Long, hot summer is the perfect time to explore an active Hawaiian volcano in "Eruption"

I just finished “Eruption” co-written posthumously by Michael Crichton and prehumously by best-selling author James Patterson. It’s a wild ride to the imagined 2025 catastrophic eruption of Hawaii’ s Mauna Loa. I learned so much about volcanoes and about Hawaii. The book includes a map of the big island but I kept a big Hawaii map handy so I could follow the action. I looked at many videos of volcano eruptions around the globe that are mentioned by volcanologists in the book.

I have read some good books on volcanoes. Simon Winchester’s “Krakatoa: The Day the World Ended, Aug. 27, 1883.”  This is a nonfiction thriller about the world’s worst eruption witnessed by humans. Curl your toes it will. “Rising Fire: Volcanoes and our Inner Lives” by Colorado’s John Calderazzo explores the physical and spiritual aspects of volcanoes. He also wrote a companion children’s book. There are dozens of children’s books on the subject. Also, Harry Turtledove writes alternative histories and this one explores a future Yellowstone eruption: “Supervolcano: All Fall Down.” The map on the cover makes it clear that Cheyenne, Wyoming is toast. Thanks, Harry. We have a forest of nukes on one side and a supervolcano on the other. Yellowstone was in the news this week about a dramatic steam eruption not far from Old Faithful. Nobody killed or hurt but it left one hell of a mess.

While the volcano is the center of the action in “Eruption,” a slew of interesting characters move the story along. Dr. John MacGregor  (“just call me Mac”) is the crotchety focus of the story. Mac kind of loses his starring role when army generals show up to manage the toxic weapon cache stored in Mauna Loa’s ice cave. Sorry, this is a bit of a spoiler but a key element of the story.  It’s worth reading the book just to find out what kind of doomsday weapon the U.S. could devise if they had Dr. Strangelove as the designer.

The book is organized into short scenes – there are 109-plus chapters. They are short, punchy chapters. This rhythm kept me reading even though the narrative sometimes got bogged down into arcane details of vulcanology. That’s OK by me but some readers may be tempted to skip over the middle chapters to get to the eruptions.

Almost as interesting as the novel’s proceedings in its back matter. Michael Crichton was just 66 when he died from cancer in 2008. He was an author, screenwriter, and filmmaker who, according to his very long bio was “the only writer in history to have a #1 book, #1 film, and #1 television series at the same time, and he did it twice.” I might be a bit skeptical had I not participated in the reading, moviegoing, and TV watching of Crichton’s work. I read his first novel, “The Andromeda Strain” in 1971, ate up “Jurassic Park,” and now it is 2024 and I have read his last one, or at least the last one to carry his name. He left behind a mountain of research on volcanoes and the people who study them. Also, neat details of Hawaii’s volcano-carved islands. It was up to family members and James Patterson to piece together his notes and plan for the book. “Eruption” the movie is in the works and the web is buzzing with the casting of Keanu Reeves in the lead role. The acting and special effects should be spectacular.