[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.