State of Fear – World War Z
One of the benefits of being the world’s first and foremost amateur consulting movie detective is that on those occasions when the cases which present themselves during a given week do not include anything worthy of investigation, I am always free to throw myself upon the sofa and lie there until the motion picture industry does better. This week I allowed Dr. Watson IV to spend his time with his patients and allowed Mrs. Hudson IV to bring my meals to the sofa while I spent long hours not even raising a hand while I listening to a pair of books-on-CD.
State of Fear by Michael Crichton does a little bit more editorializing than his past science thrillers, giving the issue of global warming a working-over that reminds one of putting Al Gore in a cage match with a boxing kangaroo. Instead of cloned dinosaurs or time-travel knights, State of Fear features lightning weapons that somehow don’t offer the mental stimulation of his other works. And by the time his characters get done with all of their lectures on global warming, one wonders why Crichton didn’t just write a non-fiction work on that subject (not for long . . . they probably wouldn’t pay him his ususal rate for non-fiction). As with so many modern works where the author shows off the researches he did to prepare for his work of fiction, one is left wondering just how much is fake and how much is real. Not something I ever hope to see as a movie, as Crichton’s books inevitably wind up.
Not nearly so encumbered is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, read by a full cast. A collection of personal stories of the Earth in a “Night of the Living Dead” scenario, World War Z extrapolates on the zombie theme is a good science fiction manner. What country would a zombie plague start in? Which countries would be first to react, and which would stay in denial until it was too late? Not so much a horror story as a series of “man versus nature” tales in a world where nature includes the living dead, World War Z is a pleasantly diverting . . . although it is a bit distracting when Alan Alda’s distinctive voice pops up later in tale. Blending in much better is Mark Hamill as a regular army soldier caught up in the craziness. If the world can handle a zombie movie at the level of Independence Day, this book could translate wonderfully to the big screen.
What Great-grandfather Sherlock would say:
“My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work!”
Past Investigations