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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.
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.
Well, at least one reputable news source has done so.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
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!
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 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.
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
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.
I remember reading "The Lost World" when I was a under-read, newly minted college graduate.
After four years of being required to read every crappy book ever written* in high school I was pretty much burned out on reading. (I always liked reading, ever since I was young... I even remember reading Iacocca's biography instead of whatever I was supposed to be reading at the time.) But by the time Hight School was done I was only reading car magazines and stuff like that.
The summer after my first year in college I found (literally--someone left it behind in the movie theater where I was working) a copy of Jurassic Park and I started reading it. I got sucked in right away, literally to the point of hiding it in my cash drawer and reading it at the concession stand that I was working at when it was slow. I burned through it in no time, then started reading his other stuff. I remember reading Andromeda Strain and Terminal Man early on and reading Congo and Sphere later on. (Sphere and Jurassic Park are my favorite books by him and I've read and re-read them both several times.) Then I remembered liking some Stephen King stuff that I had read in the past so I went and looked for more by him (Christine, Firestarter--his early stuff) and then I found more and more authors and I got back into reading and I've been reading steadily ever since. But I'll always remember that it was him and Jurassic Park that got me back into reading for fun. Thank you, Mr. Crichton. You will be missed.
* a couple, like Mosquito Coast, were OK, and I loved Catcher in the Rye, but overall, I hated all the selections at my HS. About 10 books a year, including 2 or 3 to read over the summer. The Guns of Navarone, On the Beach, stuff like that.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
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").
... 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
Yay for Godwin's Law!!!
Fear the penguin.
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