Michael Crichton dead at 66

RIP

I liked his novels, pity he died at such a young age.

Yet another great writer dies

Sadly we lose another great writer.

The thing I liked about his books is that they were very believable. You could easily get lost in them due to the way he wove his story. He was able to make you feel something for each of his characters.

RIP.

It's not true

It's all just a conspiratorial fraud to make money. I've written a book about it, please buy it.

Michael Crichton falls into the category (along with Stephen King) of having interesting and well written books that just end badly every time. Sphere was the worst example of his I read.

Stephen King?

Interesting and well written books? You insult literature, you cad.

@Stephen King?

Have to agree with you Mr Coward. Stephen King must be one of the world's worst authors.

I would rather read a cornflakes packet. Far more substance.

Whoops

I didn't mean to say that King was a good writer (although a couple of his books turned into films were pretty good, and only a couple, Pet Cemetary has to be the worst film ever), but that the authors share the inability to make a half decent ending.

Crichton the illiterate

I started some books, failed to finish some, hated the lot. His characters failed to be at all credible, his plots sucked, his ideas (jurassic park excepted) sucked, he just couldn't write.

@Thomas Shinnick:

on your recommendation I checked out Tomatoes (generally found wanting) & then Wiki. Assuming this isn't vandalism, here's an extract from the latter <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13th_Warrior>:

{{

The outcome of this film's production disappointed Omar Sharif so much that he retired from film acting. He did not take a role in a major film until 2003's Monsieur Ibrahim.:

"After my small role in The 13th Warrior, I said to myself, 'Let us stop this nonsense, these meal tickets that we do because it pays well.' I thought, 'Unless I find a stupendous film that I love and that makes me want to leave home to do, I will stop.' Bad pictures are very humiliating, I was really sick. It is terrifying to have to do the dialogue from bad scripts, to face a director who does not know what he is doing, in a film so bad that it is not even worth exploring." [1]

}}

Why does mediocrity thrive?

State of Fear

@all who made comments re: Crichton's skepticism around Global Warming;

Actually Michael Crichton at the epilogue to State of Fear did not deny global warming as a threat. He made the point that we should be careful of research commissioned by entities with a vested interest in the outcome of the research.

No mention of West World?

This was another seminal Crichton work...

Though I admired his earlier work I didn't think much of his later efforts.

Still; a great creative mind now departed.

A real shame!

I too really enjoyed his books. And although Jurassic Park was a fun film, the book had more science in it to back up the plausibility of cloning dinosaurs. His medical background really shows through in the attention to detail he put in his books.

He will be missed. RIP.

"Its a Unix system. I know this!" ( for the IT angle)

New book

I believe there is a new book scheduled for end of Nov / beginning of Dec. I presume (hope) this will still be released.

To Stefan Paetow re Odd Thomas

erm... Odd Thomas is a Dean L Koontz creation. So there will be another one along in 12-18 months.

Westworld

AFAIK, he never wrote WestWorld, but it was a pretty good movie, like something he might have written. Similarly, Coma was actually a Robin Cook novel, but he did a pretty good job directing it.

Sad to see another author go. Have to agree with some of the other comments, he was a good writer, but had a lot of crappy endings.

My favorite would probably have to be Eaters of the Dead, though that was so atypical of his work. Timeline & Sphere were rubbish. Disclosure & Prey amongst the better of his later works. For the older stuff, I'd have to go with Terminal Man.

We'll miss you, Michael!

'Eaters of the Dead'

Thomas Shinnick wrote: 're-imagined an old Anglo-Saxon tale'.

Actually it's based on an incomplete account by the Arab Ibn Fadlan of his encounters with Swedes ;) Crichton's brilliant idea was to start his book where the Ibn Fadlan account suddenly breaks off.

The book is excellent, the movie much less so. An annotated version of the original Ibn Fadlan narrative is here:

http://www.uib.no/jais/v003ht/03-001-025Montgom1.htm

I enjoyed

Andromeda Strain, Westworld, Jurassic Park, 13th Warrior (be quiet, Omar). Thanks, Michael.

Goodbye, Mr. Crichton

I read a lot of your books, and enjoyed them immensely. From "A Case of Need", "The Andromeda Strain", and "Eaters of the Dead"; to "Rising Sun", "Jurassic Park", and "Airframe". I also enjoyed and admired your handywork in such great, through-provoking, and yes, entertaining films such as "Coma", "Westworld", and "Looker", which provide not only a thrilling experience, but social commentary on the human condition.

My warmest regards go to your family and friends; may you rest in peace. You will surely be missed.

-dZ.

Unfortunately...

Unfortunately, the only book of his I've read was "State of Fear", which was crap... Entertaining, easy to read, sure. But the cheap literary tricks he uses are SO cheesy, SO obvious... Shallow characters with obvious motives, all that. The "science" was crap too -- not even the biggest sceptics with funding from fossil-fuel companies deny any more that it is getting warmer, because it's quite impossible to have a brain and do so; they now deny it's human caused. And the fact he put a disclaimer at the end does not excuse the rest of the book.

I wonder if his other books are like that.

Anyway, sympathies to his family and friends.