RIP Michael Crichton

[Mike24]

Haven't read him in years, but here's a thread for the dude who is very much responsible for getting me into reading as child.  The book is always better than the movie, people.

[elpollodiablo]

Yeah I know there's a lot of understandable hate out there, but this guy is pretty much responsible for getting me to read full-fledged novels in the fourth grade.

[YojimboMonkey]

also responsible for some bitchin movies like Jurassic Park, Westworld, the 13th Warrior

[dieblucasdie]

...Congo

[elpollodiablo]

Hahaha oh man Westworld

Haven't seen that movie since old times

[jebreject]

Yeah I know there's a lot of understandable hate out there, but this guy is pretty much responsible for getting me to read full-fledged novels in the fourth grade.

Same here.

[davy]

Sphere was pretty much perfect entertainment for 13 year-old me.

[davy]

From the other thread:

andromeda strain was rad

You gotta admit that the ending was pudding-soft, though.

That was his thing, man. Fucking TERRIBLE endings. In Sphere, they're all basically omnipotent, so they force themselves to forget they're omnipotent. In Congo, they finally find the blue diamond or whatever that they've been looking for, but in a fit of sentimental wistfulness, they throw it over the side of their escape hot-air balloon. In Jurassic Park, they just....leave the island.

Others have similarly blank endings.

In related news, Terminal Man is one of the worst books I've ever read, and I knew that such was the case even in middle school.

[Greg Nog]

I seem to recall Sphere having one or two awesome sexy bits in it.  That's all I remember about it, though.  I'm worried that going back to it after a couple of decades, I'll find that those "awesome sexy bits" are actually along the lines of: "She took off her shirt.  She had boobs."

[davy]

Also, this deserves to be posted. It's from Salon.com's Readers Guide to Contemporary Authors.

Although Michael Crichton has written fourteen novels, four works of nonfiction, seven screenplays, and nine other books under pseudonyms, it is not necessarily clear that he is a writer. He is, without a doubt, the most successful crafter of popular entertainment in this century. The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Disclosure, Rising Sun, Twister, [Sphere, Congo,] and the television show ER, among others, all emanated from his pen, quickly moving from print to visual media, usually finding spectacular financial success. Crichton himself was equally adaptable, directing seven of the movies made from his books. In 1995 alone, his earnings topped twenty-two million dollars.

[Mike24]

Sphere was pretty much perfect entertainment for 13 year-old me.

yep, i read that whole thing lying in bed in one night.  13 year-old me thought that was quite an accomplishment.

[davy]

It was pretty creepy in parts!

[diesel_powered]

Yeah I know there's a lot of understandable hate out there, but this guy is pretty much responsible for getting me to read full-fledged novels in the fourth grade.

Same here.

Thirded.

[hannah]

yeah, in the third grade I was all, "Mom, your book group should definitely do Jurassic Park next"

Anyway, I will remember him by returning again and again to the Michael/Mick Crowley libel case. Sez Michael Crowley:

There is an obscure publishing doctrine known as “the small penis rule.” As described in a 1998 New York Times article, it is a sly trick employed by authors who have defamed someone to discourage their targets from filing lawsuits. As libel lawyer Leon Friedman explained to the Times, “No male is going to come forward and say, ‘That character with a very small penis, ‘That’s me!’” This gimmick was undoubtedly on the mind of Michael Crichton, the pulp science-fiction writer of Jurassic Park fame, when he wrote the following passage in his latest novel, Next. (Caution: Graphic imagery. Kids, ask for permission before reading on):

    Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. Crowley was a wealthy, spoiled Yale graduate and heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. …

    It turned out Crowley’s taste in love objects was well known in Washington, but [his lawyer]–as was his custom–tried the case vigorously in the press months before the trial, repeatedly characterizing Alex and the child’s mother as “fantasizing feminist fundamentalists” who had made up the whole thing from “their sick, twisted imaginations.” This, despite a well-documented hospital examination of the child. (Crowley’s penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler’s rectum.)

The next page contains fleeting references to Crowley as a “weasel” and a “dickhead,” and, later, “that political reporter who likes little boys.” But that’s it–Crowley comes and goes without affecting the plot. He is not a character so much as a voodoo doll. Knowing that Crichton had used prior books to attack very real-seeming people, I was suspicious. Who was this Mick Crowley? A Google search turned up an Irish Workers Party politician in Knocknaheeny, Ireland. But Crowley’s tireless advocacy for County Cork’s disabled seemed to make him an unlikely target of Crichton’s ire. And that’s when it dawned on me: I happen to be a Washington political journalist. And, yes, I did attend Yale University. And, come to think of it, I had recently written a critical 3,700-word cover story about Crichton. In lieu of a letter to the editor, Crichton had fictionalized me as a child rapist. And, perhaps worse, falsely branded me a pharmaceutical-industry profiteer.

[davy]

Wow.

[elpollodiablo]

That's fucking hilarious

[lastclearchance]

Yeah I know there's a lot of understandable hate out there, but this guy is pretty much responsible for getting me to read full-fledged novels in the fourth grade.

Same here.

Thirded.

Yeah, after I read Jurassic Park like ten times, I moved through the rest of his work. My fourth grade math teacher called my parents to make sure they were aware I was reading Rising Sun.

[elpollodiablo]

I feel like we've had this conversation before, but that EXACT SAME THING happened to me. My parents were totally freaked I was reading that in the fourth grade.

[diesel_powered]

I read that book in middle school and I don't remember finding it particularly shocking. Yeah, there was that whole dead hooker thing, but I can't remember anything particularly lurid going on in that book.