crichton a copy editor?” One such instance occurred when a character says something to Momma’s Boy in a foreign language and we read (quotation from memory):

“He didn’t know what it meant. But it’s meaning was clear.”

Other pasages contain monstrosities of dialogue that no copy editor could fix. F’rinstance: Toward the very end of the book one triumphant good guy character is expositing on his grand vision for the future, of how to save environmentalism from itself, save science from its current predicament, and generally improve society. (This speech is sometimes so general that certain points remind one of the Monty Python sketch “How To Do It,” in which we are told that the way to cure all disease is to invent a cure for something so that other doctors will take note of you and then you can jolly well make sure they do everything right and end all disease forever.)

This manifesto would go on for several pages without break except for the fact that Momma’s Boy gets to interrupt it with scintilating interlocutions like:

• “Okay.”
• “It sounds difficult.”
• “Okay. What else?”
• “Why hasn’t anyone else done it?”
• “Really?”
• “How?”
• “And?”
• “Anything else?”
• and (a second time) “Anything else?”
• and (a third time) “Anything else?”

I’m sorry, but no copy editor could fix a multi-page speech with such transparent attempts to disguise it as dialogue. At that point it’s the editor’s job to call the author and demand a re-write.

If the publishing house is interested in producing quality works, that is–as opposed to simply making money.

Oh, and lest I forget, there are numerous dropped threads in this story. Like: Whatever happened about that arrest warrant that Momma’s Boy got threatened with? And: How about other established characters who left him messages and needed to talk to him? And: What did the other critter-victims tell the police after the toxin wore off? And: Where did that body come from that got washed up on the beach and how did someone else’s clothes and watch get on it? And: Why didn’t the heroes ever use the incriminating DVD to incriminate anybody?

And most importantly: What actually, y’know, happened to the bad guys in the end? Did they go to jail? Were there congressional hearings? Did they flee to countries with non-extradition treaties? Did they manage to keep their cushy jobs? Did they just go out for sushi? What???

Crichton is interested in telling us none of these things.

But then, his “novel” was never about the story to begin with.

It’s a political tract that fails to rise above the level of those theological “novels” (both Protestant and Catholic) in which one side is always right and in which characters of opposing points of view exist only to serve as conversational foils to help illustrate the rightness of the protagonists–time after time after time.

It’s enough to make you scream.