It was the last Chriton book I read.
“Prey” got such bad reader & critical reviews that i gave up on him.
When I read “Timeline” I felt that it was written to be a movie. It lacked the technical depth that I like from Chriton.
“Congo” should never have seen life as a movie.
“The Andromeda Strain” was the best as a movie.
That’s because Crichton doesn’t write ER, at least not since the first season. Executive producer, yes, hands-on, daily manipulator of story, plot and dialogue, no.
I liked the book, not as a technical treatise but as a story. It had gaping holes of logic, absolutely, but it was an enjoyable summer vacation read. But as I read it, I thought “They’re going to make this into a movie, and they’re going to blow key parts of it because of the language issue, and it’s going to suck.”
Fast forward three years. My prediction comes true. Whodathunkit?
This will be a “after it’s not a new release” DVD rental, at best. Maybe a “catch it if it’s on one of our premium channels on cable” thing instead.
Heh.
I remember a some reviewer or other commenting that Crichton doesn’t write science fiction, he writes anti-science fiction.
Fenris
Actually, I find this idea to be one of the more sensical ones. Basically, the idea is that what we are experiencing is the world in which the actions of time travelers have had an effect. Thus, when you go back in time you aren’t changing anything, because in the present you have already done so - things have already “changed” so there’s no difference.
Hrm, I see I’m not making much sense. How about an example. If I go back in time to write my name on a wall, then in the present time my name was always on the wall - hence, my going back in time to write it changes nothing.
I think it just has something to do with the way he writes. I can pick up a Crichton book and point out all the plot holes and shallow characters that I want, but I can’t put the book down! It’s like Crichton has stumbled on the formula for literary crack. In his slightly-more-realistic novels like “Airframe,” he has the ability to get me interested in subjects that I thought I didn’t care about. He seems to have a gift for providing the perfect amount of technical information for the casual reader. It’s always enough to whet the reader’s appetite, but never too much that it will bore him.
When you compare him to other authors I enjoy, the flowery prose of Truman Capote makes Michael Crichton look like a hack. When it comes to character development and realism, everyone makes him look like a hack. Characters Tolstoy wrote about 150 years ago are more identifiable to me than MP3-player-toting characters that Crichton created last year.
It seems like you can pick out pretty much any aspect of his writing and find a thousand authors that can do it better. Few, if any of them, however, have the ability to make me lay on the couch and keep reading for twelve hours or more, stopping only for bathroom breaks. I hear about cocaine users staying up for days on end and only going to sleep when the coke runs out, and suddenly I can relate. Good thing Crichton doesn’t write epics.
Michael Crichton is not a great writer. His ideas are not profound and his books do not challenge the reader or break any literary ground. I would not be at all surprised if his name is little more than a footnote in a hundred years. Still, though, I always shell out money for hardback copies of his books as soon as they come out. They are great entertainment.
Exactly! When the book suxs, and the Computer Game was an abominatino to Nature why’d you watch the movie.
PS Did you notice how once they started advertising the movie it wasn’t **Michael Crichton ** Timeline, like the game & book were it was just Timeline. Even he knows how bad it is.