That crazy pseudoscientific hack, Michael Crichton, has screwed up big time. In a teeny-tiny tantrum against a critic, he made up a character in his latest book with a similar name and background who also happens to be a depraved rapist of infants. Now the obliquely defamed critic makes a measured reply.
I confess to having mixed feelings about my sliver of literary immortality. It’s impossible not to be grossed out on some level–particularly by the creepy image of the smoldering Crichton, alone in his darkened study, imagining in pornographic detail the rape of a small child. It’s uplifting, however, to learn that Next’s sales have proved disappointing by Crichton’s standards, continuing what an industry newsletter dubs Crichton’s “recent pattern of erosion.” And I’m looking forward to the choice Crichton will have to make, when asked about the basis for Mick Crowley, between a comically dishonest denial and a confession of his shocking depravity.
Poor Crichton. The honest skewering is always more potent than the lying slander. I gave up on reading his books after Jurassic Park, and I can see I won’t be picking up any in the future, either.
Off Topic Question for Pharyngulites:
http://advisoronid.blogspot.com/
Is this a joke, or not? I honestly can’t tell. A 2008 Presidential campaign that has a science advisor, at all, let alone one devoted to intelligent design (which turns out to be a misnomer regardless, as he’s a straight up AiG creationist), let alone one that is, like, fifteen?
And at one point, I’m pretty sure the kid is arguing that there is no gravitational force to pull interplanetary debris together to form planets. I can’t really tell. Tell me this isn’t true.
Sorry, it is true. Never underestimate the total stupidity of the Saved.
Still, this episode suggests a potential new revenue stream for novelists, akin to product placement in the movies. $250 bucks to have your name placed in my new novel, or, alternatively, $500 to avoid being placed in it as a child molester.
Might be a good idea for Crichton. His books have been selling less and less.
@N.Wells:
Some of the science-fiction writers who publish through Baen Books do that sort of thing. You can pay to become a redshirt character in an exploding-starship novel. I don’t think they have yet embraced the concept of protection money, however.
Response to off-topic question:
Oh, yes. Gene Chapman is a fringe candidate for president in 2008 whose fate will be chronicled in tiny little sidebars on the “other” candidates during coverage of election news. His “intelligent design advisor” is R. Josiah Magnuson, a teenager who was second runner-up in an essay contest sponsored by Answers in Genesis. That may be as much as you need to know, or you can read my recent post on him, with links to the earlier stuff.
@plunge:
Zeno at Halfway There has discussed this “Advisor on ID” youngster.
When all you’ve got left is calling your critics obscene names, it’s time to cash that last check and vanish into well-earned obscurity.
(See also: Richards, Michael)
I wonder if that kid is getting extra credit points in American Government.
Regardless of the science or lack thereof, the Jurassic Park franchise was what got me into dinosaurs, which got me into evolution, which got me into critical thinking and atheism, and so on.
It’s a shame to hear that Crichton is purportedly a nutter. Aside from casting a critic as a baby rapist (ew ew ew), what else has he done?
Personally, I thought Michael Crichton’s “Next,” was a book so boring so as to be horrid… Those news blurbs he put in were lousy, too.
I mean, how on Earth could he have made a book about a talking chimpanzee be so, uh, stale?
Karley, Crichton thinks that we should reinstate the use of DDT to fight malaria, as the threat of its carcinogenic properties, and its ability to last in the environment for millenia are trifflings compared to the pain, death and suffering caused by insect-born diseases…
What else has he done? Apart from the appalling catalogue provided by Stanton above, he’s also a climate change and mad-pro-business anti-science cheerleader. See, e.g., http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/11/145156/081
His book State of Fear evidently lays out the manifesto: That the real threat to the planet is not our wise and prudent custodians with Big Oil connections, but environmentalism. http://www.crichton-official.com/fear/
On the silly end of things, Crichton thinks that something strange other than sleight-of-hand is going on in terms of spoon-bending. On the serious end, Crichton’s notorious State of Confusion is taken seriously by deniers of anthropogenic climate change. Indeed, the current occupant of the White House met with Crichton rather than actual climatologists in order to “learn” about climate change.
I pretty much gave up on him after The Andromeda Strain. He’s simply a bad writer.
On the subject of DDT and other pollutants, Robert F. Kennedy’s book Crimes Against Nature makes heartbreaking reading. From an interview http://www.eande.tv/showAssets/related/021705/021705transcript.html
Also see: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/falcon/irony.htm
More on Carson: http://www.friendsofblackwater.org/eagle_cam_blog/archives/2005/04/22/index.html
I remember now, reading Jurassic Park several years after the movie, wondering how such a bad book made such an awesome film. Tried reading Congo too, but I didn’t get far.
Reading these posts, I’m glad I didn’t follow up.
It’s an article of faith among the anti-environmental right that DDT is God’s plan for salvation from insect-borne diseases. Tim Lambert at Deltoid is a great resource on the DDT nonsense. As he points out, DDT is not banned in all cases, but it’s no longer the magic bullet it used to be. (Some people have never heard of evolution and how bugs acquire resistance of over-used chemicals.)
Tim Lambert on DDT
I have a vague recollection of a director doing something similar to Gene Siskel (unless it was Roger Ebert); putting an unpleasant character with a very similar name in one of his movies. Does anyone else recall this with more details?
Speaking of bad writers who have sold way more books than they deserve, how about Dan Brown? I have read “The Davinci Code” and “Angels and Demons” out of having to hear about them so much that I had to find out what people were talking about. “The Davinci Code” was just dumb but “Angels and Demons” was both dumb and had that evil scientist twist to it. It followed his usual formula: naked dead guy leads to a secret society. Along the way the male lead has to explain even the most basic stuff to the allegedly intellegent female character. Throw in a completely insane Catholic character for good measure. This guy is a one trick pony and is really a hack writer. The ending was so completely laughable in its inanity that it almost needs to be read to be believed. The ambigrams were pretty bad too. Did you guys know that Cern is a fun place to work, almost a playground?
This guy used to be an English teacher, LOL!
Come on now – Michael Crichton does write good stuff. Maybe he has some strange ideas, and doesn’t agree with my or your political views, but when his books don’t cover these, they’re fine. I didn’t think much of his anti-global-warming “State of Fear”, but his Jurassic Park books, the Andromeda Strain and many others are good books, well worth a read.
I remember thinking when I was reading “Jurassic Park” that it read like a movie script. The book offered only wooden characters and lousy dialog, but it had that killer dinofantasy hook with tremendous merchandising potential across the American kidscape. I also remember thinking this is the last Crichton novel I’ll read.
The only Crichton book I’ve read is Prey. I distinctly remember the point where I thought, “This is stupid. I’ve got to return this and get a refund.” Then I remembered someone loaned it to me.
Crichton’s ER series is one of my favorites. It’s a good show, no controversies here.
Yes, I did know that.
I guess tastes can differ. My sample of Crichton is limited, because I can only read so much before throwing the book across the room in disgust. The passage quoted by Crowley is, from my experience, representative — and that is some bad, bad, writing, folks.
Tastes may also differ on Rachel Carson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., but their respective standards of scholarship are not a matter of debate.
Rachel Carson did her homework.
RFK Jr.’s dog ate his.
And surely Crichton deserves some blame for Sharon Stone’s role in his movie ‘Sphere’ that kept her in a deep sea diving suit nearly the entire time.
Mustafa: It was Godzilla, if I’m not mistaken. The mayor and his stupid assistant were Ebert and Siskel, respectively.
I think it’s possible everyone is confusing Michael Crichton with the well-known author and presidential confidant Mike Crouton whose bizarre salad fetish put such a damper on his book sales a few years back.
People read his stuff beyond their teenage years? I’m surprised! I think I read Andromeda Strain when I was 14. I didn’t know adults get into his stuff (he said, ducking!).
I lump it with Force Ten from Navarone and that sort of fun fluff.
Bah. Stupid Crichton. The only thing I ever appreciated about his writing was the fact that he was willing to address the possibility of males being sexually harassed by females (though I never finished Disclosure, as the sex scenes proved too few and far-between for my 12-year-old brain to pay attention), something with which I was already intimately familiar.
While satirizing personal as well as ideological enemies with one’s characters can be therapeutic as well as hilarious, writing a critic as a depraved child molester is pretty childish, in that it’s disproportionate. Critics who were unreasonable, spiteful, or obviously biased I might write in as comic relief, but even the idiots who made my life more of a hell than the average unpopular kid’s in middle and high school only rate having their names slapped on “trailer-trash” stereotypes. It’s more fun working digs at celebrities in, I think; one of the best examples of this I’ve seen, though, is a short story (not publicly available, to my knowledge, that a friend wrote, in which a character whose brain was being eaten began spouting Ann Coulter lines roughly halfway through…though I’m rather fond of my own idea of the Microsoft Windows Personal Operating System (POS).
I find that hard to believe; given the number of thoroughly wretched movies that Siskel and Ebert gave “two thumbs up”, I’d be surprised if a director had much of an objection to them. Unless the character was written as a bootlicking yes-man, I suppose…
My impression had been that while Carson’s claims about DDT had for the most part been vindicated, the research about its carcinogenic properties was inconclusive. Got a link for this?
Oh, and while we’re talking about really bad writers, did I hear Dan Brown’s name come up? If you enjoy a really savage analysis of just what makes a bad writer bad (and who doesn’t), you need to read Geoffrey Pullum’s dissection of The DaVinci Code.
It’s not as funny as Mark Twain’s Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses, but nothing was or ever will be as funny as that.
George, perhaps the same subgroup of adults who like DDT in their salad dressing.
Reflecting on it more, it seems like MC’s sole talent is coming up with ideas that others can flesh out and edit into better works. Jurassic Park, ER, Congo*…
Did Prey start out with a pair of ornithomimids getting eaten by the title critters? Because I remember a book that started that way and hooked me into reading it…and not much farther along I quit out of boredom.
* Has anyone seen this movie? I used to watch t all the time with my sister…it’s a riot.
The only think I’ve read by Crichton was his pompous afterword to State of Fear. He ended it with some sure-to-be famous last words: “Everybody has an agenda. Except me.” I thought, show me a man who doesn’t have an agenda, and I’ll show you the kind of man who actually replies to those viagra e-mails. Not something to brag about.
I have to admit to liking the ideas behind some of Crichton’s books, specifically Jurassic Park and Timeline, but I cannot stomach his writing and politics. Can anybody out there in science land recommend any novels that are similar to Jurassic Park and Timeline but contain far better/more acurate science and are written better (and by a non-hack.)
As I have said, I used to like Crichton’s stuff, mainly as airplane reading, where I don’t want anything deep. That was until I read about State of Fear and then found out about his belief in mental spoon bending. Once you find out someone is a total idiot, there is no reason to listen to him any more. Or read what he writes.
Yeah, real men want organophosphates on their salads.
Want to be put off reading Crichton for several lifetimes? Read Timeline. Painfully idiotic.
Holy crap.
I looked up a bit on Crichton’s spoonbending bullshit and found this laugh riot:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/11.27.03/spoonbending-0348.html
After bending a spoon, you’re left with a bizarre feeling–almost as if you had just done something you know is impossible, but it can’t be a trick, because you just did it. No sleight of hand, no rabbits pulled out of hats, no nothing. But since it’s supposed to be impossible, you’re not supposed to believe it.
Bending a spoon is supposed to be impossible? That’s funny, because my brother and I used to get in trouble for bending spoons at the dinner table when we were little kids.
Now I know that we were psychic geniuses.
I never stop being amazed at how retarded certain literate people can be. Fucking sick brain death is what it is.
I liked Sphere and Eaters of the Dead (which was made into the film “The 13th Warrior” with Antonio Banderas–good, swashbuckling fun) in my teens. Jurassic Park pissed me off because it was clear that Crichton had ripped off an episode of the GI Joe cartoon that aired almost four years before Jurassic Park was published:
That’s right–GI Joe scooped Michael Crichton
Rising Sun was a typical anti-Japanese screed of the mid-80s, the movie only saved by the dual screen presence of Wesley Snipes and Sean Connery. After Jurassic Park, though, it was clear Crichton became too set on his political agenda, and since he was a hack to begin with, it just meant his already mediocre books became crap. Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick had agendas in their writing too, but they were good writers that didn’t forget to tell a compelling story. (Interestingly, while both men arguably came from opposing sides of the political spectrum, they were good friends, Heinlein even helping Dick out when the latter was in rough financial straits.)
Crichton is final proof that Corporatism
makes people stupid.
OK, maybe rich, but…stooooooooooooo-pid!!
Sounds like Crichton evolved into a dinosaur.
I liked a lot of Crichton’s stuff (read Prey in one sitting), but then again, I have pretty juvenile tastes in entertainment. State of Fear did make me think about my understanding of global warming…I came to the conclusion that, while he may have medical training, he’s not a climatologist. That, and he put forward the idea that academics were supporting the theory of global warming to advance their careers, while saying that similar accusations against corporate-employed scientists were vile slander. The razor cuts both ways, or not at all.
I’ve read the two Dan Brown works mentioned…it’s pretty clear he’s a hack. No further discussion needed.
>>I have a vague recollection of a director doing something similar to Gene Siskel (unless it was Roger Ebert); putting an unpleasant character with a very similar name in one of his movies. Does anyone else recall this with more details?
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | December 19, 2006 05:02 PM
Don’t know anything about that, but I recall from the late 70’s a comedian by the name of David Brenner who got into a bit of trouble because he started talking about his “friend Jack Fountain, who was soooo dumb…” then would always follow with different stories about how dumb Jack Fountain was.
Turns out Brenner’s wife left him for a Jacques Lafontaine, and this was the comedian’s revenge. I believe he was sued, and lost.
K. Engels, have you read any Greg Bear? I got into him when he wrote Darwin’s Radio about endogenous retroviruses (my field of research at the time) driving the next stage of human evolution. Not perfect but definitely a class above Jurassic Park etc!
Just wanted to join the Dan Brown pile-on. Angels and Demons was so bad it gave me a migraine, I finally gave in and read ‘The DaVinci code’ and found it to be almost as awful and essentially the same story.
The plot of ‘Angels and Demons’ was bad enough but I found it even harder to stomach the thinly-veiled ‘Dan-Brown-as-raffish-don-cum-hero-of-the-story-who-is-irresistable-to-young-french-hotty-intellectuals’ and don’t get me started on the science howlers: The breathless preface describing how antimatter will be the solution to all of our energy woes (conveniently disregarding the laws of thermodynamics); The ridiculous hydrogen-fuelled hypersonic jet that can land at any small airfield (where presumably they have abundant slush-hydrogen refuelling facilities) and many many more besides just made me want to poke my eyes out.
I remember liking Jurassic Park when I read it as a teenager. As soon as I read State of Fear and noticed that he had the same “scientific arguments” as my dad (an evil corporate environmentalist for the likes of HELLiburton)I KNEW he was a total hack.
I really don’t get where that came from. If anything, Gene & Roger were probably the *most* critical of major film critics, and made many enemies in the industry for that — and more than one movie had a scene mocking obvious caricatures of S&E.
Am _I_ allowed to sue my hack-writer evil twin, for besmirching _my_ good name? :-P
Yep. This show Crichton to be a petty vindictive jackass.
Does anyone else remember Gore Vidal’s (rather harsh) skewering of William F. Buckley as William de la Touche Clancy in “Burr?”
…sued for what, exactly?
Why, from the number of thoroughly wretched movies I’ve seen with Siskel and Ebert’s “two thumbs up” rating/review quoted in the advertising, of course.
Crichton = Airplane Reading? I’m co-opting that category for future use. It describes the Crichton genre succinctly.
All references to Dan Brown must immediately cease in this thread, as this is a thread — purportedly — about authors, or at least writers. To steal from the late, short Truman Capote: “that’s not writing; that’s typing!” Maybe some will apply that to Mr. Crichton as well.
I hope our “good writer” sails through this with nary a consequence. I haven’t read any of his work, at least while flying.
Crichton is guilty of petty cruelty — something I see fairly often, as I am a middle-school teacher. Grown-ups should know better. I suppose this is tantamount to watching Michael Richards or Rosie O’Donnell attempt to handle sensitive matter comedically. Didn’t we learn Rule #6 yet? “If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t mess with it.”
Crichton is, at least, instructional to read if one aspires to write movie treatments of storylines. Sometimes (Rising Sun, Jurassic Park 2-Whatever) you can actually see the screenplay gears whirring.
I don’t doubt that there probably have been cases where they liked a movie that you didn’t, but what are examples of “throughly wretched” movies that they liked? It is far more likely that they *didn’t* like a movie that you did — for example, many people still bring up the fact that both Siskel & Ebert gave negative reviews to “Blade Runner” in 1982, a movie that has entered many people’s top ten movies of all time.
Ebert in particular is so associated with negative reviews (many of which are pretty amusing even when one thinks they are unfair) that he even has a book out of his most famous negative reviews entitled “I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie”.
Crichton was never a good writer, at the level of narrative composition. But he used to have some awfully neat ideas and good plotting, and the pseudo-documentary format was distinctive. The Great Train Robbery, The Andromeda Strain, and Eaters Of The Dead are all on the shelf of books I’ll re-read sometimes when I feel brain-dead or too sick to assimilate anything new, and I like Westworld in all its low-budget cheesiness. Congo foreshadows some of his later problems, and Sphere has more, and then by Jurassic Park the jig is up.
It’s not necessary to be a good writer to be a good entertainer. But Crichton’s given up the latter in favor of preaching, without improving the former.
I don’t doubt that there probably have been cases where they liked a movie that you didn’t, but what are examples of “thoroughly wretched” movies that they liked?
LOL!!
Pretty much every Hollywood action movie they ever reviewed for which they gave “two thumbs up”. I’m sure there are a few exceptions but that list would seem to comprise scores if not hundreds of “thoroughly wretched” movies.
I recently posted about the bizarre beliefs of legendary comic book artist Neal Adams, who thinks plate tectonics is an illusion, among other things. I’ve been wondering how does a person who is arguably intelligent and gifted come to such a pass? Part of has to do with the willingness of others to regard such people as geniuses/celebrities above reproach, leading to the condition that John Lennon rather poignantly termed ‘Elvis Beatle.’
If you research Crichton’s personal history, you’ll find ample evidence to support the notion that he’s been regared as a celebrity genius for a very long time. He’s very tall, was a brilliant student (M.D., Harvard, summa cum laude) and at one point was arguably was cutting-edge technologist (he wrote a computer programming book and was involved in developing CGI back in the 1970’s for Hollywood). And, rather tellingly, married and divorced four times.
This is a guy who is very successful, extremely confident and most likely completely insulated from criticism. So it’s not just a reactionary political agenda or contrarian personality at work; it’s also the fact that such people tend not to be challenged by those around them, eventually becoming convinced that they are incapable of making serious mistakes in the formulation of ideas.
Thus, global warming denials and spoon bending. Sigh..SH
That, and I bet he’s never heard that most of the insect pests DDT was used to combat have now become extremely resistant to it, too.
Yeah, Roger Ebert is kind of a hero of mine so I’ll have to back up the person who notes he’s much more likely to give movies thumbs down than thumbs up.
Also, he’s quite clear about reviewing movies for what they are. For example, recognizing that an action movie or a horror movie won’t be as quality as your typical oscar-bait but that there’s a way to make them so that they’re actually entertaining, and that he can recommend on that level.
Although he liked X-Men 3, so I don’t know what the hell is up with that.
What exactly would be rather telling about that? There are many, many reasons for that and I think it’s actually 5 times now. :-)
Welcome to my world. How do any scientists manage to accept that Christian claptrap?
“But Crichton’s given up the latter in favor of preaching, without improving the former.”
He’s developing cranky old man syndrome. I also thimk it’s pretty disgusting when a grown man writes about women the way he does. It’s very puerile.
It is magnificent,” the girl said. When she spoke English, her accent sounded exotic. In fact, everything about her was exotic, Jonathan thought. With her dark skin, high cheekbones, and black hair, she might have been a model. And she strutted like a model in her short skirt and spike heels. She was half Vietnamese, and her name was Marisa. “But no one else is here?” she said, looking around.
“No, no,” he said. “It’s Sunday. No one is coming.”
Jonathan Marshall was twenty-four, a graduate student in physics from London, working for the summer at the ultra-modern Laboratoire Ondulatoire-the wave mechanics laboratory-of the French Marine Institute in Vissy, just north of Paris. But the suburb was mostly the residence of young families, and it had been a lonely summer for Marshall. Which was why he could not believe his good fortune at meeting this girl. This extraordinarily beautiful and sexy girl.
And he complains about Hollywood? Is he just reliving his youth in every book? I see a lot of potential wasted in favor of appealing to the fantasies of a bunch of teenaged boys (and idiot Presidents).
I’ve noticed that some authors of Sci Fi/Technology Thriller seem to become poorer writers as they age (or possibly write more books).
For example I found the earlier works of Michael Crichton, Orson Scott Card, and Robert Heinlein exciting and thought provoking. Their later works appeared to adopt a more conservative view, had thinner plots, and sometimes used cheap narrative tricks to resolve plot difficulties.
Some other authors seem to avoid this, or perhaps they have just stopped writing unsatisfactory books. Perhaps Crichton should giove up now to protect what is left of his reputation?
“Perhaps Crichton should giove up now to protect what is left of his reputation?”
I second the former, but it’s too late for the latter.
Crichton should just complete the process and write is opus and start his own religion/mail order business……mmmmmmm……M. Ron Crichton’s Schlockentics and Schlockology.
He could become a recluse, claim a brilliant war record, solicit donations from the controlled and have all the lastest brain-dead celebrities learn his ways and procliam his word.
Oh wait,…..that’s been done already.
For example I found the earlier works of Michael Crichton, Orson Scott Card, and Robert Heinlein exciting and thought provoking. Their later works appeared to adopt a more conservative view, had thinner plots, and sometimes used cheap narrative tricks to resolve plot difficulties.
If you think Scott Card’s work has been subpar recently, just wait until you’ve checked out his latest work, Empire about a red-state, blue-state civil war, with the noble, salt-of-the-earth conservatives fighting the terrorist liberals. I can only liken the decline of Scott Card to the deterioration in the prose of Christian when he broke up with his ghostwriter, Cyrano. I think that may be what happened in this case, since I’m having trouble conceiving of someone who wrote Ender’s Game penning such a steaming pile. If I were the editor, I would have renamed it Plan 9 from the Potomac.
Prey has cropped up.
I read The Andromena Strain while a teenager and thought it wasn’t worth reading any more Crichton when there were so many other, better, writers out there. Of course, I know plenty of people whom I respect who do read Crichton regularly, but my tastes differ.
But when Prey came out a couple of years ago, my boss insisted that I read it. She said it was the best thing she had read in years. It may well have been ;).
I was amazed that an editor would even accept Prey as a novel. It was clearly a novella, probably written in the mid-eighties when nano-tech was king. The novella was taken out of the reject drawer, dusted off, polished a little, and then end-caps were added to it to lengthen it to the size of a Crichton novel. The novella wasn’t too bad, but to pad it into a novel simply reeked of money-grubbing to me.
I’m going to continue to not read Crichton. Instead, I just ordered Feynman’s autobiographical books which I haven’t read in probably twenty years and my copies never returned from loan.
Quick follow up on Ebert: 25 years ago, he may have held higher standards, but he definitely softened as he got older. The tipping point for me came when he gave Speed 2: Cruise Control a thumbs up in 1997; you can still read the three star review on his website. Since then, every time I’ve seen his “thumbs up” touted on a movie ad, I know that the promoters of the film are using an endorsement that’s one small step up from one by 60-second preview or the Hollywood Reporter.
A friend of mine was reading The Lost World and decided to show me an example of his atrocious writing. The sentence he had me read was, and this is very close to verbatim:
PZ, rather slyly, wrote: “Welcome to my world. How do any scientists manage to accept that Christian claptrap?”
Hmm. It seems to me that Crichton *poses* as science-savvy and uses that platform to push his increasingly contrarian political views. I think we can all agree that’s not the way science policy should be done, without regard to our private views on religion.
That’s not quite the same thing as a working scientist having such views. He/She is of course compartmentalizing, choosing to set aside areas of his or her life as separate from scientific inquiry. As long as they don’t try to impose belief into the conduct of actual science, Professor Myers, I would hope you remain perplexed but unthreatened by such folk.
Including me! Peace…SH
It’s so refreshing to read that other people think Crichton sucks. For some reason — I guess as an antidote — it makes me think of challenging SF like Dahlgren by Delaney and Bradbury’s beautiful use of language in everything he wrote. Way too many hacks out there which I think testifies to the power of the teenage dollar.
The decline of Crichton into corporate shill-hood is very sad. He was always something of a Luddite, but if there was any reasonable message in his earlier novels, it was that it could be dangerous to rely on future technology to solve problems created by current technology. Now that he seems to have lost any respect for the precautionary principle, he’s just another pulp writer.
Which is funny, cuz if the people who complain about Silent Spring had ever read it, the principle is covered in there in quite some detail.
I think the important question at this point is, reputation with who? In a lot of ways Crichton’s recent actions can be seen as sacrificing reputation with one group to garner reputation with another. For example, his last couple of books may be irreparably damaging his reputation among fans of science fiction, but at the same time his reputation among James Inhofe (R-OK) is soaring.
I can’t help but contribute for your consideration Mr. Ben Mezrich, “author” of the atrocious “Bringing Down The House” (e.g., “The two were best friends, cut from the same mold.”). For runners up, “Sideways” was a horrible novel, as is “Darkly Dreaming Dexter,” but both of these at least made fantastic movies/shows.
(I know these guys have nothing to do with science or science fiction, but hey, if you can toss out Dan Brown as chum, I figure anything goes.)
Which is not of course a form of insanity in any way.
Ah, you’ve heard the little voices, too?
Seriously, C, you ever see that piece of schlock with Ray Milland, “The Thing With Two Heads”…? I was thinking about it, and I wrote a song. Here’s a few sample lyrics for you to ponder:
“It’s like some golden oldie,
in grainy black-and-white.
Some scientist gone mad
don’t know his left brain from his right.
But it’s really quite a common disease:
In fact, most the cats I know are Siamese,
Oh thank Goodness I’m not affected,
oh yes you are oh no I’m not …
oh yes you are oh no I’m not …
Everybody gawk at THE THING WITH TWO HEADS
One head is living, and the other is dead.”
Cheers…SH
There’s a thing with two heads in A Canticle For Leibowitz. Kathy Bates and Daveigh Chase would be perfect.