State Of Fear Week One

From the book group we had on Multiply:

Get comfortable with being on the edge of your seat as you get ready to read this book!  Although crammed full of environmental data,  Michael Crichton's novel, State Of Fear, moves at a fast pace propelling the reader from one crisis to another.  The writer calls to the scientific community for more in depth study of the facts involved in environmental care and warns us all that keeping the general population in a state of fear, even  an imagined one,  is a means of controlling that population.  He begins by quoting George Orwell as saying, "Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.", while initiating a debate that needs to happen.

Approximately the first forty pages of the novel lay groundwork opening with a method of murder that becomes important later in the book and moving on to some seemingly disconnected purchases of an odd assortment of equipment.   Following this back drop the story begins and a cast of characters emerge that include the following to name a few:

George Morton - an odd ball millionaire philanthropist

Nicholas Drake - the director of a large environmental fundraising organization

Peter Evans - Morton's personal attorney, young,  not real coordinated  and the main character of the book.

Sarah Jones - Morton's knock out personal secretary

John Kenner - a national security agent

Sanjong Thapa - Kenner's associate

Jennifer Haynes - an attorney who is much more than she first appears.

More curious events that as yet seem unrelated lead us to the end of the first section titled "Akama" as the group make plans to travel to Anartica.

Does the book offer a central idea or premise?  

What are the problems or issues raised? 

Are they personal, spiritual, societal, global, political, economic, medical, scientific?  

Do the issues affect your life?

How so—directly, on a daily basis, or more generally? 

Now or sometime in the future?  

What kind of language does the author use?

Is it objective and dispassionate? 

Or passionate and earnest?

Is it polemical, inflammatory, sarcastic? 

Does the language help or undercut the author's premise?  

Does the author—or can you—draw implications for the future? 

Are there long- or short-term consequences to the problems or issues raised in the book?

If so, are they positive or negative? 

Affirming or frightening?  

Does the author—or can you—offer solutions to the problems or issues raised in the book? 

Who would implement those solutions? 

How probable is

success?