Fiction Reviews
Eruption
(2024) Michael Crichton & James Patterson, Century, £22 / US$32, hrdbk, ISBN 978-1-529-90749-0
Michael Crichton is possibly best known in SF circles for his novel The Andromeda Strain (1969) – his first novel under his own name – and the film he directed Westworld (1973) for whom he also wrote the screenplay. This last spawned a successful TV series (2016) that ran to four seasons. The former spawned the film The Andromeda Strain (1971) directed by Robert (The Day the Earth Stood Still, Star Trek: The Motion Picture) Wise. For the general public, and indeed younger SF fans, he is known for his Jurassic Park (1990) novel once Steven Spielberg made it into a blockbuster film (1993). But he also did much else. Towards the end of his life he became a bit of a climate sceptic and conspiracy theory sympathiser. (Ahem, well, you can't have everything.)
Following his death in 2008, his wife, Sherri, found a mass of research notes into volcanism. She knew of his interest as on some of their last holidays they visited volcanic sites at home and abroad. She also came across a partial manuscript for a novel with the working title The Black Zone. Some years after his passing, Sherri was introduced to the novelist James Patterson, a thriller writer whose creations include the 'Alex Cross' stories and the 'Women's Murder Club'. He agreed to work on Crichton's notes and manuscript on what would become the novel Eruption.
Crichton's – aside from The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park (possibly Timeline (2000) though that does not do too much in the way of exploring its SF trope) – work is arguably more technothriller than SF, though undeniably he has a foot in both camps. James Patterson is more a thriller writer but nonetheless seems to have been a reasonable fit to take over the reigns of what would become Eruption.
This edition, from the Century imprint, is purportedly the British Isles edition but actually the punctuation and spellings are all Americanised. So we get: 'sulfur', 'program', 'raincheck', 'theater' and the like.
Eruption, which will by now be obvious, concerns a volcanic eruption, specifically that of Hawai'i's Mauna Loa.
First, a little deep-time geology. The archipelago of Hawai'i sits directly above a hot mantle plume – the Hawaiian hot spot. The plume creates a large volcanic island. As continental drift carries the island, it moves away from being above the plume. Without a volcano to provide new lava, hence land, so the island begins to erode and become smaller. Meanwhile a new, large island forms above the top of the plume: this is why the Hawaiian chain of island has one major one – the one with active volcanoes – with a tail off ever smaller ones running northeast-by-east and, indeed, a whole undersea mountain chain. Crichton chose Mauna Loa (which is next to the dormant Mauna Kea that has not erupted for over four thousand years) for his portent of doom. Mauna Loa is Earth's largest active volcano by both mass and volume: only the non-active Tamu Massif is bigger.
Eruption's principal protagonist is John Macgregor the chief geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory: and this is a real place. In the book, Mauna Loa last erupted in 2022 but the signs are that deep in the Earth the Loa's magma chamber is filling: an eruption is due and it will be bigger; bigger even than the 1984 eruption!
If all this was not enough, as we see in a short introductory chapter set in 2016, there is also something else in the mountains. This 'something else' is Crichton's way of upping the ante for if it gets caught up in the eruption and the ash is carried high into the stratosphere, then that’s it for all complex life on Earth… So, no pressure then.
In addition to the dashing John Macgregor, there are a number of support characters: there's a fellow scientist providing a loose romance interest; the no-nonsense, seasoned army general; the rich billionaire; the celebrity geoscience wanna'bes; an assortment of politicians and local dignitaries; their friends and relations along with some army grunts. Added in is the local Hawaiian culture and setting – the city of Hilo and so forth – and some fairly respectable geoscience background (always welcome).
With the magma chamber slowly filling, we have the tension of a countdown to potentially the end of the world, with the novel's climax happening literally within the book's last few pages. And along the way we have action, helicopters too close to volcanic crater activity, some civil panic, and even a few deaths – including of some of the support characters.
While this will not go down as Crichton's best work, it is up there with some of his more solid technothrillers and his fans will love it. Apparently (I'm guessing if the book does sufficiently well), Steven Spielberg is contemplating adapting it into a film presumably to build on his Jurassic Park success. If he maxes out the film's more SFnal added terror with some horror then I'd certainly go to that.
As for volcanoes being a threat to life on the planet, well, Crichton did need to up the ante. A volcanic super-eruption (such as if Yellowstone blew) would certainly devastate the global harvest for a decade, and mass starvation would certainly follow if not fingers on the nuclear button did not get us first. Having a lifetime studying human ecology I am acutely aware of how fragile is our, supposedly robust, global civilisation. Fortunately, it is unlikely for there to be a super-eruption for quite a few decades (if not centuries?). Nonetheless, a spate of major global eruptions could cause sufficiently bad enough harvests for a year or two to have a devastating effect: witness 1816 due to Tambora. But no sense worrying: our politicians have got it all in hand… Haven't they?
Jonathan Cowie
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