[ergothus]

Interesting - I greatly enjoyed Crichton's earlish work (e.g. Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain), but found his later stuff to be terrible in its scientific basis and _Prey_ was when I stopped reading because I found it too terrible to just enjoy.

Glad someone enjoyed it, I may have been too picky.

[jfoutz]

I enjoyed a bunch of his books. Prey had problems, but i thought it was a fun read after i stopped worrying about power.

I gave up on him after http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2006/12/michael_crichto.ht...

It's so dirty and underhanded. He seemed like a really interesting guy from the window of his books. Perhaps he just got a little off track at the end there.

[veidr]

I don't think it is dirty and underhanded, and I would even go so far as to say it's awesome.

It isn't like Chrichton defiled some serious work of journalism or science by slipping in this personal vendetta; as Crowley aptly points out, Chrichton's works are mass-market novels about 'killer dinosaurs and talking monkeys'.

So what's the harm? Books like that need despicable minor characters to set the tone, and I think this is perfectly fine way to say, "Fuck you, Michael Crowley!" It's his novel, after all.

Also, after reading Crowley's article[1] that so incensed Crichton, I think he probably does have a small penis^W^W^W^W^W^W^W it is not very good. (Neither are Crichton's books, although I probably read most of them in the pre-kindle days when you had to buy a paperback at the airport before a long flight.)

[1]: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/michael-crichtons-scaries...

[nitrogen]

The name is the same, though. I think that's what makes it completely ridiculous.

[veidr]

I agree -- ridiculously over-the top. Zero subtlety. That's why I found it kind of awesome.

[FiatLuxDave]

No, let me give you a true example of ridiculously over-the-top, zero subtlety.

I once read an obscure sci-fi novel where the bad guy was an evil physicist named Edward Teller, who wanted to destroy the world with his invention, the hydrogen bomb. No relation to the real-world Edward Teller, of course. All characters in the novel were fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, was purely coincidental. It said so right in the front of the book...

[brwnll]

Giving a bad guy's background in a fiction novel a similar some similar traits someone you don't like for openly being critical of your work is "so dirty and underhanded"? This feels utterly backward.

If you gave me the option of:

A) Having a person publicly criticize my work saying things such as: "I found a man who has long yearned for intellectual stature beyond the realm of killer dinosaurs and talking monkeys"

B) An author will write a d-bag into one of his novels and say he went to the same college and works in the same field as me.

I find "A" much more appalling.

[jfoutz]

A) is forthright. Standing up and saying, "hi, i'm bob, and joe sucks" is clear and unambiguous.

B) is an underhanded rhetorical trick. "Hi, i'm bob, let me tell you a story about Moe. For convienence, Moe looks talks and acts just like Joe. Moe is a child molester."

See, there's this internal conflict, either the mythical Moe is just like Joe, and Joe is a child molester, or Moe isn't just like Joe.

Just stand up and say Joe sucks. Leave Joe out of the story you're trying to tell.

[volaski]

It's ludicrous to even think of this as an "attack". Just sounds like some conspiracy theory based on this guy's insecurity. Let's say Crichton did mean to use this as an attack. How did it hurt this critic guy? After all, no one would have recognized that it was him if this guy didn't go through all the trouble to come up with his "theory". Even after this guy wrote this blog post, how did this theory hurt him? Based on what you say you did, it just sounds like it was Crichton who's the casualty from this event. Lastly, I think it's stupid to stop reading an author just because of something like this. Let's say everything on that post is true. (Although it only sounds like this guy's theory) Even then this is just some childish personal behavior you can laugh over (It's not like Crichton attempted to bury this critic guy with "underhanded" tactics), it has nothing to do with his ability to write good books.

[kohanz]

I'm as big of a Crichton fan as they come, but I don't understand how someone can discover that he put this passage in his book (likely to take an underhanded shot at the critic, but if not, to what end?) and not have a lower opinion of him as a person. Either it was a really, really low insult or a pointless and gratuitous story of raping a toddler. I'm not even sure which is worse.

Amazing science fiction author, but possibly not a great person. Those can both be true.

[maxlybbert]

I've never doubted it was meant as an attack on Michael Crowley, but Crichton wasn't the first storyteller to insult a real person. From over-the-top portrayals of whoever happened to be the US president when a book or movie was written (e.g., the "difficult president" referred to in Harry Potter), to more personal attacks, there's a long history of writers trying to prove the pen is mightier than the sword. Some of the attempts end up in Literature classe, like portions of Dante's Inferno.

[kbenson]

Regardless of how rational it is, sometimes the reality surrounding a person can affect the interpretation of their work. For a while, it was hard for me to really enjoy watching Tom Cruise, even though I knew his personal life didn't really matter for my enjoyment of his performance. Eventually I got over it.

[ArkyBeagle]

I loved "State of Fear" because he overtly used the techniques of propaganda almost as a parody. Don't know why, but that was just deeply entertaining.

But I also share his concern with the politicization of science.

[aws_ls]

I read "State of Fear" about two years back. The novel (story line) was very interesting. And it convinced me for a while, that 'climate change' is over-rated and a lot of propaganda.

I remember his protagonist, scientist who is busting the myth/propaganda in the story, lives in a 900 sq ft. home. Juxtaposed against the lavish life style of those who are propagating 'climate change'.

Crichton is a writer who takes a very macro view of the timeline. Lets not forget, he wrote Jurrasic Park, and hence the entire franchise owes him that credit.

In this book, he says that this micro environmental changes, don't matter when compared to macro stuff like Ice age, which happens every some 10,000s of years.

Also he gives a lot of data in the book. For e.g. Historical temperature charts of various cities etc. to make his case of 'climate change' being over-rated & driven by ulterior motives, than substantive in itself on merits to call such a drastic action.

I am just a layman on this. But truth be told, the book did impress me at that time. Which is not a long time ago. And please understand, I am totally not a nutcase who denies science.

[jbenz]

If it makes you feel any better, I followed the exact same path. He was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid, but by the time Prey came out... yeesh.

But I still love Sphere, The Lost World, and so many more. I even love Disclosure, with its hilarious take on virtual reality file storage.

[harryh]

Airframe is pretty good too, even if the plot is eerily similar to Disclosure.

[snowwrestler]

I recently went back and reread Jurassic Park. It was still an exciting story, but Crichton's strongly negative view of science and scientists shone through brightly to me now. It's really quite shrill in parts.

[dghf]

Micro, his last novel, was utterly, truly dreadful. But it was posthumously completed by another author (Richard Preston, who wrote The Hot Zone, which I really enjoyed, in a freaked-out way), so I don't know where the blame should lie.

[Sgt_Apone]

His early stuff is excellent, but the last Crichton book that I enjoyed was Timeline. I found Prey to be disappointing and State of Fear was just about unreadable with its complete misrepresentation of climate change science.

[DanBC]

Timeline was fun, but there are much better examples of similar stories. Connie Willis's "Doomsday", "Black Out" and "All Clear" are better.

[jh3]

I remember reading Timeline and Prey in high school. They were amazing books to me at the time. I just couldn't put them down. I never cared too much about how scientifically accurate they were though. That's like complaining about the plot holes in Back to the Future. It's entertainment, so to me he did his job well.

[veidr]

Well for me (and I presume at least some other people) bad science in works ruins the entertainment value.

For example, if in an otherwise realistic military thriller, the hero finds the runway blocked by a tank, so he throws his F-16 into reverse and takes off backwards, that would completely take me out of the story, destroy the suspension of disbelief, and ruin (or at least severely degrade) the book.

Some of Crichton's books do that for me, as does almost every movie in which they use computers, and the computers are all like, bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep! whzzzzt! and sounding like R2D2 with every normal user interface action, such as scrolling text and opening windows.

[bduerst]

Prey has a great story to it, and is pretty free of any political bias.