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.
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.
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.
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.
Companies that benefit from the status quo won't buy ads on networks that advocate change. It's not that Americans have suddenly gotten genetically less intelligent in the last fifty years, but rather the reason our political system has fallen apart is (largely) because corporations came to control the media. Noam Chomsky has something to say about this in Manufacturing Consent.
In fact until fifty years ago working class Americans used to read the paper as much or more as upper class Americans. What happened is the papers of the rich started being subsidized by advertisers, so the working class papers couldn't compete and all went out of business. (Ads are worth much more in papers that target the wealthy, so the papers of the wealthy had a bigger ad subsidy, and thus sold for less money at the newsstand than the papers of the working class.) That's why poor people are largely illiterate and uneducated today, whereas only fifty years ago it was the working class that drove the progressive movement.
In fact until fifty years ago working class Americans used to read the paper as much or more as upper class Americans. What happened is the papers of the rich started being subsidized by advertisers, so the working class papers couldn't compete and all went out of business. (Ads are worth much more in papers that target the wealthy, so the papers of the wealthy had a bigger ad subsidy, and thus sold for less money at the newsstand than the papers of the working class.) That's why poor people are largely illiterate and uneducated today, whereas only fifty years ago it was the working class that drove the progressive movement.
That sounds like nonsense. If the separate papers appealed to separate demographics, a separate income for one wouldn't affect the sales of the other. If people started switching newspapers they would still be reading so you wouldn't be able to pin to this a disappearance of literacy. The only way this could happen is if newsstands actually dropped certain papers in favor of others, but considering the demographic split, it seems unlikely that this would be possible in all areas.
Even if you grant that this actually happened, it's hard to say that this caused illiteracy rather than the reverse, Considering the shear volume of tabloids, magazines, and newspapers that cater to the relatively illiterate.
Either way, it's a massive generalization and I don't think it holds water.
Companies that benefit from the status quo won't buy ads on networks that advocate change.
I know of only one oil company that advertises only on right-leaning blogs and news sites.
What happened is the papers of the rich started being subsidized by advertisers, so the working class papers couldn't compete and all went out of business.
Really? I would think that rich people would be harder to advertise to. If you're in the top 1%, you spend your time around the people you take cues from -- if the New York Times says one thing is cool, and Trey Wellborne the Nth says another, you're going to emulate Trey.
That's why poor people are largely illiterate and uneducated today, whereas only fifty years ago it was the working class that drove the progressive movement.
A more sensible hypothesis is that our economy is better at using smart people than it was fifty years ago. For one thing, fifty years ago, half of the smartest 50% were restricted to working as housewives and secretaries. There are now many more jobs for which a high IQ leads to higher pay -- so the problem isn't that the poor were under-stimulated and thus became dumb; it's that the smart, regardless of stimulation level, didn't stay poor.
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.
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 enjoyed the first half of Timeline, and like I said, it was my first exposure to the quantum physics presented there. The second half (after everyone was trapped in the past) seemed kind of cliche.
I didn't find Prey too interesting though. I'd already known about nanobots and at that point was a professional software developer, so the programming aspect didn't have the same "magical" appeal as the others.
Perhaps if you're already familiar with the area he covered, it doesn't hold as much of an appeal?
Undoubtedly. The reason Timeline held (and does hold) such an attraction for me is that it helped me realize that the people in the past weren't stupid or maybe even misguided compared to our current selves. They were just working with different sets of information.
A professional historian would not find something like this new at all, so your perspective does matter.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One has to achieve humility in interacting with other minds.
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Seems like you need to take a bit of your own medicine, mate. On the one hand you look down on those so-called "pseudo-intellectuals", "these people", for having a multi-dimensional understanding of the purpose of books, and on the other, you preach humility.
Get some humility into your own brain first. Those people you look down on see something you don't. That doesn't make them inferior, it just means your perspective is narrower.
I don't look down on these people. I dislike them.
And my view on books is that it's open. There are no constraints, so I don't see my viewpoint as narrow. A book is what you make of it.
I grew up on books and nothing else. No TV, no Radio. I read books at random, without a system, and I judge them by if I like them or not. And not by if others tell me I should like them or not.
Humility is not really something that can be explained easily, but when you finally become humble about the books you read, you will know it.
"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?
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.
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 :-).
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.
Didn't you just write yourself that probably it was just a fabrication of his press guys? Anyway, no, I am not interested in the issue. I don't know the book in question, and I don't know Clinton.
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.
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.
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.
I liked the original version. I'd put it up there with One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest on the list of best adaptations. But I've seen some god awful remakes, most notably the recent miniseries with Benjamin Bratt.
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.
I must admit, I had fun reading Dan Brown (Illuminati and Da Vinci) - more fun than reading Crichton. I knew that it was total nonsense, but it was entertaining. I think Crichton's main goal was also to entertain and make lots of money, so where is the big difference?
Maybe I missed out on that, because I read a borrowed copy in German translation.
I found it amusing that De Vinci Code manages to attract so many fans, by using the simplest, oldest puzzles ever. I mean making those old puzzles appear cutting edge was an achievement.
Well, Dan Brown or Robert Ludlum are shit, the bottom of the trash pile. This is like saying that relative to Hitler or Stalin, Bush was a great president.
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.
One metric for greatness is how long a work survives. If people are still reading Andromeda Strain in 100 years, then it may be considered a great novel.
For example, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist originally started out as a newspaper serial. It probably wasn't considered great literature at its time. Now, however, it's classic reading material.
Well, one possible test is, as mentioned by others, whether his works are still read a hundred years from now (I doubt that will be the case with Crichton). That's more a practical definition than a theoretical one though, and in my opinion it doesn't necessarily define "great" authors, but lasting ones. All great authors are lasting, but all lasting authors are not great - however, most lasting authors are in fact great authors.
On a theoretical level, I'd put the argument this way: Literary works use lies to achieve one or more of 3 objectives: 1) entertain, 2) expose new ideas, 3) expose deep pieces of ages-old wisdom. I think that in order to be "great", an author needs to at least have a firm foot in the third category.
Michael Crichton was certainly a good author, and very talented at 1) and even 2) sometimes, but did he ever convey any piece of eternal wisdom in his works? I sure didn't find any. This is not to put him down - being a good author is a hard enough achievement. But being great is something else.
Some examples of "great" authors, in my view: Dickens, Shakespeare, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Gabriel Garcia Marques, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, Tchekov, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Hemingway, Romain Gary...
Not all of them are 100 years old, although, sadly, all of them are dead.
the reason people have trouble with concepts like geniuses and great artists is that it is very hard to distinguish anything more than two levels above your own.
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.
I'll grant you that, though I honestly think that Crichton's work will date very badly and he probably won't enter the "great" category. It still supports my point that it's far too early to call him a "great" author.
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.
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.
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.
