2013 read #14: Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton.

Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
309 pages
Published 2009
Read January 24
Rating: ★ out of 5

There was a time, strange as it may seem now, when the general public and the political organism in this country accepted the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. It was a time when Newt Gingrich appeared on television with Nancy Pelosi to warn of the dangers of global warming, when serious discussions were held at the highest levels to control carbon emissions and develop alternative power sources. It may seem like an age of legends and heroes to us now, but it was not so long ago.

The change, of course, was dictated from the top down. Right-leaning politicians discovered how much money automotive and fossil fuel industry lobbyists were willing to part with, and just like that, even the anemic Kyoto Accords were abandoned, and the national press "discourse" was suddenly full of dubious scientists on the petroleum industry's payroll and other would-be debunkers. At the time I figured no one could be stupid enough to believe a "scientist" employed by a massive multi-billion-dollar industry, when the scientific consensus was unambiguous and easy to understand. I mean, the basic ideas behind anthropogenic climate change are literally high school chemistry: CO₂ absorbs energy in the infrared range and retains it. If you have more CO₂ in the atmosphere, the atmosphere retains more solar radiation in the form of heat. Humans have been dumping prodigious quantities of CO₂ (and methane and CFC's) into the atmosphere at unprecedented and accelerating rates. The precise effect that will have on Earth's climate is a matter of complex computer simulations based on a wide array of paleoclimatological data. Such simulations will inevitably shift as we gather more data and models improve, but that's how science operates. You'd have to be some kind of total idiot or ideological infant to ignore the basic science and its implications.

But as I have so many times in life, I overestimated the reasoning abilities of the American public. When the conservative media machine manufactured "doubts" about climate change, lifestyle Republicans -- those who practiced Republicanism as an identity badge and lifestyle choice rather than a coherent ideology, which is to say, most Republicans -- ate it up. And right around the time that public opinion turned from "Let's all believe the scientists" to "Let's all believe the fossil fuel industry lobbyists," all-star airport novelist Michael Crichton published State of Fear.

I'm not saying Crichton was party to the massive industrial misinformation campaign that bamboozled half the American public, but all the same I've never forgiven him. Crichton had been one of my childhood heroes. Jurassic Park was one of the first unabridged, unexpurgated grownup books I ever read. Throughout my 'tween and teen years, I read and reread Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Congo, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain. For years my stories bore the unfortunate stamp of his prose style. Timeline was the very last birthday-cum-Christmas present I ever asked from my grandmother, the last innocent moment of my childhood. But the existence of State of Fear soured me on him overnight. (Nowadays I just find it kind of funny that in his seminal "Humans aren't affecting global climate" novel, the villains employ a literal weather-changing machine. Which I guess is somehow more plausible than basic atmospheric chemistry, as various HAARP conspiracy theorists suggest. Sardonic amusement is the only comfort left for a 21st century rationalist.)

My attitude toward Crichton hasn't softened since 2004. If anything, after years of reading superior fiction, I dislike him all the more: I realize his books weren't all that good. I still like Jurassic Park, and I haven't bothered to revisit Congo or Sphere, but The Lost World is simply terrible, Eaters of the Dead was stupid, and (sentimentality aside) Timeline was hilariously bad. Every time I scoff about "airport novelists," I have this fucking guy in mind. (Well, Crichton, Koontz, Clancy, Brown, etc.)

All that was simply a segue into this book: Pirate Latitudes. It's a Michael Crichton novel about pirates. As much as I dislike the man and his prose style, his blow-up doll characters, his "dramatic" sentence fragments, his tell-not-show descriptions, it's a Michael Crichton novel about pirates. Come on. If that doesn't spell "entertaining trainwreck," I don't know what would.

Well, I'll be the first to admit I was wrong: There was scarcely anything entertaining about Pirate Latitudes.

I want to say the prose was particularly graceless and insipid, even for Crichton, but I can't be sure -- years of reading good books, and half a year of reading the dishwater dreck of those who emulate airport fiction, may have left me particularly averse to Crichton's paint-by-numbers storytelling. This is the fast food of fiction, and not even the satisfying kind you might indulge in once in a while. This shit is KFC chicken strips withered into dry stringy shingles at the end of the business day, served up with a hard tasteless biscuit and a watery half-cup of mac and cheese; the kid in the drive-thru didn't give you any dipping sauce, and your soda is bubbly tap water that maybe once held some Pepsi in it before it was retrieved from the trash and rinsed out for your use, and you're eating it alone in your car because no one loves you. Far from a welcome break from more serious reading, this book made me long for something brainy and substantial to relieve the monotony of flat interchangeable characters and "Everyone nodded"-style storycraft. It was bad, man. It was bad. Call this a low blow if you like, but come on -- even Crichton had the sense to hide this manuscript away for all those years.

I'd type up some specific criticisms, but this rant is already three times longer than it should be, so I'll just leave it here.