My Beef with Crichton
Author Michael Crichton yesterday died yesterday after losing a battle with cancer, which I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I do have some gripes with the man’s art though. I enjoyed some of his early novels, especially those featuring dinosaurs. Over the last few years though, it seemed that he had an axe to grind that I was not on board with. I wrote a full length diatribe about it two years ago.
Some highlights of my lack of appreciation:
- Crichton wins a “journalism” award from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists for his fictional climate change-denying door stop State of Fear
- Crichton settles a score with a critic by making him a child rapist in his novel Next (read this article about the matter to learn the “small penis rule” of libel
- A trend piece about including a bibliography in novels includes this: Readers are often impressed with his bibliography, Mr. Crichton added. “People will often say to me, ‘Oh my goodness, look how many books you’ve read,’ ” he said.
On the plus side, I came across the completely unrelated Strunk and White Elements of Spam while searching the archives for this post.
Tags: Crichton
Authors, Books, To Checkout | Tim | 
November 6, 2008 8:05 am
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By Mike, November 6, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
Crichton definitely had some views I didn’t support. I am glad, though, that I read his early novels when I did. They got me one (very)small step away from books you can buy in airports, even though he was one of the kings of them.
The science elements gave me a tiny bit to think about when the book was over, and made me want to find books that gave me even more to think about.
By Pete, November 6, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
And don’t forget that after State of Fear came out, he was called before a Congressional committee as an “expert witness” by the GOP in a lame attempt to legitimize the sheer idiocy of global-warming denial.
By Dr J, November 6, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
Tim, you’re an environmental scientist. Can you explain why the sunrise has seemed so much brighter and the air a lot fresher throughout the entire U.S. of A. for the last two days?
By Tim, November 6, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
I don’t want to get bogged down in technical jargon, but the must compelling explanation that I’ve heard is that our collective heads have been removed from the collective rectum thereby allowing fresher air and sunlight to shine upon our collective visage. Or something like that.