Crichton’s State of Fear, with a reported first print run of 1.7 million copies, is an action thriller that doubles as a scientific primer on global warming and other environmental topics. Crichton’s protagonists — a scientist, a lawyer, a philanthropist and two remarkably athletic women — race around the world foiling the plots of environmental extremists who seek to frighten the world into embracing their radical agenda. Along the way, they take time to explain to their adversaries, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind global warming and other imagined environmental crises.

The end of radical environmentalism?