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Yes, I read it. I was bored on Commencement weekend, stuck on campus for the weekend with nothing to do, and the campus bookstore had it on a major sale, so I said what the hell and bought it.
It's not hard to see why it was on clearance. As fiction, it's pretty terrible, below even standard Michael Crichton levels. You've got a ton of nonsensical loose ends (why the hell would you assassinate someone with an obscure poisonous octopus when it's clearly in your power to snuff them inconspicuously?), cliches bordering on the insulting (strong-but-silent native guide, oongawa!), and of course plenty of gratuitous sexual content described too woodenly even to be titillating. And the plot is pretty hard to believe to begin with, as it involves (ahem) an environmentalist group engineering environmental catastrophes to make global warming seem real so they can profit by scaring people. Yes, it's as dumb as it sounds.
The polemic overwhelms the story's logic at times, as when the hero/Jack Chick-style Numbskull Doubter figure believes that global warming might alter our planet's rotation. That was pretty comical. And I'm inclined to take Crichton with more than a grain of salt after such believable classics as "The Terminal Man," where epilepsy supposedly makes a quiet guy into a hypersexual serial killer, and "Prey," a tale of grey goo that melts like the Wicked Witch of the West the second it's exposed to a bacteriophage attacking its symbiotes.
Even with all that, some of the arguments he cited against GW appear respectable, though I of course know nothing of climatology. The bits about disproportionate urban heat increases, and the actual cooling of the atmosphere compared to the ground, seemed damning. My perspective remains largely unaltered by the book ("the science is beyond me, but the proposed cure is worse than the disease so who gives a rat's ass?"), but it did get me thinking more about the subject. I've only now worked up the courage to admit I took something from a MC book somewhat seriously. Plus the book's a few years old now. Anyone here know the current state of the arguments he cited? Failing that, anyone else want to rag on the ludicrous plot?
It's not hard to see why it was on clearance. As fiction, it's pretty terrible, below even standard Michael Crichton levels. You've got a ton of nonsensical loose ends (why the hell would you assassinate someone with an obscure poisonous octopus when it's clearly in your power to snuff them inconspicuously?), cliches bordering on the insulting (strong-but-silent native guide, oongawa!), and of course plenty of gratuitous sexual content described too woodenly even to be titillating. And the plot is pretty hard to believe to begin with, as it involves (ahem) an environmentalist group engineering environmental catastrophes to make global warming seem real so they can profit by scaring people. Yes, it's as dumb as it sounds.
The polemic overwhelms the story's logic at times, as when the hero/Jack Chick-style Numbskull Doubter figure believes that global warming might alter our planet's rotation. That was pretty comical. And I'm inclined to take Crichton with more than a grain of salt after such believable classics as "The Terminal Man," where epilepsy supposedly makes a quiet guy into a hypersexual serial killer, and "Prey," a tale of grey goo that melts like the Wicked Witch of the West the second it's exposed to a bacteriophage attacking its symbiotes.
Even with all that, some of the arguments he cited against GW appear respectable, though I of course know nothing of climatology. The bits about disproportionate urban heat increases, and the actual cooling of the atmosphere compared to the ground, seemed damning. My perspective remains largely unaltered by the book ("the science is beyond me, but the proposed cure is worse than the disease so who gives a rat's ass?"), but it did get me thinking more about the subject. I've only now worked up the courage to admit I took something from a MC book somewhat seriously. Plus the book's a few years old now. Anyone here know the current state of the arguments he cited? Failing that, anyone else want to rag on the ludicrous plot?
I found his scinece unconvincing. Now hes on about the enviros, hes still unconvincing.
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