Oh, I thought it was a fun enough read. Its tone was preachy and its characters wre flat. Well not perfectly flat, Crichton gave them all one Non-Plot-moving characteristic. The naive lawyer was a playboy, for no reason other than it got a little more sex into the story. The assistant had a dating problems. I liked the Mad Professor. Once i started thinking abou this premise, that society will invient fears, I was started thinking that frivolous lawsuits might be another example. How many times have we said "if you do that you'll get sued". At the end of the day we still have diving boards, skate parks, and handguns, so maybe its all a big scare campaign perpetuated by urban myths. Ok, the book sucked, but it was an easy read.