In other news Michael Crichton passed away. I somehow remember writing in my 6th grade yearbook that Crichton was my favorite author. I had seen and then read The Andromeda Strain and loved it. After that I read everything of his that I could find, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, etc. They were fun quick reads and as techno-thrillers, emphasized science. I saw his movies (Westworld, Coma, Looker, Runaway) and watched ER.
After the success of the film version of Jurassic Park (which was great), Hollywood mined his other books and I was happy. Until I saw those films. Rising Sun and Disclosure were ok but flawed. Congo, a book I had liked because I liked the idea of jungle exploration with high tech, was an appallingly bad film. I looked forward to Sphere but that was horrible too. Dustin Hoffman's character first question to an alien being was to ask its last name for the report. " I want a full name for my report. I'm not putting in my report that I lost a crew member on a deep-sat expedition to find an alien named Jerry." This is was so ridiculously stupid I had to pull the book off my shelf and find out how Crichton had originally written the scene and yup, it word for word from the book. Oh well.
After my mother's long illness I remember sitting at my father's house with not much to do, I didn't have Internet access. Things had been so busy and stressful for months that I used spare time to keep up with work and wasn't reading anything for entertainment at all. I just didn't have the concentration. I picked up Crichton's Airframe and finished it in one sitting. A great book? Not at all. But it got me reading again and I'll always appreciate that.
I read State of Fear on a cruise and hated it. He always blended real science with fiction but in this case he did it with global warming. He clearly stated it was a work of fiction and he was trying to increase critical thinking, but it was done in a way that blurred the facts and that allowed deniers to use it to support their cause. Yeah I know what it should say about them for using a work of fiction as evidence, but there you go.
Still I have Timeline at home and haven't read it yet. Maybe as a quick read after Anathem which I'm about to get back to.
2 comments:
I ready Andromeda for the first time only a month ago. It was a ridiculously quick read and thought it was okay, but not nearly as phenomenal as I was lead to believe. For one thing, the ending was very underwhelming - trying to avoid spoilers here, but the problem just kinda resolved itself. No feats of superhuman scientific prowess were necessary. I did, though, like the basic premise of the story and the science behind the research lab.
I detested Sphere. No desire to see the movie, because I thought the book was moronic.
Jurassic Park, OTOH, I fully enjoyed. Too bad they had to go and ruin things with a lameass sequel to the movie.
My captcha phrase for this comment is "dispeive." ignoring the i-before-e rule, I think dipsieve would make a fine word, worthy of a humorous definition.
The original Andromeda film was faithful to the book. There was a recent TV version that was horrible. I think for when it was written it was quite good and of course I read it in 6th grade. The first page suggests this is an official military report and I remember having a problem figuring out if the story was real or not.
I'm sure the book Sphere was awful. But really to be sure to avoid the film. The Abyss was a much better version of the story.
For a while I really liked the book Congo, but I hesitate to recommend it since I don't remember it and the movie was so horrendous.
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