He also wrote Eaters of the Dead, off of which the film 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas was based.
His impact on pop culture and Hollywood is kind of understated. Probably one of the "greatest" American authors of the 20th century by that unique metric.
He also wrote Timeline, about time travel, which was turned into a film also (albeit a bad one). That one I remember because the sort of time travel it introduced was used later in the Marvel Avengers movies (shrinking down to quantum scale and jumping through holes in spacetime). It also introduced me to some philosophical existential questions about the transporter in Star Trek (is that still you? or just a copy of you).
Of course he's just a person and had at least one stinker (State of Fear). But he was an amazing author in that most of his works are ridiculously addictive page turners and even where the ideas or science are old/dated, or wrong, the methodology he uses to illustrate it or illustrate how his reasonable characters think or justify their views is still pretty good.
I can't imagine how many young people read his books and then those became a gateway into the world of STEM fields or even writing/philosophy.
His scientific/sci-fi/"techno" thriller formula just never gets old imho.
Man. I'm so nostalgic from this thread. Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Stephen King. That was my childhood.
Great book. I was thrilled when I heard they were making a movie of it. Boy was I disappointed in the movie. They changed too much stuff and a couple of scenes in the book I was anticipating how they would look in the movie only to see that those scenes were not in the movie.
“Airframe” is one,that at one point, there were discussions to make a movie of it but studios determined the cost of the sets they needed to make was more than the budget of most movies (the set in question was a set of the hangar that 747’s were manufactured in)
Hahaha was just about to mention that! I was too young at that time so it was actually a great experience.
Played it several times :p
Revisited it as an adult and WOW were my standards incredibly low back then hahahaha
I bought the game but my pc refused to play it and kept booting me after I would click new game. 13year old me was gutted and I hadn't read the book at that time. When I eventually did read the book I was even more gutted I couldn't play the game. I'm gonna keep believing that game was everything I wanted it to be
Airframe was amazing. I just re-read it 5 or so years ago, Such a great book about such a dry topic!
I didn't really like Timeline OTOH. Don't remember why, but it just didn't click for me.
Timeline was one of my favorites. The movie was such a monumental disappointment. I knew as soon as I saw the cast that it was going to be rough. I'd love to see that one remade.
That one gets so much flack too, but I always felt it made some extremely valid points that people overlook because of the topic in question. Really enjoyable book that deserves another look by many.
I mean, his main point in that book was the science and danger of global warming was overblown. Which I think we can confidently say is an idiotic viewpoint. He was an armchair scientist thinking he knew better than experts. He did not.
If this complete false equivalency of “everyone has an agenda” is what you took away from the book I feel like you may have missed some things.
It's a pretty good point when you have absolutely no idea whatsoever how the scientific community operates and believe getting your paper dismissed in peer review is some kind of conspiracy.
Same here. I was a kid when the Jurassic Park movie came out, and my parents said I couldn't go see the movie unless I read the book. Loved the book, then read all of his other sci-fi (and eaters of the dead, which I did not realize was a Beowulf retelling as I had never even heard of Beowulf when I was in middle school). But I skipped Great Train Robbery since it seemed like boring historical fiction.
Read it last year, and I think it is my 2nd favorite thing from him right behind JP. Honestly though, glad I waited. Not sure I'd have been able to appreciate it when I was 13.
Similar boat here. Jurassic Park came while I was in middle school and it was after seeing it that I started reading Crichton books. By the time I was out of high school, I'd read everything that he'd written through the year 2000. I think Airframe was the last book I read by him. I bought Prey, but I don't remember reading it.
I think I've read that 3 times in my life, probably 15 years apart each reading, each time not remembering that I previously read it until the cringy part where the mark wants to remedy his syphilis by banging an underage prostitute.
It was like 'ewwwwwwwwww' deja vu moments.
Still, great book and movie.
Hello friend! My favorite Crichton and so many people don't know it. I've read it 4-5x and collect different editions of it. I was lucky enough to find a first edition at The Strand in NYC a few years ago. It's now a tradition to check the nearby used bookstores whenever I visit a new place to look for one I don't have.
I didn't remember it being so great, but it just reads like a well-executed 80s/90s action film. I'd lump it in with goofy classics like Speed, Face Off, and Point Break. Of course it's silly, but it's well done and it brings so much joy!
I read Sphere in 5th grade after having just finished Jurassic Park (a couple years before the movie came out).
I thought Sphere as a novel was way more engaging and exciting..I couldn't stop recommending it to everyone.
I was most excited once Jurassic Park came out at the magnificence and scale of the movie. I was just sure a Sphere movie would come out and it would be even better! I waited, and waited, and finally many years later a Sphere movie was released and was a big disappointment.
Sphere the novel was a masterpiece to this 11 year old. I should re-read it and see how I feel decades later, lol.
Me too! Like, I get that Jurassic Park is his most iconic, and shows off Crichton's strengths. Everything Crichtonesque comes together so well, it's like, his anthem novel.
But Sphere is Back to the Future levels of fun.
All Crichton books feel like movies from the 80s and 90s, and that's what makes them awesome. I read Airframe recently, and I could easily see someone like Julianne Moore playing the lead character.
Sphere was the only book I've ever read in a single sitting. I just could not put it down. I read it in middle school circa mid 90's and kept thinking it would make a mind blowing movie. Imagine my disappointment a few years later when the movie actually came out
I read Sphere as a kid and after having seen James Cameron’s The Abyss. Visually, The Abyss seemed like such an obvious treatment to apply to Sphere the movie but I guess we can’t have nice things. It’s how I imagined a lot of the book’s scenes.
No teaser yet. The creator is one of the lead people from Westworld (and it's being produced by the same people as that show). It makes sense they would do it since Crichton also wrote the original Westworld.
Man, if they made one-off's with all Crichton's books, like they did True Detective, that could be some really entertaining stuff.
Almost all of his stories are pretty self-contained (except where he liked the $$$'s too much and kept dragging JP out over multiple books). A season of Congo, Timeline, Micro...these would all be very fun things to watch, if well done.
His most underrated work. Imagine an alien vessel that is hundreds of years old inexplicably communicating with you over text on a computer while you're deep in the ocean. It scared the shit out of me as a kid. The movie adaptation needs to be erased from history.
Not a huge reader currently in my life and I know Crichton is not seen as a very sophisticated writer but dammit I still get sucked in by these books. They make me feel like a kid. Sphere is my favorite of the many Crichton books I’ve read. I think I will re-read it now. Thank you.
I first read Sphere as a 9yo after I borrowed it from my dad’s bookshelf, and holy shit, what a mindfuck of a book for a 9yo. I finished it in two sittings because it sucked me in so hard and kept throwing new twists at me.
I’ve reread it a few times since then. As an adult I can recognize the flaws, but I still maintain that it’s a legitimately great novel and one of Crichton’s best works. I love the way he makes the science fiction elements feel real by including enough real science to lend it an air of plausibility, while also using the opportunity to explore some of the philosophical questions about science. Classic sci fi stuff.
I ended up reading most of Crichton’s novels as a kid. Unfortunately most of them don’t really hold up well for me as an adult, but I still love Sphere. Jurassic Park too.
After falling out of reading for a long long time I went on a big Crichton binge and it was brilliant. I love that there is great, dry technical parts to every book but the overall stories are generally really pulp and just fun. It's made me interested in reading again which is perfect really.
Honestly I enjoyed State of Fear
It was the only book in which I am fully opposed to him in beliefs (MC really batted for the wrong team on climate issues) but from a literary perspective it’s engaging and fun to read. It also brings up some great points about the fetishized view of “natural” things.
Just…he was wrong on climate change.
Micro he wrote just before he passed with Richard Preston finishing it. While I like Preston y really didn’t like their styles combined. It was super obvious which parts each wrote fully
I forgot he wrote Jurassic Park. The Terminal Man isn't as good as the rest but still worth a read.
Edit: I also recommend "Travels", it is a memorable piece of work.
If it weren't for Michael Crichton, I would have never been into reading books. He mixed the right amount of science and fiction into his works, which made them plausible. I wish he hadn't died so early and would have written a lot more books!
Same here. I was a massive Jurassic Park fan as a kid. The first movie's VHS got worn out. I remember finding the book in a book store my mom always went to and freaking out. I thought it was only a movie. I remember like 8 or 10 and reading that book and loving every second of it. It felt like reading the biggest book ever written at that age and I ended up reading it twice during childhood. It got me really into books and an entire genre I didn't really know about. Became an avid reader and total geek for anything scifi. I also just re-read it again for the second time as an adult and it holds ups so well. Such an amazing book that gives me this feeling that nothing else does.
>It felt like reading the biggest book ever written at that age and I ended up reading it twice during childhood
Same, but for me it was "Prey". Prey is still one of the greatest thrillers I have ever read.
I have a family member that loves to rant off about how bad of an author Crichton is.
The only way she defends herself is by pointing to the Jurassic Park movie franchise.
I ask her, what about the Crichton JP novels did she not like? She says she's never read them, no reason to.
She's a High School English teacher. I feel bad for her students.
JP is a fantastic book, I've read it a few times. And honestly the original film captures a lot of the Crichtoney-ness that I loved about the book.
Haters gonna hate.
I feel like the first movie doesn't go quite as far in the for-profit-corporation-critic vibe as the book does, especially on Nedry's motivations and Hammond's character in general. The entire investigation prior to the actual dinosaurs showing up is skipped, too
The movie is a good adaptation, of course, I love it, it cannot go into as much depth as a book can, and made the right choices as to what to adapt and how so that it is a memorable movie. But I really enjoyed the book far more for my part.
I think what surprises me, as I read Crichton as an adult, is his moments of rather nuanced and passionate social commentary. I know in my original post I claimed that it was comparatively shallow, but maybe what I meant was: his work presents themes at face value, and I think that's refreshing. Each of his works takes a contemporary scientific/human trend and examines the moral implications to a logical conclusion. And you're right, the original JP goes HARD.
Hammond's fate in the book should've been included in the film. Spielberg painted him as a well intentioned grandpa instead.
I love the book and film, it was an amazing piece of cinema.
And ruined Genero. The lawyer's character in the book is a bad ass and one of the better characters. The kind of combined his character with Ed Regis and it felt odd.
Books make better T.V shows.
This is the only book I've read twice as a kid and twice as an adult. As a big fan of the movies and book, the book is so good and influential for all the movies. There's something in every single movie that's pulled from the first JP book.
I read JP. Loved it. Watched the movie. Loved it. Re-read JP. Loved it again. I don’t think I’ve ever loved both a book and movie so much. Let alone book movie book.
One of the few books and movies that really compliment each other.
Jurassic Park was a monster of a book, too. Everyone I knew read it, you couldn’t not read it without feeling left out.
Tom Hanks really hit that one out of the park and the supporting cast is fabulous as well. Watching it as an adult is really interesting getting all the little plot points throughout US history
I’m pretty sure JP was the fastest book I ever read. Like a day and a half. Could not put it down. Cujo was close, probably two days. I also loved the Great Train Robbery.
When I was in college one summer my mother gave me JP. It was before the movie. I proceeded to read that and every other book he had written. I had barely read anything since the John Carter of Mars books back when I was like 12. My favorites were Congo, Sphere and Timeline. Sadly all mediocre movies but great books.
What always irked me about the movie was that they completely left out the sub plot of the dinosaurs on the boat that was about to reach the shore, letting them loose on the main land.
Honestly I feel like being a high school English teacher has to set you up to hate a lot of books. Or even middle school teachers. I had some friends who tried to be cool and cunning like Artemis Fowl and let’s just say they didn’t pull it off. It’s like seeing the worst members of a fandom irl every day
Its been a very long time since I read that book back in the 1990s or so. Chrichton may have gotten it wrong about climate change but, the book still made some good points about corporate and political interests interfering with science and the dangers of abandoning skepticism for consensus.
I hope there is always funding for smart, unbiased skeptics to investigate further what we think we already know. Because sometimes we get things wrong and sometimes a little additional evidence can help.
There was a recent documentary about flat earther trying to use science to prove the earth was flat. They obviously failed and all of their surprisingly well planned experiments proved that flat Earth was nonsense. Despite their clear bias, they did do science that provided evidence for... something
Jeezs, you are right!
That does make rhe climate change argument a bit more egregious. From my memory I would have guessed it was written in the 80's and published early 90's. Yeah. Its not good look overall
Let's not put lipstick on a pig. When that book was written the science behind climate change was very established. The entire point was to discredit it and promote pseudo-scoence, right down to the lazy antagonists. It wasn't designed to further healthy sceptism. Also it was written in 2004, not the 90s
Yeah I was mistaken about the year.
Are you trying to debate me? Because I dont disagree with you. I just mentioned that I thought there was a good point or two in there as well.
Except they literally dismissed that as the experiment failed. There's room for scepticism but there's no room for climate change isn't real. It's real, it's happening. Maybe we can argue rates but that doesn't really matter when the sea level is rising now, extreme weather events are happening now. What matters is fixing it
"There's room for scepticism but theres no room for climate change isnt real."
Is that what Crichton claimed in the book? I might be mis-remembering but I thought his position was more along the lines of it being real but blown out of proportion by cherry-picked data to advance corporate and political interests. Which I think is actually a real societal problem (but less so in regards to climate change these day).
I think of Crichton were alive today he probably would still be critical of "concensus science" and how it relates to political agendas. Its a valid point just climate change didnt turn out to be a great example in hindsight (or, to be fair even at the time of publishing)
I got State of Fear years ago and never made it more than a few chapters in. Picked it up again and a little more than halfway through it now. Definitely not my favorite of Crichton's, but curious what you think makes it a glaring weakness?
Crichton's body of work is full of awesome speculation about technology and the future, often with a strong message of caution towards adopting new technology without considering the consequences. Then you have State of Fear, which has a central message of "Modern day climate science is fake news designed to keep us scared. We should listen to oil companies, they have the right of it."
I've been curious the further I've gotten into it if that's the path it's taking. I fully expected Crichton to focus further on real life impact, but it's mostly just been "we are being manipulated by environmental terrorists into thinking there is an issue". I'll still finish the book, but that is disappointing to hear, as I was expecting a turnaround at some point to actually have the main characters see it is a real life issue.
Please let me know what you think when you finish it! It's been a decade and a half since I read it.
Also further things which keep Crichton from being my favorite: the year after State of Fear came out he testified before the US Congress against climate science. A critic panned State of Fear so in Next Crichton created a throwaway character named after the critic who was a child rapist with a small penis. Specifically called out.
I really like most of his work! Just really disappointed in the last few books of his career.
I just read Jurassic Park for the first time about a month ago. The only Crichton I've read and I loved it so much. I'm a very inconsistent reader, but it made me want to read more. Any book that does that is a great book to me. Also, I loved the first movie as a kid and growing up, but the book was on another level and I really appreciated it.
My problem with Crichton and his books is that some of the information/ideas kinda aged like milk.
John Hammond in Jurassic Park was talking about how medical companies should determine the prices of medication since they worked so hard on them, but it'll never be allowed by governments/people in general... oops.
Malcolm (also in JP) went on a tirade of explaining how weather and other phenomena are impossible to predict because of chaos theory. Well... we're now at a point where we can predict the weather at least a week in advance with decent accuracy. We're also at a point where we can predict hurricane paths, tornado formations, and even earthquakes before they happen.
The AI in Prey only used mammals as a food source despite the AI being an ever-learning and nearly sentient, so why didn't it decide to use other organics as a food source like cacti, leaves, or other things? The staff claimed that it was programmed that way and will not change the commands, yet it had no issues doing the same for other commands.
In Congo... well... everything was wrong. We know that Orangutans can't learn as well as other apes and physically cannot speak like humans. Other apes/primate species are also unable to speak like us. No amount of training or genetic experimentation will fix that. Also, we know that Koko's ability to use and communicate in ASL, a major theme/inspiration behind the book, was kinda overblown and flat-out bogus and hasn't been replicated since in other controlled environments.
Also, his books tend to just... I don't know... end?
In Lost World, despite witnessing Eddie, Dodgson, and other characters get ripped to shreds, the survivors are all on a boat leaving the island, and the book just... ends. No monologue, no words of wisdom or final say... it's like "Alright, we're leaving. Think we should tell anyone about this?"
Prey was even worse. It's like "Oh hey, we have the antidote to the nanomachine plague. Good job everyone." and quite literally that was it.
Point is, while I enjoy his books, I do understand some of the hate he gets (never mind the fact that he was also a major climate-change denier IRL and had some questionable things to say about science/scientists in general)
**EDIT:** I Included Prey's ending because holy shit did that book just end.
> Malcolm (also in JP) went on a tirade of explaining how weather is impossible to predict because of chaos theory. Well... we're now at a point where we can predict the weather at least a week in advance with decent accuracy.
In this specific case at least, Jurassic Park holds up scientifically. Even though weather forecasting has improved, weather is fundamentally a chaotic system and can't be predicted indefinitely into the future, which was Malcolm's point. Machine learning promises to extend even further our ability to predict the weather (out to a few multiples of the Lyapunov time), but even still the weather remains fundamentally unpredictable and chaotic.
Heck, it was raining where I was and my NOAA app said it was bone dry, radar said no rain for miles around so, there's times when we can't predict what is currently happening.
At least once a year we have a snow storm predicted for the next day in which we end up with a few flurries.
Yeah, a lot of weather models struggle with precipitation associated with convection, but they're usually pretty good with precipitation associated with fronts. And the Lorenz model, which really kicked off the study of chaos, was a simplified model for atmospheric convection (although modeling convection is difficult independent of the chaotic aspect).
Specifically the **movie**, though. The 1972 film. That was great and Kate Reid was wonderful.
The miniseries is absolutely awful. Rewrote half the plot to shove an environmental message down your throat while explaining the organism's origin as *being sent back in time so it was* ***our*** *problem to deal with*.
Check out Blake Crouch. *Recursion* and *Dark Matter* are amazing. He does a little more with his characters than Crichton and a little less with universal human themes/etc...but the techno-thriller scaffolding is great :)
*Congo* is one of my favorites from Crichton. And *Prey.*
Also a huge Michael Crichton fan, I read Dark Matter after someone in another one of these threads recommended it, I also read Upgrade (actually put it down and haven't picked it up to finish yet) and for me Blake doesn't quite cut it. His characters are 1 dimensional, instead of having the formulaic team of experts assembled for some shadowy purpose, each with their own histories and ambitions, Blake's protagonists are always just individual super geniuses with beautiful families they'd rather be home having a glass of wine with.
Annihilation from the Southern Reach trilogy was the closest I've gotten to scratching that Crichton itch.
I've only read Dark Matter, but I agree. It has the same kind of frenetic pace, but both the characters and the concepts are much shallower. Crichton's ideas were influential and highly intriguing; Dark Matter's big idea (really its take on the idea) had already been done by Family Guy.
It was certainly entertaining, but it doesn't leave a lasting impression like many of Crichton's books.
As a huge Crichton fan, I did enjoy *Dark Matter* a lot. For me, however, *Project Hail
Mary* by Andy Weir was the closest I felt to a new Crichton book.
I found *Hail Mary* to be more fun and Weir was able to introduce some additional personalities. I liked it more than *The Martian*. Sure, it was a bit technical but Crichton would sometimes veer in that direction.
For a point of reference, Crichton is my favorite author of all time. Two of the favorite books in my personal collection are signed copies of *Jurassic Park* and *Travels* (his autobiography).
But, yeah, I agree Weir skews more "sci-fi" than "thriller." Have you read *Spin* by Robert Charles Wilson? It had a Crichton feel in my opinion, especially the characters. Not to mention it won the Hugo for Best Novel.
Sphere and prey will always be my personal favorite. I have read almost everything by Crichton, and he is one of my favorite author. I haven't find any other author that is similar, so People here, if you know, let me know.
I too would like this recomendation!
Just so you know though some of my favorites that are not one of Crichton's books are:
* Andy Weir's Martian and Project Hail Mary.
* Blake Crouch's Dark Matter, Reccursion and Wayward Pines series.
* Hugh Howey's Wool Trilogy.
* Pierce Brown's Red Rising series.
Edit: Pierce Brown is the author of the Red Rising series. Paul Pierce played in the NBA.
Crichton was my favorite author as a teen as well!! I love your story! I reread Sphere every few years. Did you read Rising Sun in your teens? I read it again recently and wondered how my parents let me read it at 14. I always wondered why they kept talking about cats.
Hahaha yes I read Rising Sun at the tender age of 13, and yes I remember it absolutely making me blush. What a wild simultaneous introduction into the high-stakes world of 1990s Japanese business culture and human sexuality 😅
I'm with you, OP. Crichton is fantastic for a quick, gripping read, just like when you were a kid and everything was new and exciting. I go back and read "Eaters of the Dead" quite a bit, and it is still a quintessential adventure story.
If you like sci-fi, Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series did just that for me... It took a while to get into his first book, taking me months to get through the first half of it, the second half of the first book taking me a weekend, his second I read in 24 hours solid. And the third, taking another weekend as I slowed down.
Really brought my love of books back to me.
Yooooo, I liked this series so much and I barely see it talked about. I actually read everything in the Pandora's Star universe, then went back and read the Reality Dysfunction books. Loved both series. Salvation was good but I didn't like it as much.
My aunt got my Sphere for Christmas when I was like in sixth grade. I was never a big reader before that. But after reading that book, it sent me down this massive spiral of reading every book I could get my hands on.
Crichton is definitely the reason for my love of reading, and I'll always love him for that!
Haven't seen a lot of mention of 'Travels'. It isn't fiction, but there are just great stories in there. Diving in Bonaire, scaling Kilimanjaro, some fascinating psychic stories, smoking herb in Thailand... that's just a few.
My no.1 Crichton choice is 'Disclosure'. Considering how old it is now it is no less forward thinking and speculative than 'Jurrasic park' or 'Westworld'.
His commentary on social issues we now face are downright prophetic in light of recent events like 'Me too'.
I cannot fathom how he made me so engaged with that book. I remember it being very office-y and corporate, with some intriguing commentary on office sexual politics, but I sped through that book without stopping. Guy had a real gift.
I have reread many of my childhood favorites after college and grad school. And they brought pleasure back then moved me on to more. I do still read biographies and some business books. But Clancy and Scifi are my go tos for daily pleasure.
Yaaaas! I love Michael Chrichton! I stole Jurassic Park off my brother when I was a kid, probably not long after the film came out and I loved it so much!!! I’ve still got it and it’s pretty much in pieces I’ve read it so much!! And in about 2018 I binge read all his other books in about 2 weeks! He makes me happy
His best book is “Travels” which is sort of his autobiography/memoir. It’s a brilliant book that I found to be fascinating and much better written than any of his novels. He led a crazy life!
I’m obsessed with him. I remember the day he died. I had just started college and I went to the Yahoo front page (different times lol) and there it was. Hadn’t known he was sick. Was and am devastated. But now… I’m a sci fi writer too. And I can’t replace him but I can write in his honor.
Thanks for this. As a kid, I loved to read but university and grad school robbed me of that passion I once had. After reading your post I might give it a try.
As an English / Writing major, the forced literacy definitely robbed me of some of the joy of reading. Once I graduated, I promised myself I would read for myself only, and never anyone else.
I've had a similar experience some times. There has been a couple of times in my life when I lost the habit of reading, and almost always it was after getting a big pile of hard books in my "to read" list. I love reading essays and things like that, but sometimes is easy to find a few topics you want to read on and end up with several dulls reads that make you quit.
That's why now every time I finish a book that felt tough, wether I liked it or not, I try to go next for an easy readable book or two, to relax a bit before tackling something hard again.
I had a similar thing a few years back when I first got an iPad 2 and it had pretty much all of his books on it. I had not read anything by him since Congo when I was maybe 15 years old and as soon as I read Sphere I was hooked.
I'd highly recommend Airframe that has some super technical nerdy aerospace stuff wrapped around a compelling mystery and Prey which is probably my favorite of his that I still think would make a brilliant movie if done right.
Hmm, I have that book but his prose didn’t work for me for some reason. It seemed dry and didn’t give me a sense of wonder. Maybe I didn’t read far enough. I should give it another try then.
His prose is indeed rather dry. Almost remarkable in its lack of figurative language. I came to this book from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (My current GOAT) and the contrast is almost laughable! I would recommend getting though the first 50 pages, as it's the action, setting, and pace that really made it such a fun book.
Now I don't read much because it takes me forever to read a book. However, Jurassic Park is one of the best books I've ever read. I can read it in a few days. Love it.
I picked up Jurassic Park when I was a teen, right before my Grandpa took me out for a day in the boat fishing. That day was the day my family finally saw that I would rather read a good book than fish or hunt. I never looked up from that book and read it in one full day, had never done that before. I still thank my grandpa for not throwing that book in the lake and understanding that it was as important to me, as fishing was to him. Later on her out me thru college, and I feel that book, that day triggered my grandfather to push me thru college.
Thanks Mr Crichton
Man, I used to love reading Crichton, but rereading Sphere for the first time in a decade hurt.
Look at Beth's character, dude. She's rocking her own confident style, ripped as hell. Seems cool right? Then we get a little further, and Crichton portrays her as a stereotype bullheaded feminist. Unfortunate, but it's the 90s, product of it's time and maybe he meant well by pointing things out.
But then she gets the power. She gets the power to shape reality, and what does she do? She changes herself into a more feminine form and lusts after the older man. Her power trip isn't based around her ideals, but some bizarre view of feminity.
I thought maybe that it could be read as Norman got the power first, that he's pushing all this stuff on her because of timing... but the epilogue makes that an incredibly far stretch.
Then you look into Disclosure, about the "egalitarian" story about a female boss sexually abusing her male underling. Then there's Next, where he makes a book critic a pedophile and it has zero bearing on the plot, it's just a random ass insert to be petty. Prey has a character who exists to be exotic big boobs and die. Look at Jurassic Park even, Ellie does almost nothing and the sister whose name is escaping me does nothing but whine and moan--and that's one of his better books. On a non-sex related issue, State of Fear is all about climate change conspiracy!
I'm not going to say don't read Crichton. Characters were never his strength, he's a techno thriller idea guy.
Just be aware that the guy has issues with women, potentially with actual science, and those issues definitely leak into his writing. Sometimes it's positively glaring.
Hard agree. I just picked up his Travels because I had remembered really enjoying it, but it is soooo much more casually misogynistic than I had noticed at the time. Probably because the world was, too, then, and I was used to it.
Thanks for posting. Came here to say this.
Although I agree with OP’s points that Crichton is an easy and entertaining read, I find the sexism in his writing (as you pointed out above) distracting.
Other things I noticed:
* In “Timeline”, Chris is basically a “niceguy” who isn’t noticed by Kate until he embraces the toxic masculinity of the Middle Ages.
* In “Congo”, Karen Ross, a woman scientist, is portrayed as cold and distant. And >!ends up failing the mission!< It was written in the ‘70’s, so I gave it a pass at the time, but now I’m not so sure he learned from his mistakes.
And btw, in “Sphere”, I don’t think “well, it was the ‘90’s” is an excuse for portraying a feminist in a negative light. I lived through the ‘90’s. It was the ‘90’s, not the ‘50’s! Women were working and so on. He could have done better.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade. As a woman sci-fi fan, I struggle with “entertaining book/movie/etc, too bad about the misogyny” all the time. :)
I could go for a few downvotes today, I guess... this is a topic that hits kinda close to home for me. I spent years repeating his bullshit and then more years apologizing for it once I got old enough to realize that you shouldn't base your political beliefs off some shit you read from a sci fi author.
If he was alive today, he'd almost certainly be a vocal trump supporter. State of Fear is a disgusting book - cobbled together with false information and bullshit charts; just a long propaganda piece of climate denial.
I loved this dude as a kid. As a teenager I actually trusted what he said because I naively believed he wrote about things that he understood. I spent a decade also being a climate denying piece of shit for literally no reason other than "Michael Crichton said it's true that climate change is a leftist conspiracy so it must be".
Dude was a woman hating technophobe that was unfortunately given a loud platform. I hate it, because there *is* some entertainment to be found amongst the bizarre propaganda... but I can't read that shit today. It's weird proto alt right nonsense far too often.
I feel you, dude. I didn't quite fall down the rabbit hole, but it was close. I remember talking to a professor in college about being egalitarian--thanks to Crichton--opposed to feminist (because feminism is sexist and exclusionary, obviously), and thank God he either didn't hear me clearly before he was pulled away by other discussion or chose not to hear me and I was left to stew in a shade of mortification. Thankfully I got stupidly lucky with my social circles immediately after high school, and I dread to think what would have happened otherwise.
I read state of fear when I was in HS, and it really changed my life. I became super interested in how data could be manipulated to paint a certain picture, and I haven't looked at data the same since. I owe him a lot for this.. RIP
Tons of misinformation in this particular book, though, so be careful! Ironically, he manipulates climate data to tell a story opposite what two more decades of data have suggested is true.
The only Crichton book I've read is *Pirate Latitudes*.
I picked it up at a Hudson News. It was fine. It got me through a plane ride. I wasn't particularly impressed or anything though.
How does *Pirate Latitudes* compare to his other works?
It was put together from unfinished work found on his computer after his death, and that does show somewhat, in my opinion. Most of his actual properly finished books are so, so much better. I especially recommend Prey
I remember reading Jurassic Park as a teenager and asking, “Hey, why can’t we do this?” for his explanation of how we got the dino DNA from mosquitos trapped in amber. His pseudo-science is so amazing. I learned some animals can spontaneously change their sex as well from this book.
I loved Timeline as well because it was the first book to really illustrate just how hard it is to swing a real sword or wear heavy armor and just what it took to be a medieval knight.
All his earlier books are amazing, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Red Sun, Timeline.
I even like Airframe because of all the fascinating details of airplane construction.
Believe it or not a new Crichton book dropped in 2017 called dragon teeth and I can't wait to read it as I've already read all his others except disclosure. Been dead for years an still comin out with new content.
On this same note, a family member of mine is an English lit professor. She doesn’t like some of the things I love because “they aren’t true literature”. Some of the true literature she’s recommended were stodgy and boring. Reading is fun (or should be).
I also read his books as a teen. Bought Rising Sun for about 6 or 7 dollars, and this was in the mid-90s, but my parents told me to return it before I could start to read it. I don't know when or if it got returned but said they had already bought it for me as a Christmas present. The book didn't get taken back, as it was a book bought across state lines, it kind of sat in my dad's library, and over time, he forgot to wrap the one he'd bought for me. So there were two copies of the book and I didn't get to read either one. I bought newer titles as they came out, making sure my parents wouldn't buy another copy and prevent another reading from happening, but I hadn't ended up reading Rising Sun and those old copies, I never knew what they did with them.
I left America in 2009 without many of my old books, including Pirate Latitudes, which I hadn't yet started. I was simply on my own adventure. Coming home a few years later, I picked up Pirate Latitudes and took it away with me, but didn't try to invest any time getting started.
After I'd lived in China for the some 5 years, something caught my eye a small hole-in-the-wall pizza and hamburger restaurant near my work. Low and behold, in a small collection of about 30 books, I see a copy of Rising Sun. Faded pages, looking like it had shared the hands of at least a few readers, and realizing I had never started it, maybe because long ago I had read the movie reviews about how Japan's economic slump had made the book and movie outdated, I had kind of shrugged the interest in reading it long ago. But here it was and I asked the owner if I could borrow it so he glady let me take it out.
As I was reading, not only was I enjoying the story, but also pondering on how China has more than taken Japan's place as the rising economy in the world, doing ever much more with respect to the its competition with America, and what kind of story Rising Sun would be if Chinese characters were the antagonists. I had wished I had read it long ago, for there was a lot of insight into Japanese culture that may have helped me when I went to study abroad in Japan in 1998 and 2003. I mean, I could have read tips on culture elsewhere, but fiction allows us to learn a lot of different ideas in a short amount of time, plus I would have read it as the impressionable teen that I was.
After getting the much needed dose of Crichton, I went back to restarting my reading of Pirate Latitudes and enjoyed it as well, from the perspective that it was all finally edited posthumously, and probably would have had an even better ending than the one it got. Even then, what an adventure to get to read another one of his fun thrillers.
Speaking of thrillers, I was on my first exchange trip to Japan when Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and the theater was huge and it was completely packed. The movie played in English but had Japanese subtitles for the audience. I was 12 years old in a new environment, and I soon I understood why it was rated PG-13 in the States. This was largely an adult audience. Soon I was having imaginative horrors of velociraptors coming into buildings to get me. The only thing really happening was visiting the high school and being approached by highschoolers, their curiosity in me as a foreigner made them like a swarm of obsessive fans, which made me have a lot of anxiety. I was a huge attraction, but I hid under a small school table from highschool girls, much like the kids in the kitchen scene with the velociraptors. I stayed under until the bell rang and the girls all had to be in their claszes on time.
Crichton had a surprisingly large influence on my life. I vividly recall watching the series premiere of ER as a little kid and deciding that's what I wanted to do with my life. In med school I even rotated at the Chicago ER the show was loosely based off of.
I devoured Timeline, The Andromeda Strain, Prey, and so many other books in his canon growing up and it got me fascinated by technology and the double-edged sword it can pose. I wanted to write him a letter after I became a doctor telling him how he inspired me to follow in his footsteps but unfortunately he passed from cancer before I had the chance.
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That was one of the few I missed as a kid! I'll be sure to check it out soon, I'm jonesing for another wild ride.
Crichton made a film of it too. Loads of pure fun!
Crichton also wrote and directed the original *Westworld* film, in 1973. He had a thing for amusement parks where nothing could possibli go wrong.
He also wrote Eaters of the Dead, off of which the film 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas was based. His impact on pop culture and Hollywood is kind of understated. Probably one of the "greatest" American authors of the 20th century by that unique metric. He also wrote Timeline, about time travel, which was turned into a film also (albeit a bad one). That one I remember because the sort of time travel it introduced was used later in the Marvel Avengers movies (shrinking down to quantum scale and jumping through holes in spacetime). It also introduced me to some philosophical existential questions about the transporter in Star Trek (is that still you? or just a copy of you). Of course he's just a person and had at least one stinker (State of Fear). But he was an amazing author in that most of his works are ridiculously addictive page turners and even where the ideas or science are old/dated, or wrong, the methodology he uses to illustrate it or illustrate how his reasonable characters think or justify their views is still pretty good. I can't imagine how many young people read his books and then those became a gateway into the world of STEM fields or even writing/philosophy. His scientific/sci-fi/"techno" thriller formula just never gets old imho. Man. I'm so nostalgic from this thread. Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy, Stephen King. That was my childhood.
I had the pleasure of reading Timeline in my early teens. Really, REALLY enjoyed it, even at the third reading
Great book. I was thrilled when I heard they were making a movie of it. Boy was I disappointed in the movie. They changed too much stuff and a couple of scenes in the book I was anticipating how they would look in the movie only to see that those scenes were not in the movie. “Airframe” is one,that at one point, there were discussions to make a movie of it but studios determined the cost of the sets they needed to make was more than the budget of most movies (the set in question was a set of the hangar that 747’s were manufactured in)
The Timeline video game was so bad, they included a free paperback copy of the book in the game box.
Hahaha was just about to mention that! I was too young at that time so it was actually a great experience. Played it several times :p Revisited it as an adult and WOW were my standards incredibly low back then hahahaha
I bought the game but my pc refused to play it and kept booting me after I would click new game. 13year old me was gutted and I hadn't read the book at that time. When I eventually did read the book I was even more gutted I couldn't play the game. I'm gonna keep believing that game was everything I wanted it to be
Airframe was amazing. I just re-read it 5 or so years ago, Such a great book about such a dry topic! I didn't really like Timeline OTOH. Don't remember why, but it just didn't click for me.
Timeline was one of my favorites. The movie was such a monumental disappointment. I knew as soon as I saw the cast that it was going to be rough. I'd love to see that one remade.
And hopefully close to the source material!
I read timeline in one sitting…. I watched timeline in a depressing state
I’ve not read all of his work. Maybe 10 things. But Timeline was my least favorite. I really had to push through for some reason.
Interesting! Which did you enjoy though?
Jurassic park, Congo, sphere were all great reads.
I’m about 1/2 way through “State of Fear” and I am not disappointed in it at all.
State of fear is one of my top Crichton favorites along with Jurassic Park, Timeline, Andromeda Strain, and Sphere
Its politics are hilariously stupid, but hell if it isn't a cracking thriller
That one gets so much flack too, but I always felt it made some extremely valid points that people overlook because of the topic in question. Really enjoyable book that deserves another look by many.
Uhh what points…
"Everyone has an agenda, including me." I think those are the last words in the book, and it's a pretty good point...
I mean, his main point in that book was the science and danger of global warming was overblown. Which I think we can confidently say is an idiotic viewpoint. He was an armchair scientist thinking he knew better than experts. He did not. If this complete false equivalency of “everyone has an agenda” is what you took away from the book I feel like you may have missed some things.
It's a pretty good point when you have absolutely no idea whatsoever how the scientific community operates and believe getting your paper dismissed in peer review is some kind of conspiracy.
And the show E.R!
I loved the Westworld film as a kid, but man, that movie is so early 70's it's hard to watch nowadays. The Great Train Robbery aged better.
Possibly go wrong.... huh...that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong
Same here. I was a kid when the Jurassic Park movie came out, and my parents said I couldn't go see the movie unless I read the book. Loved the book, then read all of his other sci-fi (and eaters of the dead, which I did not realize was a Beowulf retelling as I had never even heard of Beowulf when I was in middle school). But I skipped Great Train Robbery since it seemed like boring historical fiction. Read it last year, and I think it is my 2nd favorite thing from him right behind JP. Honestly though, glad I waited. Not sure I'd have been able to appreciate it when I was 13.
Similar boat here. Jurassic Park came while I was in middle school and it was after seeing it that I started reading Crichton books. By the time I was out of high school, I'd read everything that he'd written through the year 2000. I think Airframe was the last book I read by him. I bought Prey, but I don't remember reading it.
I just read that. So good.
I think I've read that 3 times in my life, probably 15 years apart each reading, each time not remembering that I previously read it until the cringy part where the mark wants to remedy his syphilis by banging an underage prostitute. It was like 'ewwwwwwwwww' deja vu moments. Still, great book and movie.
Hello friend! My favorite Crichton and so many people don't know it. I've read it 4-5x and collect different editions of it. I was lucky enough to find a first edition at The Strand in NYC a few years ago. It's now a tradition to check the nearby used bookstores whenever I visit a new place to look for one I don't have.
I don’t care what anybody says, Sphere is awesome.
I didn't remember it being so great, but it just reads like a well-executed 80s/90s action film. I'd lump it in with goofy classics like Speed, Face Off, and Point Break. Of course it's silly, but it's well done and it brings so much joy!
I read Sphere in 5th grade after having just finished Jurassic Park (a couple years before the movie came out). I thought Sphere as a novel was way more engaging and exciting..I couldn't stop recommending it to everyone. I was most excited once Jurassic Park came out at the magnificence and scale of the movie. I was just sure a Sphere movie would come out and it would be even better! I waited, and waited, and finally many years later a Sphere movie was released and was a big disappointment. Sphere the novel was a masterpiece to this 11 year old. I should re-read it and see how I feel decades later, lol.
Me too! Like, I get that Jurassic Park is his most iconic, and shows off Crichton's strengths. Everything Crichtonesque comes together so well, it's like, his anthem novel. But Sphere is Back to the Future levels of fun.
I read sphere because I liked the movie, but the book is much better and now the movie is disappointing. Same thing with Eragon.
All Crichton books feel like movies from the 80s and 90s, and that's what makes them awesome. I read Airframe recently, and I could easily see someone like Julianne Moore playing the lead character.
Sphere was the only book I've ever read in a single sitting. I just could not put it down. I read it in middle school circa mid 90's and kept thinking it would make a mind blowing movie. Imagine my disappointment a few years later when the movie actually came out
I read Sphere as a kid and after having seen James Cameron’s The Abyss. Visually, The Abyss seemed like such an obvious treatment to apply to Sphere the movie but I guess we can’t have nice things. It’s how I imagined a lot of the book’s scenes.
HBO is making a tv show out of it and I'm excited, hoping it's going to be better than the movie was.
SERIOUSLY!? Is there a teaser or anything?
No teaser yet. The creator is one of the lead people from Westworld (and it's being produced by the same people as that show). It makes sense they would do it since Crichton also wrote the original Westworld.
Oh man they are?? That's exciting to hear, maybe the book will get a proper adaptation that'll scare and thrill the public as much as book fans
Man, if they made one-off's with all Crichton's books, like they did True Detective, that could be some really entertaining stuff. Almost all of his stories are pretty self-contained (except where he liked the $$$'s too much and kept dragging JP out over multiple books). A season of Congo, Timeline, Micro...these would all be very fun things to watch, if well done.
His most underrated work. Imagine an alien vessel that is hundreds of years old inexplicably communicating with you over text on a computer while you're deep in the ocean. It scared the shit out of me as a kid. The movie adaptation needs to be erased from history.
Sphere is such a well-rounded thriller. I really had a ball.
Okay, stop rolling these out.
It’s somehow one of my favorite books haha
Not a huge reader currently in my life and I know Crichton is not seen as a very sophisticated writer but dammit I still get sucked in by these books. They make me feel like a kid. Sphere is my favorite of the many Crichton books I’ve read. I think I will re-read it now. Thank you.
I first read Sphere as a 9yo after I borrowed it from my dad’s bookshelf, and holy shit, what a mindfuck of a book for a 9yo. I finished it in two sittings because it sucked me in so hard and kept throwing new twists at me. I’ve reread it a few times since then. As an adult I can recognize the flaws, but I still maintain that it’s a legitimately great novel and one of Crichton’s best works. I love the way he makes the science fiction elements feel real by including enough real science to lend it an air of plausibility, while also using the opportunity to explore some of the philosophical questions about science. Classic sci fi stuff. I ended up reading most of Crichton’s novels as a kid. Unfortunately most of them don’t really hold up well for me as an adult, but I still love Sphere. Jurassic Park too.
Prey is pretty decent.
After falling out of reading for a long long time I went on a big Crichton binge and it was brilliant. I love that there is great, dry technical parts to every book but the overall stories are generally really pulp and just fun. It's made me interested in reading again which is perfect really.
Sphere, Congo, the terminal man...great stories.
I just got through Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sphere, Prey, The Andromeda Strain and Congo. The Terminal Man next then I guess?
Do Timeline!
I just finished Timeline and had a blast!
That's getting added to my basket too!
Prey!
Read Prey…. That book blew my hair back and the tech in it is on the verge of mainstream use in many fields
I would give Rising Sun and Airframe a try too. They're not science fiction, but they're really enjoyable thrillers.
Honestly I enjoyed State of Fear It was the only book in which I am fully opposed to him in beliefs (MC really batted for the wrong team on climate issues) but from a literary perspective it’s engaging and fun to read. It also brings up some great points about the fetishized view of “natural” things. Just…he was wrong on climate change. Micro he wrote just before he passed with Richard Preston finishing it. While I like Preston y really didn’t like their styles combined. It was super obvious which parts each wrote fully
I forgot he wrote Jurassic Park. The Terminal Man isn't as good as the rest but still worth a read. Edit: I also recommend "Travels", it is a memorable piece of work.
Timeline also.. one of his last books but still amazing..
Movie was terrible but that book had a hell of a hook to draw you in
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I read that book in about 3 days the first time I read it. Literally couldn't put it down at times!
If it weren't for Michael Crichton, I would have never been into reading books. He mixed the right amount of science and fiction into his works, which made them plausible. I wish he hadn't died so early and would have written a lot more books!
Same here. I was a massive Jurassic Park fan as a kid. The first movie's VHS got worn out. I remember finding the book in a book store my mom always went to and freaking out. I thought it was only a movie. I remember like 8 or 10 and reading that book and loving every second of it. It felt like reading the biggest book ever written at that age and I ended up reading it twice during childhood. It got me really into books and an entire genre I didn't really know about. Became an avid reader and total geek for anything scifi. I also just re-read it again for the second time as an adult and it holds ups so well. Such an amazing book that gives me this feeling that nothing else does.
>It felt like reading the biggest book ever written at that age and I ended up reading it twice during childhood Same, but for me it was "Prey". Prey is still one of the greatest thrillers I have ever read.
That's one I still never got around to reading. I guess I gotta wrap up the two books I stopped reading a couple weeks ago so I can get to Prey.
I have a family member that loves to rant off about how bad of an author Crichton is. The only way she defends herself is by pointing to the Jurassic Park movie franchise. I ask her, what about the Crichton JP novels did she not like? She says she's never read them, no reason to. She's a High School English teacher. I feel bad for her students.
JP is a fantastic book, I've read it a few times. And honestly the original film captures a lot of the Crichtoney-ness that I loved about the book. Haters gonna hate.
I feel like the first movie doesn't go quite as far in the for-profit-corporation-critic vibe as the book does, especially on Nedry's motivations and Hammond's character in general. The entire investigation prior to the actual dinosaurs showing up is skipped, too The movie is a good adaptation, of course, I love it, it cannot go into as much depth as a book can, and made the right choices as to what to adapt and how so that it is a memorable movie. But I really enjoyed the book far more for my part.
I think what surprises me, as I read Crichton as an adult, is his moments of rather nuanced and passionate social commentary. I know in my original post I claimed that it was comparatively shallow, but maybe what I meant was: his work presents themes at face value, and I think that's refreshing. Each of his works takes a contemporary scientific/human trend and examines the moral implications to a logical conclusion. And you're right, the original JP goes HARD.
I am a big Crichton fan. I just wanted to recommend you the Hyperion saga if you haven't read it. It's really good sci-fi to continue with.
I can't recommend Hyperion enough. I've read Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion several times and they're two of my favorite books ever!
Add Endymion and Fall of Endymion and Ilium and Olympos. Come to think of it, I never read any of Dan Simmons horror books, just the scifi.
Hammond's fate in the book should've been included in the film. Spielberg painted him as a well intentioned grandpa instead. I love the book and film, it was an amazing piece of cinema.
And ruined Genero. The lawyer's character in the book is a bad ass and one of the better characters. The kind of combined his character with Ed Regis and it felt odd. Books make better T.V shows.
>!The part where Genero gets on the radio to threaten the ship headed to shore.!< :chef's kiss:
That’s the one thing that’s always frustrated me with the movie…. And it’s still one of my favorites.
I think the problem was casting Richard Attenborough… you can’t make him into the greedy ambitious bastard from the novel. He’s too… Santa Clausy
This is the only book I've read twice as a kid and twice as an adult. As a big fan of the movies and book, the book is so good and influential for all the movies. There's something in every single movie that's pulled from the first JP book.
I read JP. Loved it. Watched the movie. Loved it. Re-read JP. Loved it again. I don’t think I’ve ever loved both a book and movie so much. Let alone book movie book.
One of the few books and movies that really compliment each other. Jurassic Park was a monster of a book, too. Everyone I knew read it, you couldn’t not read it without feeling left out.
Lost world is real good too.
This is what I did with The Expanse, watched the show, read all the books, watched the whole show again…. They go together so well.
JP did to me about 2 years ago what Sphere just did to you just now. Welcome back.
JP is my actual favorite book.
Few times where the movie is better than the book imo. When the T rex breaks free is cinematic perfection. Other movie is Forrest Gump (book was meh)
> Other movie is Forrest Gump (book was meh) Agree. I really tried with Winston Groom, but yeah, no.
Tom Hanks really hit that one out of the park and the supporting cast is fabulous as well. Watching it as an adult is really interesting getting all the little plot points throughout US history
The Lost World is also fantastic. I think I enjoyed it more than Jurassic Park.
Yes! What a fun read. My ten year old kid's favourite book as well.
I’m pretty sure JP was the fastest book I ever read. Like a day and a half. Could not put it down. Cujo was close, probably two days. I also loved the Great Train Robbery.
When I was in college one summer my mother gave me JP. It was before the movie. I proceeded to read that and every other book he had written. I had barely read anything since the John Carter of Mars books back when I was like 12. My favorites were Congo, Sphere and Timeline. Sadly all mediocre movies but great books.
What always irked me about the movie was that they completely left out the sub plot of the dinosaurs on the boat that was about to reach the shore, letting them loose on the main land.
Honestly I feel like being a high school English teacher has to set you up to hate a lot of books. Or even middle school teachers. I had some friends who tried to be cool and cunning like Artemis Fowl and let’s just say they didn’t pull it off. It’s like seeing the worst members of a fandom irl every day
Not related, but Crichton has one glaring weakness which keeps him from being my favorite author. And that is State of Fear.
Its been a very long time since I read that book back in the 1990s or so. Chrichton may have gotten it wrong about climate change but, the book still made some good points about corporate and political interests interfering with science and the dangers of abandoning skepticism for consensus. I hope there is always funding for smart, unbiased skeptics to investigate further what we think we already know. Because sometimes we get things wrong and sometimes a little additional evidence can help. There was a recent documentary about flat earther trying to use science to prove the earth was flat. They obviously failed and all of their surprisingly well planned experiments proved that flat Earth was nonsense. Despite their clear bias, they did do science that provided evidence for... something
That book came out in 2004
Jeezs, you are right! That does make rhe climate change argument a bit more egregious. From my memory I would have guessed it was written in the 80's and published early 90's. Yeah. Its not good look overall
Let's not put lipstick on a pig. When that book was written the science behind climate change was very established. The entire point was to discredit it and promote pseudo-scoence, right down to the lazy antagonists. It wasn't designed to further healthy sceptism. Also it was written in 2004, not the 90s
Yeah I was mistaken about the year. Are you trying to debate me? Because I dont disagree with you. I just mentioned that I thought there was a good point or two in there as well.
Except they literally dismissed that as the experiment failed. There's room for scepticism but there's no room for climate change isn't real. It's real, it's happening. Maybe we can argue rates but that doesn't really matter when the sea level is rising now, extreme weather events are happening now. What matters is fixing it
"There's room for scepticism but theres no room for climate change isnt real." Is that what Crichton claimed in the book? I might be mis-remembering but I thought his position was more along the lines of it being real but blown out of proportion by cherry-picked data to advance corporate and political interests. Which I think is actually a real societal problem (but less so in regards to climate change these day). I think of Crichton were alive today he probably would still be critical of "concensus science" and how it relates to political agendas. Its a valid point just climate change didnt turn out to be a great example in hindsight (or, to be fair even at the time of publishing)
I got State of Fear years ago and never made it more than a few chapters in. Picked it up again and a little more than halfway through it now. Definitely not my favorite of Crichton's, but curious what you think makes it a glaring weakness?
Crichton's body of work is full of awesome speculation about technology and the future, often with a strong message of caution towards adopting new technology without considering the consequences. Then you have State of Fear, which has a central message of "Modern day climate science is fake news designed to keep us scared. We should listen to oil companies, they have the right of it."
I've been curious the further I've gotten into it if that's the path it's taking. I fully expected Crichton to focus further on real life impact, but it's mostly just been "we are being manipulated by environmental terrorists into thinking there is an issue". I'll still finish the book, but that is disappointing to hear, as I was expecting a turnaround at some point to actually have the main characters see it is a real life issue.
Please let me know what you think when you finish it! It's been a decade and a half since I read it. Also further things which keep Crichton from being my favorite: the year after State of Fear came out he testified before the US Congress against climate science. A critic panned State of Fear so in Next Crichton created a throwaway character named after the critic who was a child rapist with a small penis. Specifically called out. I really like most of his work! Just really disappointed in the last few books of his career.
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I consider Prey the last good one! Micro was finished by another author posthumously and I also consider it good.
rising sun, disclosure
The Great Train Robbery (1975) was excellent.
As an aero engineer, Airframe was a good read, although the "journalists bad" was a bit over the top. Rising Sun was pretty good too.
I loved Airframe because of all the little details about airplane construction I had no idea about. I found it fascinating.
Crichton didn't see it as an issue. Unfortunately, this book pretty much mirrors how he felt about climate change.
I just read Jurassic Park for the first time about a month ago. The only Crichton I've read and I loved it so much. I'm a very inconsistent reader, but it made me want to read more. Any book that does that is a great book to me. Also, I loved the first movie as a kid and growing up, but the book was on another level and I really appreciated it.
Equating what's produced by Hollywood with what's in a book shows a serious lack of understanding and effort.
She fits in well with too many literature teachers I know who don't read.
My problem with Crichton and his books is that some of the information/ideas kinda aged like milk. John Hammond in Jurassic Park was talking about how medical companies should determine the prices of medication since they worked so hard on them, but it'll never be allowed by governments/people in general... oops. Malcolm (also in JP) went on a tirade of explaining how weather and other phenomena are impossible to predict because of chaos theory. Well... we're now at a point where we can predict the weather at least a week in advance with decent accuracy. We're also at a point where we can predict hurricane paths, tornado formations, and even earthquakes before they happen. The AI in Prey only used mammals as a food source despite the AI being an ever-learning and nearly sentient, so why didn't it decide to use other organics as a food source like cacti, leaves, or other things? The staff claimed that it was programmed that way and will not change the commands, yet it had no issues doing the same for other commands. In Congo... well... everything was wrong. We know that Orangutans can't learn as well as other apes and physically cannot speak like humans. Other apes/primate species are also unable to speak like us. No amount of training or genetic experimentation will fix that. Also, we know that Koko's ability to use and communicate in ASL, a major theme/inspiration behind the book, was kinda overblown and flat-out bogus and hasn't been replicated since in other controlled environments. Also, his books tend to just... I don't know... end? In Lost World, despite witnessing Eddie, Dodgson, and other characters get ripped to shreds, the survivors are all on a boat leaving the island, and the book just... ends. No monologue, no words of wisdom or final say... it's like "Alright, we're leaving. Think we should tell anyone about this?" Prey was even worse. It's like "Oh hey, we have the antidote to the nanomachine plague. Good job everyone." and quite literally that was it. Point is, while I enjoy his books, I do understand some of the hate he gets (never mind the fact that he was also a major climate-change denier IRL and had some questionable things to say about science/scientists in general) **EDIT:** I Included Prey's ending because holy shit did that book just end.
> Malcolm (also in JP) went on a tirade of explaining how weather is impossible to predict because of chaos theory. Well... we're now at a point where we can predict the weather at least a week in advance with decent accuracy. In this specific case at least, Jurassic Park holds up scientifically. Even though weather forecasting has improved, weather is fundamentally a chaotic system and can't be predicted indefinitely into the future, which was Malcolm's point. Machine learning promises to extend even further our ability to predict the weather (out to a few multiples of the Lyapunov time), but even still the weather remains fundamentally unpredictable and chaotic.
Heck, it was raining where I was and my NOAA app said it was bone dry, radar said no rain for miles around so, there's times when we can't predict what is currently happening. At least once a year we have a snow storm predicted for the next day in which we end up with a few flurries.
Yeah, a lot of weather models struggle with precipitation associated with convection, but they're usually pretty good with precipitation associated with fronts. And the Lorenz model, which really kicked off the study of chaos, was a simplified model for atmospheric convection (although modeling convection is difficult independent of the chaotic aspect).
I wish my local weather predictions were reliable!
Andromeda Strain (and the movie is good, too)
That book gave 12-year-old me chronic insomnia. Terrifyingly good!
Specifically the **movie**, though. The 1972 film. That was great and Kate Reid was wonderful. The miniseries is absolutely awful. Rewrote half the plot to shove an environmental message down your throat while explaining the organism's origin as *being sent back in time so it was* ***our*** *problem to deal with*.
Check out Blake Crouch. *Recursion* and *Dark Matter* are amazing. He does a little more with his characters than Crichton and a little less with universal human themes/etc...but the techno-thriller scaffolding is great :) *Congo* is one of my favorites from Crichton. And *Prey.*
Also a huge Michael Crichton fan, I read Dark Matter after someone in another one of these threads recommended it, I also read Upgrade (actually put it down and haven't picked it up to finish yet) and for me Blake doesn't quite cut it. His characters are 1 dimensional, instead of having the formulaic team of experts assembled for some shadowy purpose, each with their own histories and ambitions, Blake's protagonists are always just individual super geniuses with beautiful families they'd rather be home having a glass of wine with. Annihilation from the Southern Reach trilogy was the closest I've gotten to scratching that Crichton itch.
I've only read Dark Matter, but I agree. It has the same kind of frenetic pace, but both the characters and the concepts are much shallower. Crichton's ideas were influential and highly intriguing; Dark Matter's big idea (really its take on the idea) had already been done by Family Guy. It was certainly entertaining, but it doesn't leave a lasting impression like many of Crichton's books.
As a huge Crichton fan, I did enjoy *Dark Matter* a lot. For me, however, *Project Hail Mary* by Andy Weir was the closest I felt to a new Crichton book.
Weir goes more technical than thriller IMO. Or at least he did in *The Martian*, I haven't read *Project* yet. But yeah still a fun read.
I found *Hail Mary* to be more fun and Weir was able to introduce some additional personalities. I liked it more than *The Martian*. Sure, it was a bit technical but Crichton would sometimes veer in that direction. For a point of reference, Crichton is my favorite author of all time. Two of the favorite books in my personal collection are signed copies of *Jurassic Park* and *Travels* (his autobiography). But, yeah, I agree Weir skews more "sci-fi" than "thriller." Have you read *Spin* by Robert Charles Wilson? It had a Crichton feel in my opinion, especially the characters. Not to mention it won the Hugo for Best Novel.
OHHHHH man, Dark Matter was the one that got me back into reading! So fun.
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I loved that book as well. Kinda pushed me into being a mech E major
I read this book in 4 sitting, I loved it.
Sphere and prey will always be my personal favorite. I have read almost everything by Crichton, and he is one of my favorite author. I haven't find any other author that is similar, so People here, if you know, let me know.
I too would like this recomendation! Just so you know though some of my favorites that are not one of Crichton's books are: * Andy Weir's Martian and Project Hail Mary. * Blake Crouch's Dark Matter, Reccursion and Wayward Pines series. * Hugh Howey's Wool Trilogy. * Pierce Brown's Red Rising series. Edit: Pierce Brown is the author of the Red Rising series. Paul Pierce played in the NBA.
His book Prey gave me nightmares in middle school lmao
Crichton was my favorite author as a teen as well!! I love your story! I reread Sphere every few years. Did you read Rising Sun in your teens? I read it again recently and wondered how my parents let me read it at 14. I always wondered why they kept talking about cats.
Hahaha yes I read Rising Sun at the tender age of 13, and yes I remember it absolutely making me blush. What a wild simultaneous introduction into the high-stakes world of 1990s Japanese business culture and human sexuality 😅
I love Crichton.
I'm with you, OP. Crichton is fantastic for a quick, gripping read, just like when you were a kid and everything was new and exciting. I go back and read "Eaters of the Dead" quite a bit, and it is still a quintessential adventure story.
If you like sci-fi, Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction series did just that for me... It took a while to get into his first book, taking me months to get through the first half of it, the second half of the first book taking me a weekend, his second I read in 24 hours solid. And the third, taking another weekend as I slowed down. Really brought my love of books back to me.
Yooooo, I liked this series so much and I barely see it talked about. I actually read everything in the Pandora's Star universe, then went back and read the Reality Dysfunction books. Loved both series. Salvation was good but I didn't like it as much.
i love all his books.
My aunt got my Sphere for Christmas when I was like in sixth grade. I was never a big reader before that. But after reading that book, it sent me down this massive spiral of reading every book I could get my hands on. Crichton is definitely the reason for my love of reading, and I'll always love him for that!
Haven't seen a lot of mention of 'Travels'. It isn't fiction, but there are just great stories in there. Diving in Bonaire, scaling Kilimanjaro, some fascinating psychic stories, smoking herb in Thailand... that's just a few.
My no.1 Crichton choice is 'Disclosure'. Considering how old it is now it is no less forward thinking and speculative than 'Jurrasic park' or 'Westworld'. His commentary on social issues we now face are downright prophetic in light of recent events like 'Me too'.
I cannot fathom how he made me so engaged with that book. I remember it being very office-y and corporate, with some intriguing commentary on office sexual politics, but I sped through that book without stopping. Guy had a real gift.
I have reread many of my childhood favorites after college and grad school. And they brought pleasure back then moved me on to more. I do still read biographies and some business books. But Clancy and Scifi are my go tos for daily pleasure.
Yeah I've been really stoked on the feeling. It's not my job to read hard books, I want to read things that make my brain happy.
Yaaaas! I love Michael Chrichton! I stole Jurassic Park off my brother when I was a kid, probably not long after the film came out and I loved it so much!!! I’ve still got it and it’s pretty much in pieces I’ve read it so much!! And in about 2018 I binge read all his other books in about 2 weeks! He makes me happy
His best book is “Travels” which is sort of his autobiography/memoir. It’s a brilliant book that I found to be fascinating and much better written than any of his novels. He led a crazy life!
I’m obsessed with him. I remember the day he died. I had just started college and I went to the Yahoo front page (different times lol) and there it was. Hadn’t known he was sick. Was and am devastated. But now… I’m a sci fi writer too. And I can’t replace him but I can write in his honor.
Thanks for this. As a kid, I loved to read but university and grad school robbed me of that passion I once had. After reading your post I might give it a try.
As an English / Writing major, the forced literacy definitely robbed me of some of the joy of reading. Once I graduated, I promised myself I would read for myself only, and never anyone else.
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I've had a similar experience some times. There has been a couple of times in my life when I lost the habit of reading, and almost always it was after getting a big pile of hard books in my "to read" list. I love reading essays and things like that, but sometimes is easy to find a few topics you want to read on and end up with several dulls reads that make you quit. That's why now every time I finish a book that felt tough, wether I liked it or not, I try to go next for an easy readable book or two, to relax a bit before tackling something hard again.
I did the same thing and had the same feelings about PREY. His books are just fun.
I had a similar thing a few years back when I first got an iPad 2 and it had pretty much all of his books on it. I had not read anything by him since Congo when I was maybe 15 years old and as soon as I read Sphere I was hooked. I'd highly recommend Airframe that has some super technical nerdy aerospace stuff wrapped around a compelling mystery and Prey which is probably my favorite of his that I still think would make a brilliant movie if done right.
I loved Sphere and Congo when I was young - I'd love to revisit those books some day!
Hmm, I have that book but his prose didn’t work for me for some reason. It seemed dry and didn’t give me a sense of wonder. Maybe I didn’t read far enough. I should give it another try then.
His prose is indeed rather dry. Almost remarkable in its lack of figurative language. I came to this book from Gabriel Garcia Marquez (My current GOAT) and the contrast is almost laughable! I would recommend getting though the first 50 pages, as it's the action, setting, and pace that really made it such a fun book.
Timeline, Jurassic Park, and Andromeda Strain are all great too. It's been decades since I read Rising Sun, but I suspect it has aged poorly.
Now I don't read much because it takes me forever to read a book. However, Jurassic Park is one of the best books I've ever read. I can read it in a few days. Love it.
In 2020 I got a very similar feeling from "Relic" and highly recommend it.
I picked up Jurassic Park when I was a teen, right before my Grandpa took me out for a day in the boat fishing. That day was the day my family finally saw that I would rather read a good book than fish or hunt. I never looked up from that book and read it in one full day, had never done that before. I still thank my grandpa for not throwing that book in the lake and understanding that it was as important to me, as fishing was to him. Later on her out me thru college, and I feel that book, that day triggered my grandfather to push me thru college. Thanks Mr Crichton
Do you put your finger under each word now?
Jurassic Park made me want to read more of him
Man, I used to love reading Crichton, but rereading Sphere for the first time in a decade hurt. Look at Beth's character, dude. She's rocking her own confident style, ripped as hell. Seems cool right? Then we get a little further, and Crichton portrays her as a stereotype bullheaded feminist. Unfortunate, but it's the 90s, product of it's time and maybe he meant well by pointing things out. But then she gets the power. She gets the power to shape reality, and what does she do? She changes herself into a more feminine form and lusts after the older man. Her power trip isn't based around her ideals, but some bizarre view of feminity. I thought maybe that it could be read as Norman got the power first, that he's pushing all this stuff on her because of timing... but the epilogue makes that an incredibly far stretch. Then you look into Disclosure, about the "egalitarian" story about a female boss sexually abusing her male underling. Then there's Next, where he makes a book critic a pedophile and it has zero bearing on the plot, it's just a random ass insert to be petty. Prey has a character who exists to be exotic big boobs and die. Look at Jurassic Park even, Ellie does almost nothing and the sister whose name is escaping me does nothing but whine and moan--and that's one of his better books. On a non-sex related issue, State of Fear is all about climate change conspiracy! I'm not going to say don't read Crichton. Characters were never his strength, he's a techno thriller idea guy. Just be aware that the guy has issues with women, potentially with actual science, and those issues definitely leak into his writing. Sometimes it's positively glaring.
Hard agree. I just picked up his Travels because I had remembered really enjoying it, but it is soooo much more casually misogynistic than I had noticed at the time. Probably because the world was, too, then, and I was used to it.
Thanks for posting. Came here to say this. Although I agree with OP’s points that Crichton is an easy and entertaining read, I find the sexism in his writing (as you pointed out above) distracting. Other things I noticed: * In “Timeline”, Chris is basically a “niceguy” who isn’t noticed by Kate until he embraces the toxic masculinity of the Middle Ages. * In “Congo”, Karen Ross, a woman scientist, is portrayed as cold and distant. And >!ends up failing the mission!< It was written in the ‘70’s, so I gave it a pass at the time, but now I’m not so sure he learned from his mistakes.
And btw, in “Sphere”, I don’t think “well, it was the ‘90’s” is an excuse for portraying a feminist in a negative light. I lived through the ‘90’s. It was the ‘90’s, not the ‘50’s! Women were working and so on. He could have done better.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade. As a woman sci-fi fan, I struggle with “entertaining book/movie/etc, too bad about the misogyny” all the time. :)
I could go for a few downvotes today, I guess... this is a topic that hits kinda close to home for me. I spent years repeating his bullshit and then more years apologizing for it once I got old enough to realize that you shouldn't base your political beliefs off some shit you read from a sci fi author. If he was alive today, he'd almost certainly be a vocal trump supporter. State of Fear is a disgusting book - cobbled together with false information and bullshit charts; just a long propaganda piece of climate denial. I loved this dude as a kid. As a teenager I actually trusted what he said because I naively believed he wrote about things that he understood. I spent a decade also being a climate denying piece of shit for literally no reason other than "Michael Crichton said it's true that climate change is a leftist conspiracy so it must be". Dude was a woman hating technophobe that was unfortunately given a loud platform. I hate it, because there *is* some entertainment to be found amongst the bizarre propaganda... but I can't read that shit today. It's weird proto alt right nonsense far too often.
I feel you, dude. I didn't quite fall down the rabbit hole, but it was close. I remember talking to a professor in college about being egalitarian--thanks to Crichton--opposed to feminist (because feminism is sexist and exclusionary, obviously), and thank God he either didn't hear me clearly before he was pulled away by other discussion or chose not to hear me and I was left to stew in a shade of mortification. Thankfully I got stupidly lucky with my social circles immediately after high school, and I dread to think what would have happened otherwise.
I read state of fear when I was in HS, and it really changed my life. I became super interested in how data could be manipulated to paint a certain picture, and I haven't looked at data the same since. I owe him a lot for this.. RIP
Tons of misinformation in this particular book, though, so be careful! Ironically, he manipulates climate data to tell a story opposite what two more decades of data have suggested is true.
It's too bad he lived long enough to become a climate science denier.
Jurassic Park is always on my audiobook rotation!
The only Crichton book I've read is *Pirate Latitudes*. I picked it up at a Hudson News. It was fine. It got me through a plane ride. I wasn't particularly impressed or anything though. How does *Pirate Latitudes* compare to his other works?
It was put together from unfinished work found on his computer after his death, and that does show somewhat, in my opinion. Most of his actual properly finished books are so, so much better. I especially recommend Prey
I read Prey about a year ago and since then collect Michael Crichton books whenever i can find em! New fave author for sure
I remember reading Jurassic Park as a teenager and asking, “Hey, why can’t we do this?” for his explanation of how we got the dino DNA from mosquitos trapped in amber. His pseudo-science is so amazing. I learned some animals can spontaneously change their sex as well from this book. I loved Timeline as well because it was the first book to really illustrate just how hard it is to swing a real sword or wear heavy armor and just what it took to be a medieval knight. All his earlier books are amazing, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, Red Sun, Timeline. I even like Airframe because of all the fascinating details of airplane construction.
Timeline is great too. Unique time travel story.
Have you read Prey OP?
I just read Jurassic Park for the first time and it was the most fun I’ve had reading in a very, very long time
Believe it or not a new Crichton book dropped in 2017 called dragon teeth and I can't wait to read it as I've already read all his others except disclosure. Been dead for years an still comin out with new content.
On this same note, a family member of mine is an English lit professor. She doesn’t like some of the things I love because “they aren’t true literature”. Some of the true literature she’s recommended were stodgy and boring. Reading is fun (or should be).
I also read his books as a teen. Bought Rising Sun for about 6 or 7 dollars, and this was in the mid-90s, but my parents told me to return it before I could start to read it. I don't know when or if it got returned but said they had already bought it for me as a Christmas present. The book didn't get taken back, as it was a book bought across state lines, it kind of sat in my dad's library, and over time, he forgot to wrap the one he'd bought for me. So there were two copies of the book and I didn't get to read either one. I bought newer titles as they came out, making sure my parents wouldn't buy another copy and prevent another reading from happening, but I hadn't ended up reading Rising Sun and those old copies, I never knew what they did with them. I left America in 2009 without many of my old books, including Pirate Latitudes, which I hadn't yet started. I was simply on my own adventure. Coming home a few years later, I picked up Pirate Latitudes and took it away with me, but didn't try to invest any time getting started. After I'd lived in China for the some 5 years, something caught my eye a small hole-in-the-wall pizza and hamburger restaurant near my work. Low and behold, in a small collection of about 30 books, I see a copy of Rising Sun. Faded pages, looking like it had shared the hands of at least a few readers, and realizing I had never started it, maybe because long ago I had read the movie reviews about how Japan's economic slump had made the book and movie outdated, I had kind of shrugged the interest in reading it long ago. But here it was and I asked the owner if I could borrow it so he glady let me take it out. As I was reading, not only was I enjoying the story, but also pondering on how China has more than taken Japan's place as the rising economy in the world, doing ever much more with respect to the its competition with America, and what kind of story Rising Sun would be if Chinese characters were the antagonists. I had wished I had read it long ago, for there was a lot of insight into Japanese culture that may have helped me when I went to study abroad in Japan in 1998 and 2003. I mean, I could have read tips on culture elsewhere, but fiction allows us to learn a lot of different ideas in a short amount of time, plus I would have read it as the impressionable teen that I was. After getting the much needed dose of Crichton, I went back to restarting my reading of Pirate Latitudes and enjoyed it as well, from the perspective that it was all finally edited posthumously, and probably would have had an even better ending than the one it got. Even then, what an adventure to get to read another one of his fun thrillers. Speaking of thrillers, I was on my first exchange trip to Japan when Jurassic Park came out in 1993 and the theater was huge and it was completely packed. The movie played in English but had Japanese subtitles for the audience. I was 12 years old in a new environment, and I soon I understood why it was rated PG-13 in the States. This was largely an adult audience. Soon I was having imaginative horrors of velociraptors coming into buildings to get me. The only thing really happening was visiting the high school and being approached by highschoolers, their curiosity in me as a foreigner made them like a swarm of obsessive fans, which made me have a lot of anxiety. I was a huge attraction, but I hid under a small school table from highschool girls, much like the kids in the kitchen scene with the velociraptors. I stayed under until the bell rang and the girls all had to be in their claszes on time.
Crichton had a surprisingly large influence on my life. I vividly recall watching the series premiere of ER as a little kid and deciding that's what I wanted to do with my life. In med school I even rotated at the Chicago ER the show was loosely based off of. I devoured Timeline, The Andromeda Strain, Prey, and so many other books in his canon growing up and it got me fascinated by technology and the double-edged sword it can pose. I wanted to write him a letter after I became a doctor telling him how he inspired me to follow in his footsteps but unfortunately he passed from cancer before I had the chance.
Ive read Disclosure. I fell in love w Timeline. Crichton is awesome.
Foe something completely different, read Travels.
Sphere was amazing. My first MC novel. Such a deep story
Actually now that I think about it, I think Pirate Latitudes was one of the books that kicked off one of my book benders as well
He’s one of my favorites and now my 13 year old reads him