How do ya'll feel about Michael Crichton?

With a small penis, mind.

I rather liked Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Eaters of the Dead. I find his other stuff fair to middlin'.

Sphere actually made me mad because it's really just a Forbidden Planet rip-off with a twist that doesn't really work ( If they miss-mapped the cipher to make "Harry" read as "Jerry", why isn't it miss-mapped through all of the dialogue they have with "Jerry"?) and an ending that makes the whole thing a "Shaggy Dog" Story. Waste of time.

Timeline read too much like a movie script, to my mind, rather than a novel.

Congo was entertaining in a sort of second-rate Indiana Jones way, but not really what I would call a great novel. I read at least part of Disclosure as well, but it hasn't stuck in my memory much.

One of the works of Crichton that most made me think was a speech he gave called "Why Speculate?" that is essentially about news moving away from facts and into telling a narrative instead. He gave it in 2002, and the trend he pointed out has only increased since then. Go look it up online, I'm sure you could find it.

So there's a sequel to The Andromeda Strain called The Andromeda Evolution, written by Daniel H. Wilson. I read it and, while I don't think it's quite as good as the original, I liked it and think Crichton fans would enjoy it.

Talk about coincidences. I haven't visited this forum in forever and I decided to come back today and you post today, reviving this thread dedicated to one of my favorite authors.

Thank you for the info, I'll check it out.

I looked back a page or two. Crichton was not anti-science or anti-intellectual. The original Andromeda Strain in both book and movie form is one of the most realistic depictions of how a scientific investigation really works ever, including how mind-numbingly thorough you have to be.

People seem to think that because he wrote about scientists making mistakes that he was anti-science. He wrote about scientists making mistakes because he was pro-science. His basic message was "science is great, but people aren't perfect, and we should never forget that scientists are people."

State of Fear isn't a denialist creed, in between the (rather silly in my opinion) techno-thriller plot it's about the dangers of politicizing science. Whatever side of the climate change debate you sit on, you must admit it has been politicized.

Edited by Bense on Feb 22nd 2020 at 12:16:40 PM

It’s been politicized because a bunch of corporations have been denying the evidence out of self-interest, and have been aided by right-wingers.

It’s like saying the fact that smoking causes cancer has been “politicized” by cigarette companies trying to discredit it.

Another basic message of Chrichton's work is against complacency. His scientist characters get into trouble because instead of verifying a finding they stop looking and believe they know what's happening once they see what they expected. Like the scene in the book Jurassic Park when Malcolm points out that a regular bell-curve for dinosaur size should be impossible, because the dinosaurs are not a natural population and were released into the park in three distinct groups, or that they programmed their dinosaur-counting sensors to stop counting once they found all the expected animals, which prevented the park scientists from realizing that the dinos were in fact reproducing.

I'm not a fan of State of Fear, but I think Disclosure gets a bit of a bad rap. People talk about it like it's some "bitches be cray" MRA tract, but I remember it being more about the idea that women are just as likely as men to abuse power if given a chance.

I'm happy to see other people standing up for Crichton now. Fuck, my posts on last page are five years old and really show it. I didn't know what an MRA was...lucky me. Well, I guess it's good I know now about another evil in the world.

Anyway, great posts everyone.

No, I tried to read Disclosure and I had to stop after the first several chapters because of how much of a raging MRA tract it was. The Straw Feminist portrayal of the main character’s wife made that very clear.

Edited by Galadriel on Feb 22nd 2020 at 7:51:34 AM

Disclosure was written in 1994, at a time when the thought that a man could be raped or otherwise sexually assaulted by a female boss was still a pretty novel idea.

This is probably a case of a reader always bringing their own current context to the text. It's kind of inevitable that we see any piece of fiction through modern eyes. Although in this case it's only like thirty years difference, which can show you how swiftly things change.

Though I haven't read this particular book myself so I can't really comment on how MRA-ish it is yet.

I would agree. Although if you first read it 30 years ago then you might remember what you thought of it at the time as well.

I never read all of Disclosure, just enough of it to see that it wasn't really a techno-thriller like Crichton's other work.

I've read all of The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, Eaters of the Dead, Timeline, and State of Fear. Andromeda Strain is probably my favorite Crichton book, with Jurassic Park coming in second. And of course I'm a Tolkien fan, so Eaters of the Dead was pretty interesting as a "realistic" re-telling of Beowulf.

I didn't like Congo or Sphere very much.

Timeline and State of Fear were a little better, but a bit silly at points, with rather cartoonish villains.

Edited by Bense on Feb 24th 2020 at 2:27:13 AM

It's the 30th anniversary of JP coming the 20th of this month. Probably time to do a reread, especially since I'll be busy with the new Stormlight Archive book by then.