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layout: post
title: Michael Crichton -  A Great Author
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*Jurassic Park* and *The Lost World* are movies that almost everyone I know have
seen. These movies prompted me to read the novels, and, out of curiosity and
knowing that novels always contain more detail than movies, I did read them,
laying my hands on a second hand copy of *Jurassic Park*, and later on *The Lost
World*. Thus did I start reading books by Crichton, on of my favourite authors.
It did shock (and dishearten) me to learn that he died on November 4, 2008, due
to cancer (I learned it only a week after, when I checked the Wiki article on
him).

[John Michael Crichton, M. D.][crichton] (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008)
was a prolific American author, producer, director, and physician. His first
book, *Odds On*, was released under the nom-de-plume John Lange. He followed it up
with brilliant novels like *The Andromeda Strain*, *Sphere*, *State of Fear*, and
*Timeline*. *The Andromeda Strain* was the first novel published under his own name.
His last novel till date (there's one waiting to be published) was *Next*, which
was about dangers of genetic engineering.

Most of his novels followed a
cautionary pattern and are techno-thrillers, like *Jurassic Park*, which dealt
with cloning and control of living beings, or *State of Fear*, about problems
created by violent pro-environment groups. *State of Fear* had an especially
strong effect on me, so that I nearly stopped trusting mass media. Indeed, a
friend was recently commending Al Gore's *An Inconvenient Truth*, when I responded
that I'd watched it already, but it failed to convert me because of my
suspicions.


> "I want to state emphatically that nothing in my remarks should be taken to
> imply that we can ignore our environment, or that we should not take climate
> change seriously. On the contrary, we must dramatically improve our record on
> environmental management. That is why a focused effort on climate science, aimed
> at securing sound, independently verified answers to policy questions, is so
> important now."
>
>  - *Testimony before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (28
   September 2005)*

> **"Environmentalism needs to be absolutely based in objective and verifiable
> science, it needs to be rational, and it needs to be flexible. And it needs to
> be apolitical. To mix environmental concerns with the frantic fantasies that
> people have about one political party or another is to miss the cold truth —
> that there is very little difference between the parties, except a difference in
> pandering rhetoric."**
>
>  - *in Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)*

For me, his best novel is *Sphere*, in which a group of scientists encounter an
alien object within an American spaceship from the future. It grants the power
to make what they think happen to those who enter the sphere. Indeed, the
thoughts need not be conscious, but can also be subconscious. This made an
interesting and gripping tale, which left me wondering about the consequences if
I had entered the Sphere. I certainly recommend this book to my readers.

Now that another great science fiction author has passed on, I think that
Fantasy's time has come. Through the 1950's to the 1980's, science fiction was
highly popular, and enjoyed a number of brilliant authors like Isaac Asimov,
Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein and so on. Books in the Fantasy genre have
become hugely popular now, what with *Harry Potter* and the *Inheritance* series,
and the *Wheels of Time*. Its getting really difficult to get books by Asimov or
Clarke, while I can't remember when I last saw one by Heinlein. Now with
Crichton gone, will his books vanish from the book stores of India? I hope not.

> I want to mention in passing that punditry has undergone a subtle change over
> the years. In the old days, commentators such as Eric Sevareid spent most of
> their time putting events in a context, giving a point of view about what had
> already happened. Telling what they thought was important or irrelevant in the
> events that had already taken place. This is of course a legitimate function of
> expertise in every area of human knowledge.
> 
> But over the years the punditic thrust has shifted away from discussing what has
> happened, to discussing what may happen. And here the pundits have no benefit of
> expertise at all. Worse, they may, like the Sunday politicians, attempt to
> advance one or another agenda by predicting its imminent arrival or demise. This
> is politicking, not predicting.
> 
> - "Why Speculate?" - speech at the International Leadership Forum, La Jolla,
>   California (26 April 2002).

> "We are all assumed, these days, to reside at one extreme of the opinion
> spectrum, or another. We are pro-abortion or anti-abortion. We are free traders
> or protectionist. We are pro-private sector or pro-big government. We are
> feminists or chauvinists. But in the real world, few of us holds these extreme
> views. There is instead a spectrum of opinion."
