Green fictions.(State of Fear)(Book Review)

State of Fear By Michael Crichton HarperCollins, 603 pages, $27.95

On the of his latest book, State of Fear, Michael Crichton's name appears in type at least three times the size of the title. Mr. Crichton is now a brand, like iPod, Dell, and Grisham--and a good thing too, or this valuable book would never have been published. As an addict of disposable fiction, I can safely attest that most bestselling novels today are infected with political correctness. Absent the long string of hit novels and blockbuster movies based on Crichton's work, it seems unlikely that this decidedly unfashionable book would ever have been allowed into print.

Although State of Fear doesn't really work as a page-turner, as a painless primer on the environmental wars it's a masterpiece. Page-turners work best when the plot moves so fast that the fantasy washes effortlessly over the reader as he races to discover the two most important unknowns: Will the hero save the world? And will he bed the (fiercely independent, yet extremely fit and lissome) maiden?

Crichton's hero and the "Magnificent Seven" who join with him to protect the world from environmental terrorism make an extremely unlikely special ops team. And the fate of one character (obviously modeled on Martin Sheen) is particularly hard to digest. Mind you, I loved what happened to the Sheen figure. Readers willing to suspend a little disbelief will find this figure a hoot.

At the end of the book, Crichton provides an extensive list of observations on the environment that he distilled from his three years of research prior to writing his book, believing the reader may want to know what his own conclusions are on the public issues that underlie State of Fear. Some readers will be shocked by his lack of sentimentality. Others will feel that frisson that comes from having their own thoughts stated with special eloquence. Even without reading his afterword, no one will have any doubt about what Crichton believes.

Adding to this novel's unusual nature is the fact that it is replete with footnotes and charts and an extended bibliography--very useful to those of us who want ...