Michael Crichton has passed away

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-081105-michael-crichton-dead-story,0,269418.story

by atlbeer • 18 years ago

102 61 18 years ago

swilliams2• 18 years ago

People slag on him for his more recent work and speeches, but at least for me, his books really made me interested in the science presented in them. Even stuff like Timeline, which piqued my curiosity in everything it talked about.

pistoriusp• 18 years ago

I read "Next" earlier this year. Whilst it wasn't the best book I've ever read I certainly enjoyed the ideas he brought to it and it must have taken a considerable amount of research and understanding to write.

Pretty sad.

cdr• 18 years ago

Timeline was the last book of Crichton's I read. It really turned me off. I had been a fan from a young age, but that was it. He ignored or twisted science, reason, and logic just for "cool" plot points, far more so than in any previous book.

SapphireSun3• 18 years ago

Timeline wasn't about the mechanisms of time travel, it was about the past. He may have gotten some physics wrong, but it was the historical stuff that stuck with me.

While I agree that some of his newer stuff wasn't so good, his older stuff really turned me on to certain fields like archeology, physics, nanotechnology etc. My mouth literally dropped open when I saw the headline.

I wish his family well. :(

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

His most recent work and speeches support the idea that we should be skeptical of popular opinion, as wildly popular opinions in the past were both popular and wrong. This includes opinions held by the scientific community. That strikes me as a good point to make.

He gets flack because he applies that skepticism to mainstream views on Global Warming, which many people insist should not be criticized because it is really really right and ought to be beyond skepticism. I guess time will tell who was right.

I was always a fan of his work. I loved the idea-centric fiction style that he pioneered and that authors like Neal Stephenson still use today.

Alex39172• 18 years ago

Most people get their views on global warming from the media, and our media is controlled by corporate interests who profit from being allowed to dump unlimited CO2 into the atmosphere. If people are discouraged from criticizing global warming, it's not because global warming is beyond reproach but because every individual criticism is picked up by the media and given equal credibility to the scientific consensus.

adldesigner• 18 years ago

A great author indeed. May he rest in peace.

swombat7• 18 years ago

Not to be overly pedantic, but while I think he was a good commercial author and extremely successful, a great author is something else.

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

Totally, but relative to Dan Brown or Robert Ludlum the guy was James Joyce. He was as close to a great author as any good commercial author I've read.

huherto• 18 years ago

What makes a great author?

Recently a guy in the radio was saying that someone was great author if he/she was hard to understand. If you were able to understand him then he was not. I do not agree with such definition but still I cannot tell what makes someone a great author. I think it is more related to weather the author engages you and once you start reading is hard to stop.

dgordon• 18 years ago

Shakespeare was a good commercial author and extremely successful as well. As others have written here, the empirical test of "great" is whether his work lasts.

DanielBMarkham• 18 years ago

RIP Michael.

I recommend his biographical work Travels -- I found some parts very insightful.

kqr23• 18 years ago

I always thought it was interesting that he was a Harvard trained MD.

It probably took a lot of work to get there and it must have been an interesting decision for him to leave that profession and start writing.

cowmoo• 18 years ago

What's more interesting is that the man started writing (finished and published) several full-length novels while he was still in med school to "make a quick buck."

He also was suppose to declare English during his undergrad, but decided against it after he submitted an not-well-known essay written by George Orwell for a class assignment, and the professor gave it a B-. According to him, it was not an act of plagiarism, but a test to verify Harvard English Department's arbitrariness in critiquing literature. Afterwards, I think he dropped English in favor of anthropology (inspiration for Congo), which led him to med school (inspiration for E.R) and then later to a postdoc fellowship in infectious disease (inspiration for Andromeda Strain).

Oh, did I also mention the Crichton was also a star basketball player in high school? The man is quite the renaissance man.

mikesabat• 18 years ago

Travels is one of my favorite books. I had a beat up copy which I kept with me for years, but it's since disappeared. I am going to go buy another one and I suggest you do the same.

prakash• 18 years ago

That's the only MC book I read, and found it to be fascinating.

RobGR2• 18 years ago

The first book I read by him was the one about the bio-terror attack with a virus. I read it because the New York Times sais that then-President Bill Clinton had read it, and this had lead to some anti-terrorism initiative that I thought was bullshit. I said to myself, if this novel is going to be resulting in bullshit I have to deal with, I better read it.

What a piece of crap that book was. I much of my respect for Bill Clinton at that point, and more with the sexual scandals, although in retrospect he regained much ground and I like him more now.

Then I read Andromeda Strain, and that annoyed me too. It was better written, but a book that tries to be a highly realistic science fiction can't pull a cheaters ending like that. Supposedly the whole cloud of virus just mutates . . . what, every single individual, all at the same time ? Dude, spend a couple of hours scratching your head and come with an ending.

Nonetheless, one of my private dreams has always been to see a wooly mammoth cloned and alive, and if that ever happens it will be at least partly because of his Jurassic Park. RIP.

Tichy4• 18 years ago

I don't think it is a good idea to lose respect of somebody just because of allegations against him by a third party. But to each their own.

RobGR2• 18 years ago

William Clinton had a large press office that was quite capable of correcting the New York Time's reporting on his reading. In fact, knowing what we know about how newspapers and political offices work, it is probably that Clinton's press guys passed the stuff about reading Crighton's work to the New York Times as a ready-made anecdote to be inserted into stories about the terrorism boondogle.

Of course, he is still alive, and has more time now to answer correspondance. If you think the issue in doubt, email him. If you can get him to deny NYTime's reporting on the matter, I'll send you $100. If you are interested in the challenge, I'll dig up a link to the exact story in question.

SapphireSun3• 18 years ago

Andromeda strain was written while he was in med school and published under a pseudonym iirc. I don't think he had time to think of a proper ending :-).

geuis2• 18 years ago

Its a shame he died. He wasn't a great author but he did have a few good ones. Sphere(the book) was among his better ones.

mattmaroon4• 18 years ago

Really? I hated that one. Much preferred Andromeda Strain.

fallentimes• 18 years ago

The movie absolutely sucked, but I loved the book.

Edit: was talking about the 90's Sphere movie.

geuis2• 18 years ago

Yeah, I loved AS too. His later work has gone downhill but he was very innovative in his early career.

rw• 18 years ago

Sphere was the first novel I ever read. The imagery is still with me.

urajat• 18 years ago

Most of his books appear as if they were written to be made into movies. Most of them were thoroughly enjoyable too - Jurassic Park, Congo, Timeline, Prey etc., though his recent works weren't as good as his older ones.

RIP

ivanstojic• 18 years ago

Bummer :-(

brandonkm• 18 years ago

Michael Crichton was nothing short of a legend. RIP. Thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

markessien3• 18 years ago

Anyone who says that Michael Crichton wrote bad books does not understand the point of reading. You don't read to learn, you read because it's a form of entertainment. And Michael Crichton wrote supremely entertaining books. If you are entertained only when you read Shakespeare, then you belong to a small minority of people, and you should not criticize a popular and good author who wrote books read and loved by millions of people, and was behind some of the more spectacular films of the 90s.

Reading is like watching TV or movies to me. I like watching heavy stuff every now and then, but the bulk of my reading is for entertainment, and Stephen King and Michael Crichton are good examples of such work.

The same people who criticize Crichton will sit in front of their TVs and watch Lost, and then proclaim it as an excellent show. For people who grew up reading, Lost is the same level as most of Crichtons works.

jimbokun• 18 years ago

"Lost is the same level as most of Crichtons works."

You mean Chrichton's books feature a handsome male character who's shirt is always coming off for some reason or other, and an attractive female character who always seems to end up in her underwear?

swombat7• 18 years ago

Anyone who says that Michael Crichton wrote bad books does not understand the point of reading

That's a very strong statement to make. Are you sure it's not the other way around? Perhaps you don't understand the point of reading. Or perhaps there are several reasons to read?

I read entertaining books too, but I do try to keep a balance between books that merely entertain and books that not only entertain but also make me a better person.

I think literature serves 3 purposes: 1) entertainment, 2) exposing new ideas, 3) exposing deep, ages-old pieces of wisdom. Achieving 1 is hard. Achieving 1 and 2 is harder. Achieving all 3 is hardest. I don't think Crichton ever achieved all 3, and most of the time he achieved only 1.

The same people who criticize Crichton will sit in front of their TVs and watch Lost, and then proclaim it as an excellent show

I think you have a bad habit of over-generalising.

markessien3• 18 years ago

I don't. I really dislike people who think that reading is in some way something special or unusual. People who think that reading is all about literature. That's like saying movies are all about French Films with 15 minute stretches of silence.

There are many types of books, and there are many types of reading. Books are just like talking, but written down. Talking does not fit neatly into your 3 categories. When Jay Leno does a monologue, do you criticize him for not imparting ancient wisdoms? No. But people have nothing against criticizing a writer of popular sci-fi for not doing the same.

Crichton was not a bad writer at all. In his genre, he was excellent. His purpose was never to create some long lasting work, it was simply to entertain. And succeed he did.

Books are not some mystical source of magical knowledge like so many pseudo-intellectuals seem to think. It's just someone telling you something, but in a written form. You may not like what a person says, but if millions like it, then he is doing it well.

Of course, I can make this argument as long as I want, but I'll never be able to make these people understand that having Dostoevsky on your bookshelf does not mean you understood it. When you read it and then all you get from it is the same as what one could get from Wikipedia, then you have failed in your attempt to access literature that is not for you to understand.

Some of the most ridiculous dialog I have observed is usually between two people talking about books that are noted in popular culture as being intellectual. What most readers can do is talk about the books, but they don't understand what the guy who wrote the words was trying to tell them. They see the surface, they analyse the tricks, but the fail to understand the meaning. Ridiculous!

It's often those same people who will criticize "lesser" books and "popular" authors. I really dislike this pseudo-intellectualism.

One has to achieve humility in interacting with other minds.

zandorg• 18 years ago

I like his milder films, like Looker and Rising Sun

deathbyzen• 18 years ago

Man, when I was in middle school I was so proud of myself for devouring The Lost World in like 4 days. I loved his work, and though I haven't read one of his books in some time, I will miss him greatly.

hwijaya• 18 years ago

I always find his work enjoyable and present enough level of detail to make me feel "reading fiction and learning heaps". RIP.

hooande• 18 years ago

Michael Crichton was an amazing scientific and creative mind and the world is worse off for his passing. His books inspired many from my generation to have more of an interest in science and opened a world to adults and children alike.

byrneseyeview3• 18 years ago

Passed away? What a relief! I heard a rumor he died. Whatever happened to him instead sure sounds ambiguously pleasanter!

demallien• 18 years ago

Oh, what a shame :-( I remember reading Jurassic Park 2, and then being appalled to see how the fairly reasonable science in the novel was just flat out massacred in the film. Worse yet, the film absolutely killed the best parts of the plot.

However I was yet another turned off by Timeline. It was the next book of Crichton's that I read after JP2, and I was seriously disappointed... I don't remember the details now, but there were several glaring flaws in the logic of the story, not to mention some of the stuff about language just seemed so far fetched to me.

Still, there can be no doubt that Crichton was a very talented man. His contributions to our culture will be missed.

arien• 18 years ago

Was so shocked to hear about this, didn't know he had cancer.

RIP and my condolences to his family :(

Michael Crichton has passed away

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