[jambalaya8]

Crichton was frighteningly good as a prognosticator and futurist. Certainly for a writer with a medical degree. He fought the good fight, trying to inculcate caution. Most of his books (even from the seventies) hold up surprisingly well until the early 2000s. They got a bit weird by 2006. But then so did our ideas of future tech.

[10729287]

He even wrote a non fictional book on Personal Computers back in 1983 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Life

[toast0]

All the cool kids were writing those.

https://archive.org/details/herbert-barnard-1980-without-me-...

[msh]

On the other hand he also did a ‘climate change is fake’ book (state of fear).

[ablation]

That was a really, really bad book. By that time it feels like he was a shadow of his former page-turning self.

[jambalaya8]

yeah, not one of his best. not his worst, but not great.

[flumes_whims_]

Gell-Mann Amnesia? Interestingly enough, the term was coined by Crichton.

[yoyohello13]

It was kind of scary how prescient Jurassic Park was. Just swap genetics for AI and his warnings are incredibly applicable to modern times.

[MrToadMan]

Much like his earlier work Westworld which was also scarily prescient for modern times.

> These are highly complicated pieces of equipment. Almost as complicated as living organisms. In some cases, they have been designed by other computers. We don't know exactly how they work.

[ricardobeat]

That’s an amazing connection, had no idea they were written by the same person but the underlying theme is pretty consistent.

[criticas]

or The Andromeda Strain. I was on the edge of my seat for the last half of the movie as a 10 year old when it came out. The book still holds up as a medical mystery - thriller and warning of unintended consequences.

[anthk]

Dolly, the cloned sheep. That was huge in the news.

[avadodin]

One of the greatest "bad" writers. On my top ten.