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Michael Crichton Dead At 66
Many readers have submitted stories about the death of Michael Crichton. The 66-year-old author of Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain died unexpectedly Tuesday "after a courageous and private battle against cancer," a press release said. In addition to writing, he also directed such sci-fi classics as Westworld and Runaway. Crichton was married five times and had one child.
Andromeda Strain was an excellent scifi movie.
I just read some sad news on Slashdot - Sci Fi writer Michael Chrichton was found dead in his Los Angeles home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
I really don't think there's consensus on whether he's actually dead or not.
Further study is required.
The 1971 version was one of my favourites as a kid... haven't seen the remake yet.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
At the risk of being modded troll or flamebait, let me be the first to say that whoever put that tag on this article is an asshole.
I'm somewhat confused by why his books spend so much time writing about science (or at least science fiction) when he appears to have been personally bent on the unscientific new-age mysticism activities. Travels talks extensively about his beliefs in fortune tellers, auras, astral planes, and spending two weeks talking to a cactus. It seems contradictory to build a career on science and not approach mysticism with a more cynical eye.
Then again, the science in Critons' books usually end up trying to kill man, so perhaps it's not his love of science that drove him to write, but rather his belief that science with have its retribution on man.
Michael Crichton was great author, but also a scientist. He was one of few people who warned about the the dangerous trend of mixing politics into science, especially in regards to global warming.
His Aliens Caused Global Warming speech is a must read.
"after a courageous and private battle against cancer,"
They never say stuff like "after capitulating to cancer like a big pussy,"
But anyway, to employ another cliche-- he will be missed. Forget Jurassic Park- I still get creeped out by the proto-Terminator robot in "Westworld". And who can forget the classic 1981 cloning/CG extravaganza, "Looker". Well, everyone.
Here's an hour-long video interview with him on Charlie Rose.
An earlier Wikipedia entry that told the truth about his death has been 'corrected'...
Michael Crichton has died on November 5, 2008 after a long, private battle with a velociraptor.
I remember reading "The Lost World" when I was a under-read, newly minted college graduate. One of the characters, Sarah Harding, had a sequence where she talked about George Schaller reading everything that had ever been written about a subject before he began field studies - and that once he got to the field, he discovered that almost everything he had read was wrong. The two ideas - of mastering a subject and of discovering new things about that subject - intrigue me to this day. I will miss his work.
I've seen the global warming killed him on other sites and similar cracks on this very site.
Much of his career he wrote very thoughtful science-based pulp fiction that was very influential to many of us. Time and again he was very skeptical of many of the uses of technology and almost universally anti-corporate and anti-military with his evil characters. He was a friend to the techno-luddite left until he wrote one damn book that dared questioned the religious-left's view of climate catastrophe and questioned the role of science propaganda used by both the left and right. Sadly damned him forever in many eyes.
For any of you folks who have only seen some of MC's movies, don't judge his storytelling ability without reading the books first. The Andromeda Strain is clearly a classic, but some of his later books like "Airframe" and "The Rising Sun" are good reads too.
I've don't know why, but for whatever reasons, Hollywood has slaughtered just about every title they tried to turn into a movie. The ~1970 Andromeda Strain is probably about the only one where they came close (including Jurassic Park).
Rest in peace, Mr. Crichton.
Stay the fuck away from the TV remake. Forgive me for beint this blunt, but it really is that bad.
The 1971 is perhaps the most accurate book-to-movie conversion i've seen. I first saw it arround 5 years ago, and it found it gripping. There was little a remake could improve over it.
For those that modded the parent "Troll": Michael Crichton's Web site seems to be down now, but he gave a speech called "Aliens Cause Global Warming" in which he claimed to debunk "consensus science." The gist was that political discussion of global warming too often invoked "scientific consensus," where he argued that science was not consensus-based and that such claims were therefore meaningless.
Similarly, though we may not have consensus that Michael Crichton is dead, it makes absolutely no difference to him.
Breakfast served all day!
Maybe his work isn't bad for reading that you don't have to think about, but the man was barely a cut above John Grisham as a fiction writer.
For a guy who had a scientific education, he always struck me as being squarely against technology and science. I know it sells books, but why do the engineers/scientists always have to be portrayed as being arrogant and irresponsible? Surely there is some good that can come out of genetic engineering, nanotechnology, outsourcing, etc...??
I expected it to end with ...There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I found the book Andromeda Strain entertaining, it was something that was easy reading and there was a puzzle to unravel. Then I reached the end of the book and thought, "That's it?". Usually the protagonists are somewhat involved in the solution to the problem.
A Giant Has Passed
Now, there's no need to poke fun at his height.
At least of modern times, anyway. He was writing "techno-thrillers" before critics coined the term for Tom Clancy... he gave incredibly descriptive narratives about telecom technology in Congo, years before Clancy wrote The Hunt For Red October. Like many great genre authors, he could also write outside his genre... see Eaters of the Dead and The Great Train Robbery. I was completely unaware of his battle with cancer, and news of his death made an already rotten day worse.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
This post by the founder of the Mac tips website, macosxhints.com, states that Crichton was an early donor to the site. Although I didn't care for every one of his books, I was certainly a fan of his body of work and I find it very cool that he donated to a website that collects technical tips for Mac fans.
Don't feed the trolls. Let them be modded down without any replies. Thanks.
If you haven't read Travels, you're missing a fascinating autobiography and vicarious insight into what it was like to be a young man in the 1970's. Crichton documents his search for the meaning of life among every New Age craze and pursuit of that decade, intermixed with stories of his many bedroom conquests. It will lead the religious reader to conclude that he was looking in the wrong place, but the secular reader will realize that his search never ends -- the hallmark of a true scientist.
Then again, there's the part about the bedroom conquests.
I personally found Crichton's work to be shallow. It was not much more than a film script fleshed out with a few more articles and conjunctions. The characters were wooden and a bit too one-dimensional. His vehement rejection of global warming pretty much showed his analytical skills were out of whack too. Not such a big thing except that he bought the political lines spun to deny global warming. The movies made from his books will, in my opinion, really only be remembered for their special effects and the inclusion of the "one novel idea" that he could inject into it. Proof: Sphere.
Listen to parent, the tv remake was one of the most retarded things I've ever seen. For example, the whole multilevel decontamination procedure was replaced by what looked like a rave party with everyone dancing through foam with lights strobing.
It was hard to escape the conclusion that Crichton was a guy who would believe literally anything anyone told him. That's one reason I was somewhat surprised to see him arguing in favor of more objective thinking in the global-warming debate.
It's not so much that Crichton believed anything people told him so much as he didn't believe in science. While his science themed books show a great interest in reading about science, the conclusion is always that Science is Wrong and Scientists are Evil or Recklessly Stupid. The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Prey are all about the futility of trying to contain living things. In Next, the drug that saves his brother makes him age and die early. State of Fear is no different, really. It's more strident than the rest of his books about how scientists are all arrogant fools who will destroy the world, but it really matches the theme of the rest of his work.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The Terminal Man was interesting reading. Many of the ideas in it are starting to poke onto the feasability horizon now.
(anyone else want to get electrodes wired into their brain?) ...
(would you reconsider if it made your response time quicker in an FPS?)
-ellie
... one of the first full-length books I read was The Andromeda Strain.
Later, I read the condensed version of The Terminal Man, and remembered (and loved) the line where a doctor explains to a policeman that the subject had a radioactive battery, making him a possible contamination threat. The policeman's response was "Alpha or beta particle emitter?" When the doctor looks surprised, he adds, "I went to college. I can even read and write."
That was where I learned that even cops could have the geek nature.
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
just make all of the clones of michael crichton you create female so they can't breed. of course, this approach ignores the possibility of spontaneous hermaphroditism or parthenogenic reproduction in a given population of unmonitored feral michael crichtons on say a large remote tropical island
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Divorced twice: you make bad choices.
Divorced three times: you're a ... challenge to get along with.
Divorced four times: you're a colossal dick.
Just some observations I've made about human nature throughout the years.
...all we have to do is combine his DNA with some amphibian genes and resurrect him.
Yep really REALLY bad. The 1971 had a "countdown to extinction" feel that really gave it a sense of danger. And the ending on the remake was so damned lame it'll make you want to pull an Elvis on the TV. The only remake I can say was worse was Salem's Lot. Rutger freaking Hauer as the damned master vampire? WTF??? IMHO if you want to watch Andromeda watch the original and pretend the remake never existed. Trust me you'll be better off having never saw it.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yay for Godwin's Law!!!
Fear the penguin.
4th November
Scientists create new life mouse frozen 16 YEARS
5th November
Author Michael Crichton dies, 66
[Intentionally left blank]
Well, yes, it was a faithful transcript of the book. But the book was as boring as bat shit, and the movie was worse.
Notice how most of the posts mocking, belittling and having fun with the man's death are coming from the "How dare he question Global Warming" crowd.
State of Fear had hundreds of footnotes referencing the 3rd IPCC and actual scientific studies from actual scientists.
Regardless your view on Global Warming, he has a valid point in the book:
*Enviornmentalists feed on fear.
*The media feeds on fear.
*Politicians feed on fear.
Results in
*Echo chamber effect.
It's hard to get elected saying or to get a story on the news about how: "The sky is NOT falling, or not falling that fast, or it's not our fault that it's falling".
Apparently that is all it takes to get the altruistic, gentle Green movement dancing on your grave.
...does everyone just mention Jurassic Part, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain? He wrote other great books, such as Eaters of the Dead, The Great Train Robbery, and Timeline! I'll admit, though, that Next did suck.
I tried to walk into Target, but I missed. --Mitch Hedburg
Michael Crichton used to write articles for computer magazines. I remember reading one where he talked about the timing how long it took you to type your name and password to determine if it was really you.
http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/index/index.php?author=Michael+Crichton
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
So Crichton isn't Hemingway. Big deal. He wrote enjoyable books, for the most part, and did so for decades. He wrote stories that kept you thinking about them after you put the book down, even if they had flaws.
Books, like movies and even food, don't have to be "art" to be worthwhile and worthy of some respect.
As a (hack) writer myself I have much respect for authors like Crichton, (old) King, and even Dean Koontz. Their works won't be taught in school, but they sweep you away for a few hours, and get under your skin. And for me anyway, they make me want to write a book myself.* They make it look easy, in the way only real talent can.
Compare Crichton to a real hack like Robin Cook. Ugh!
I will be lifting a glass in his memory tonight, and I rarely drink. The world's a poorer place without him and his tales of Science Run Amok.
* Not that I have written a book lately because hey, I am lazy, but that's another story.