Physician / author Michael Crichton has passed away at age 66.
He will be missed.
–James
Yes he shall.
Wow! That one came out of nowhere. I found many of his books vastly entertaining, and none of the films to come close to his books. Here’s](http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/michael-crichton-dies/?hp%22%3EHere%27s) the NYTimes article.
djm
The Andromeda Strain was published in 1969. Quite impressive. He would’ve been about 26 when he wrote it.
One of my favorites.
I read and liked a lot of his books. Based on that I read State of Fear. I read it simply because it was Michael Crichton. It was good enough as a thriller, but as I neared the end of the book, I kept checking the list of titles in the front of the book. Is this the same guy?! It was a very politically aggressive and very reactionary. Very weird, but he wrote a lot of good books.
State of Fear is well worth reading; he makes valid criticisms against the “science” of global warming and against politicizing science in general.
He was an outspoken and even-handed critic of the many ways in which scientific knowledge can be misused, and many of his later novels revisited this theme.
–James
This is indeed tragic. Like many of you, I’ve read a lot of his books.
My favorites are Timeline and Eaters of the Dead
That’s a very generous analysis. I thought portraying mainstream American environmental organizations as covertly orchestrating cataclysmic environmental disasters around the globe, with massive loss of human life, as a way to encourage donations, was a bit excessive. As I recall, the enviros also had a large and well trained and equipped military wing perpetrating these disasters as well as carrying out numerous political assassinations. Sierra Club anyone?
One of the great page-turners of all time. I re-read it recently and it holds up surprisingly well.