Michael Crichton died in 2008. But as his widow Sherri tells us, the Jurassic Park author left behind an unfinished manuscript about a supervolcanic eruption, along with reams of volcano research. No doubt intrigued by the prospect of this lost world, created by a thriller writer praised for the quality of his ideas, his peer James Patterson signed on (in Sherri’s words) “to honour [Crichton’s] work and continue his story”.
Eruption, which will sell extremely well, and no doubt find its way onto the big screen, is the enjoyable, if highly choreographed, result. Crichton and Patterson’s apocalyptic romp begins on Hawaii in the metaphorical and literal foothills of “the Big One”: Mauna Loa is due to produce its worst eruption for a century. That enormous threat in fact represents only one of several incoming catastrophes, some of which are highly classified to add conspiratorial spice. For instance, a laboratory full of radioactive waste, whose inundation by lava would mean global devastation, is another ingredient in what becomes, in effect, less a novel than a trolley problem with helicopters.
Eruption’s central figure is “Mac”, AKA John MacGregor, a geologist and seemingly the world’s most competent man. He is “sometimes wrong, never in doubt”; in the self-belief stakes, he makes Dirty Harry look like Hamlet. The action, and there’s plenty of it, is soaked in an atmosphere summed up by Mac’s old college professors, who once talked about “the beauty of danger”. Mac, awestruck by nature, must be the most Accidentally Partridge figure ever to set about battling Armageddon. At one point, he declares: “That mountain isn’t some false-colour satellite image that you manipulate with a couple of keystrokes. It’s a goddamn gigantic force of nature.” At another, when asked, “You get any sleep?”, he replies: “Ain’t no slumber party… Got no time for catching Zs.”
In between his lachrymose admiration for the military, despite his dislike of following orders, and his wish to join them, which is soon fulfilled, Mac manages to fit in some unexpected raunchiness, securing the phone-number of an explosives expert and balancing something of a love triangle as hot lava flows inexorably towards the island’s population. “The world might be about to explode, but guys were guys”; “They exchanged phone numbers. Mac felt himself grinning.” (Not now, Mac!)
To say that Eruption is “cinematic” is to underplay how bluntly it attempts to cast, in real time, its characters: “The young woman wore a white summer dress and reminded Rachel of Halle Berry.” Yet its dialogue is often so clunky it would shame even Hollywood. Characters say things such as, “If it’s all the same to you… let’s not talk about the end”, or “He takes more chances since Linda left with the boys.” One character declaims: “The good old Galápagos Islands… Known for great big volcanoes, great big tortoises, and good old Charles Darwin.” Many of them are “the smartest girl/guy in the room”, most of them have Ivy League pedigree, and yet all of them defer to Mac with a near-religious devotion.
But why wouldn’t they? This man is a part-time surf instructor who also possesses an encyclopaedic knowledge of military jets. “Mac knew the plane,” we’re told, “an upgraded model of the F-15 fourth-generation fighter jet, equipped with Amber StormBreaker smart weapons that could see through fog and, hopefully, vog. He knew a lot about fighter jets, had studied them since he was a kid.” I don’t consider it a spoiler to say, at this point, that the above knowledge will come in handy.
It isn’t clear who has done exactly what in the Crichton-Patterson “collaboration”, but we can at least lay the overt contemporary time-stamps at the latter’s door: take, for instance, the cameo made by an Elon Musk-ish billionaire called JP Brett, who’s one of a number of characters oddly intent on flying into the volcano to get a better look. There are mentions, too, of TikTok, and phallic rockets owned by billionaires.
Otherwise, however, we could be reading, or watching, a classic 1990s end-of-days affair – for good and for ill. Women have winning smiles, Mac is “a cowboy to the end”, and swearing is avoided in almost all circ*mstances despite the excuse of imminent violent death. “This ain’t a drill,” Mac constantly reminds people, as if they’d seen it all before. Still, even if Eruption is hardly original, there’s something comforting in a version of Armageddon you could imagine being averted by Sam Neill.
Eruption is published by Century at £22. To order your copy for £18.99, call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books
