The Commentary

Monday, 28 February 2005

Marlon Richmond reviews State of Fear, sort of

PERSPECTIVES - thecommentary.ca

By Marlon Richmond, for THECOMMENTARY.CA

So, Joseph Planta calls me up on the phone nagging me to write a review for the novel he snagged. I complained that hey, my gambling debts this month have increased to over $3000 due to an unfortunate overestimating of the over/under for this year's Super Bowl. I begged for mercy from my bookie, but 15 armed weasels masquerading as bodyguards thought it only appropriate to give me each a swift kick in the junk Those swine will pay for what they have wrought. The apocalypse is among us folks, and all of us are getting judged, but no one seems to care any more. Raving loonies, Belinda Stronach's affairs are all the country can care about, and the world has gone bonkers based on Donald Trump's recent Benzedrine binge. We will never recover, no matter what that pack of dingoes tell me, boy that Mescaline sure is tasty...

[Editor's Note: The preceding is a very unfortunate event. It looks like instead of doing something resembling a review of the novel State of Fear by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins, 2004); Marlon went and did a very unfunny parody of a typical Dr. Hunter S. Thompson column. We all find it sad that Dr. Thompson died last week, but that is no excuse for unprofessional behaviour. Marlon had a simple task to do, but instead of submitting a simple book review in a prompt fashion, he has shown me that he no longer deserves to be associated with this website. When I visited the unkempt room that Marlon rents from his parents (he hasn't paid in the last three months), I found him passed out at 4.00 pm in the afternoon, sleeping off an all-too-frequent hangover. I was able to take back the novel, and attempted to give it a quick read. I couldn't get past the first ten pages, but did get a few comments from a friend on the internet (okay, they were from amazon.com. I run a near-prestigious internet journalism site, so I don't have time to chat online). He said that the story is crappy and absurd, but the non-fiction parts that analyze whether or not global warming is really happening based on statistical methods was quite fascinating. I don't personally know anything about science, so it was quite informing and an interesting challenge to conventional wisdom. Mr. Crichton ultimately believes that environmentalists are cynically exaggerating the idea of global warming, and that the scientific community really doesn't believe in Greenpeace-style fear mongering. I still wish that Marlon could have gotten his act together and done a decent report. For his own benefit, I am forced to suspend him from The Commentary. Hopefully he'll sober up soon and get his life back on track.]

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State of Fear by Michael Crichton is published by HarperCollins, and is $36.95 CDN ($27.95 USD) (ISBN: 0066214130).