Monday, December 13, 2004

Michael Crichton [author of Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and Timeline] is a big man with big ideas, a storyteller of nearly seven feet who turns popular science into popular fiction.

Now he's questioning global warming in his new thriller, State of Fear, about eco-terrorists who plot a series of natural disasters - earthquakes, underwater landslides, a tsunami - to prove that global warming is a threat to humanity. A ragtag band of scientists and lawyers uncovers the scheme.

State of Fear sounds like a typical Crichton thriller, but this time he's using the novel as a platform, tacking on a five-page message stating his notion that the theory of global warming is speculative at best, and a 14-page bibliography of works supporting his views.

"It was very difficult to get my head around the idea that this widely held belief may not be true, and I thought, 'If I'm going to do a book, how would I structure it so that someone could even hear it a little bit?' " he says, crammed into an armchair meant for size regular at his hotel suite, his youthful face dimpled as he yanks out different graphs to illustrate his point.

Crichton, with more than 100 million copies of his books in print, is ready to defend his view - he's armed with a tape recorder, a steep pile of colourful graphs, scientific data and text books. Pushing rimless glasses up higher on his nose, he's eager to discuss the environment and he's certain his ideas are right. But he doesn't allow ego to swallow him and is quick to laugh at himself and back off when his lecture becomes overbearing.