remember Michael Crichton? - Controversial in his lifetime, now mostly known for his dinosaur books

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skykiii

skykiii

kiwifarms.net
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17 de Jun, 2018
I won't lie... like most people, I first discovered him because of Jurassic Park and The Lost World.

I quickly discovered that Crichton is an interesting author.

From what I've been told, the guy went through eras--his earlier works were more story-focused, but by Jurassic Park (possibly earlier) his works... okay, I'll be blunt: Crichton is one of those authors whose novels are pretty much a thinly-veiled excuse for him to espouse his opinions. In between actually advancing the plot there will be pages where Ian Malcolm or whoever will go into a long lecture about some aspect of science, industry, society, or whatever.

And I completely understand if that's a turn-off for people.

Personally... I actually found his stuff engaging, and admittedly I read more of his books as much because I was interested in Crichton's opinions. It probably predicted a lot of things...

Put bluntly I get the feeling that if Crichton were alive today, he would probably be here on the Farms, as a lot of his views sound like a proto-version of stuff we say now.

For example:

--he was one of the first people I knew of to point out that feminism inspired a lot of double-standards and often ignored basic facts of humanity.

--Environmentalism, according to Crichton, is largely a religion that has no tangible benefit and is based on faulty science.

--and speaking of Science, it's become a corrupt industry that can be (and often is) paid off by the likes of pharmaceutical firms to find or claim anything that is of benefit at the time.

Part of me really wishes Crichton had lived to see the modern-day rise of the tranny, and what he would think of that.

The last book Crichton published during his lifetime was NeXt, and I'll admit... I kinda like it. It's bad (it seriously reads like a first draft) but its kind of fun in its badness, and again I can't help but enjoy the commentary on how science has become a corrupt industry. A part that I remember even after decades is this bit where a senior scientist finds a student did a genius research paper, and basically tricks the student into letting the professor claim credit for it.

There's also some Crichton quotes (and I don't remember where all these come from) that stick with me to the present day.

One of them is "A statement that can mean anything, means nothing." The original context for this was discussing some math equation that apparently people used to prove life must exist on other planets. Crichton was pointing out that the equation by design was meant to read however you damn well pleased, which means it actually proved nothing at all. I find that this statement is easily adaptable to other contexts.

So basically.... Crichton might not have been a good novelist but he was a great essayist, and I wish he had lived longer.

But that's just me, what did you think of Crichton and his work?
 
Congo is a good read (monkeys with lasers)

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The Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite novels and movies ever. Unfortunately, I picked up Sphere as my next Crichton, and it was so mediocre it put me off him.

Just going by The Andromeda Strain, I will agree with you on good novelist and great essayist; that's a good way to describe reading it.
 
Only read Jurassic Park which was okay but got a bit convoluted towards the end and Airframe! which was objectively terrible but had lots of fanservice so I can't hate it.
 
Donut Coma dijo:
The Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite novels and movies ever.
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I read the Andromeda Strain for the first time recently. It'd been a while since I'd read such a tight and focused story and the concision of it all was like heroin. I enjoy huge, sprawling epics as much as the next guy, but it's rare I read something with all the fat cut out that isn't either boring or pulp. Buddy could probably make his shopping list a fascinating read.
 
No mention of "State of Fear", with the Globalist Warming cabal as antagonist?

He even included an "author's message" which sounds quite reasonable, and of course would have him branded a heretic today:
  • Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.
  • I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don’t know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardy perennial in human calculation.
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A novel such as State of Fear, in which so many divergent views are expressed, may lead the reader to wonder where, exactly, the author stands on these issues. I have been reading environmental texts for three years, in itself a hazardous undertaking. But I have had an opportunity to look at a lot of data, and to consider many points of view. I conclude:

  • We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty.
  • Atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.
  • We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that began about 1850, as we emerged from a four-hundred-year cold spell known as the “Little Ice Age.”
  • Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.
  • Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.
  • Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century. The computer models vary by 400 percent, de facto proof that nobody knows. But if I had to guess—the only thing anyone is doing, really—I would guess the increase will be 0.812436 degrees C. There is no evidence that my guess about the state of the world one hundred years from now is any better or worse than anyone else’s. (We can’t “assess” the future, nor can we “predict” it. These are euphemisms. We can only guess. An informed guess is just a guess.)
  • I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.
  • Before making expensive policy decisions on the basis of climate models, I think it is reasonable to require that those models predict future temperatures accurately for a period of ten years. Twenty would be better.
  • I think for anyone to believe in impending resource scarcity, after two hundred years of such false alarms, is kind of weird. I don’t know whether such a belief today is best ascribed to ignorance of history, sclerotic dogmatism, unhealthy love of Malthus, or simple pigheadedness, but it is evidently a hardy perennial in human calculation.
  • There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers. So far as I know, nobody had to ban horse transport in the early twentieth century.
  • I suspect the people of 2100 will be much richer than we are, consume more energy, have a smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don’t think we have to worry about them.
  • The current near-hysterical preoccupation with safety is at best a waste of resources and a crimp on the human spirit, and at worst an invitation to totalitarianism. Public education is desperately needed.
  • I conclude that most environmental “principles” (such as sustainable development or the precautionary principle) have the effect of preserving the economic advantages of the West and thus constitute modern imperialism toward the developing world. It is a nice way of saying, “We got ours and we don’t want you to get yours, because you’ll cause too much pollution.”
  • The “precautionary principle,” properly applied, forbids the precautionary principle. It is self-contradictory. The precautionary principle therefore cannot be spoken of in terms that are too harsh.
  • I believe people are well intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.
  • I have more respect for people who change their views after acquiring new information than for those who cling to views they held thirty years ago. The world changes. Ideologues and zealots don’t.
  • In the thirty-five-odd years since the environmental movement came into existence, science has undergone a major revolution. This revolution has brought new understanding of nonlinear dynamics, complex systems, chaos theory, catastrophe theory. It has transformed the way we think about evolution and ecology. Yet these no-longer-new ideas have hardly penetrated the thinking of environmental activists, which seems oddly fixed in the concepts and rhetoric of the 1970s.
  • We haven’t the foggiest notion how to preserve what we term “wilderness,” and we had better study it in the field and learn how to do so. I see no evidence that we are conducting such research in a humble, rational, and systematic way. I therefore hold little hope for wilderness management in the twenty-first century. I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners. There is no difference in outcomes between greed and incompetence.
  • We need a new environmental movement, with new goals and new organizations. We need more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens. We need more scientists and many fewer lawyers.
  • We cannot hope to manage a complex system such as the environment through litigation. We can only change its state temporarily—usually by preventing something—with eventual results that we cannot predict and ultimately cannot control.
  • Nothing is more inherently political than our shared physical environment, and nothing is more ill served by allegiance to a single political party. Precisely because the environment is shared it cannot be managed by one faction according to its own economic or aesthetic preferences. Sooner or later, the opposing faction will take power, and previous policies will be reversed. Stable management of the environment requires recognition that all preferences have their place: snowmobilers and fly fishermen, dirt bikers and hikers, developers and preservationists. These preferences are at odds, and their incompatibility cannot be avoided. But resolving incompatible goals is a true function of politics.
  • We desperately need a nonpartisan, blinded funding mechanism to conduct research to determine appropriate policy. Scientists are only too aware whom they are working for. Those who fund research—whether a drug company, a government agency, or an environmental organization—always have a particular outcome in mind. Research funding is almost never open-ended or open-minded. Scientists know that continued funding depends on delivering the results the funders desire. As a result, environmental organization “studies” are every bit as biased and suspect as industry “studies.” Government “studies” are similarly biased according to who is running the department or administration at the time. No faction should be given a free pass.
  • I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
  • I personally experience a profound pleasure being in nature. My happiest days each year are those I spend in wilderness. I wish natural environments to be preserved for future generations. I am not satisfied they will be preserved in sufficient quantities, or with sufficient skill. I conclude that the “exploiters of the environment” include environmental organizations, government organizations, and big business. All have equally dismal track records.
  • Everybody has an agenda. Except me.
 
Prey is one of my favorite books as a kid. It had action, drama, and nanobots before they became a plague in all other fiction that includes them. I wish I could have as fun of an experience while still learning new concepts from other books.

Edit: Hot take, the lost world book is better than the movie.
 
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Donut Coma dijo:
The Andromeda Strain is one of my favorite novels and movies ever. Unfortunately, I picked up Sphere as my next Crichton, and it was so mediocre it put me off him.

Just going by The Andromeda Strain, I will agree with you on good novelist and great essayist; that's a good way to describe reading it.
Presiona para expandir...
He started Sphere while writing the Andromeda Strain, because he wanted to explore first contact with intelligent alien life and punted on it in that book. Good for The Andromeda Strain, ultimately bad for Sphere.

Eaters of the Dead is probably my favorite of his novels. Taking a real-life account of an Arab traveler who went into 900's Russia and met the Vikings that would become the Rus people, he expanded the story into a what if, had the man traveled further north into Scandinavia proper. I won't spoil what he encounters there, but it's a fantastic journey.
 
I love Crichton, hands down my favorite fiction writer. I'm starting terminal man tonight. Just finished Sphere. I liked Airframe because I'm an aerospace fag, the politics of his work can be a bit much, but I can usually look past it since the actual story is always good. He was also the writer of a medical drama in the 90's called ER, it's pretty terrible with all the diversity and whatnot but still worth a watch for background noise.
 
skykiii dijo:
okay, I'll be blunt: Crichton is one of those authors whose novels are pretty much a thinly-veiled excuse for him to espouse his opinions. In between actually advancing the plot there will be pages where Ian Malcolm or whoever will go into a long lecture about some aspect of science, industry, society, or whatever.
Presiona para expandir...
His self-insert characters were always my favorite part of his books, especially when he clearly had unorthodox, controversial opinions on a subject.
 
JohnnyG dijo:
No mention of "State of Fear", with the Globalist Warming cabal as antagonist?
Presiona para expandir...

State of Fear is a hilarious book. the main character is basically an NPC wojak who gets swept up in the globe-trotting adventures of an infinitely rich philanthropist slash genius scientist and his two hardboiled undercover cop buddies, who are humanity's only hope against an evil climate terrorist group that is plotting to cause a series of international incidents and kill millions of people. their justification is that climate change is real but it's happening slowly and not dramatically enough to turn people's heads, so they're going to make people believe in climate change by engineering fake climate disasters. they are, of course, being funded and manipulated by a not-George-Soros figure who knows it's all bullshit but is exploiting the climate panic for his own political and financial gain. the dramatic action sequences are punctuated by ridiculous scenes where the NPC protagonist blurts out something like "But the news says climate change is real!" only for Genius Billionaire Man to soundly own him with a Randian 30-page lecture containing a book's worth of statistics proving global warming is a hoax, instantly blowing his mind and stunning him into silence while the red pill works its magic. I like Michael Crichton - The Andromeda Strain and Prey were my faves - and I'm no climate shill, but don't confuse State of Fear for the level-headed musings of a concerned man of science. it is meme-tier FOX boomer wank material through and through.

JohnnyG dijo:
He even included an "author's message" which sounds quite reasonable, and of course would have him branded a heretic today:
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the book caused a minor moral panic in its day lasting several years after its release. though not as visible and mainstream as it would be today, predictable culture war lines were drawn among reviewers, and a couple of annoying people took it upon themselves to write point-for-point refutations of all of the book's talking points to correcT the record. it got some minor media attention from a few political figures waving it around to support their own talking points, including a dude who was notably on the payroll of the oil industry (oil execs knowing climate change was real while pushing money around to spread propaganda saying it was false was a big early brain worm topic). the general lib consensus was that they used to respect Michael Crichton but are now very disappointed in him for spreading Dangerous Untruths, and an apology was quietly demanded. instead, he died. coincidence? you decide....................
 
I’ve only ever read Andromeda Strain and Disclosure.

Andromeda Strain is absolutely an excellent book. Methanol poisoning changing your blood pH was such a clever plot point.

Disclosure was definitely ahead of its time. VR and sexual harassment from women.

The Andromeda Strain movie was decent too.
 
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Crichton is one of my favorite authors to read, I started with Jurassic Park when I was like eight or so. I still need to read Andromeda Strain but I have yet to read one of his books I didn't like.
 
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