The Novels of Michael Crichton

Disclosure was food too, Airframe was pointless

I love how the way that they discover that the dinosaurs are mating in Jurassic Park is by increasing the number of dinosaurs they search for on the inventory screen.

hahaha yeah that's great! See, that's the kind of dopily techy plot detail I can get behind. The program was designed for one set of circumstances and totally leaves them blind to this other problem. Drama!

this is Sphere vs Rising Sun vs A Case of Need, and now I am tempted to try to reread all three of these. Liked JP too, but I do not remember any of the specific gore scenes from that (except maybe Nedry's disembowelment).

The earth shook beneath him and Nedry knew the dinosaur was moving, he could hear its soft hooting cry, and despite the pain he forced his eyes open and still he saw nothing but flashing spots against black. Slowly the realization came to him.

He was blind.

The hooting was louder as Nedry scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could feel it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath.

But he couldn't see.

He couldn't see anything, and his terror was extreme.

He stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming.

And then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

his terror was extreme

(courtesy http://www.e-reading-lib.org/book.php?book=73660)

Raptor-on-raptor violence scene is here: http://www.e-reading-lib.org/chapter.php/73660/61/Crichton_-_Jurassic_Park.html

I remember the young male boy exclaiming "SHIT!" a lot in the book too

"Look," Wu said, "the fact remains, all the animals are female. They can't breed."

Grant had been thinking about that. He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer.

Seriously love this guy's See Spot Run approach to science fiction. It really plays like fanfic.

He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer. Which is puzzling because the study was about the behavioral effects of hostel overcrowding.

I'm going to start dealing with all ILX clusterfucks by claiming I've recently learned of an intriguing West German study that I suspect holds the answer.

it's too bad Crichton didn't write more books in the Information Age, woulda been fun to fuck with him by placing nonsense in scentific articles on Wikipedia, then watch them make their way into his books

At least once a month the big medical reveal of Andromeda Strain (why did the baby and the old man survive?) comes to mind when I'm looking at an arterial blood gas or a minimum / maximum speed sign on a freeway.

read JP first; i remember sphere being weirdly creepy, eaters being like "ok this is no longer fun," rising sun "ok i'll give it one more chance," and disclosure "i wonder if sharon stone is naked"

At least once a month the big medical reveal of Andromeda Strain (why did the baby and the old man survive?) comes to mind when I'm looking at an arterial blood gas or a minimum / maximum speed sign on a freeway.

― Plasmon, Tuesday, June 25, 2013 12:54 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha totally, i can still remember how this whole thing plays out too - the old Sterno-drinking drifter!

I've read far too many of these. Sphere is the best by a mile.

When you open The Lost Worldt you enter a strange terrain of one-page chapters, one-sentence paragraphs and one-word sentences. You will gaze through the thick canopy of authorial padding. It's a jungle out there, and jungles are 'hot' sometimes 'very hot'. 'Malcolm wiped his forehead. "It's hot up here." 'Levine agrees: 'Yes, it's hot."' Thirty pages later it's still hot. '"Jeez, it's hot up here," Eddie said.' And Levine agrees again: '"Yes," Levine said, shrugging.' Out there, beyond the foliage, you see herds of cliches, roaming free. You will listen in 'stunned silence' to an 'unearthly cry' or a 'deafening roar'. Raptors are 'rapacious'. Reptiles are 'reptilian'. Pain is 'searing'.
The job of characterization has been delegated to two or three thrashed and downtrodden adverbs. 'Dodgson shook his head irritably'; '"Handle what?" Dodgson said irritably.' So Dodgson is irritable. But '"I tell you it's fine," Levine said irritably.' 'Levine got up irritably.' So Levine is irritable too. 'Malcolm stared forward gloomily.' '"We shouldn't have the kids here," said Malcolm gloomily.' Malcolm seems to own 'gloomily'; but then you irritably notice that Rossiter is behaving 'gloomily' too, and gloomily discover that Malcolm is behaving 'irritably'. Forget about 'tensely' and 'grimly' for now. And don't get me started on 'thoughtfully'.

-Martin Amis, "Park II"

I've not read any of these, but Sphere is my favorite of the film adaptations I've seen.

qAnd then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

lol @ crichton very obviously applying the writing 101 technique of looooong sentence, shorter sentence, very short sentence

I never finished reading The Lost World (as it was hella boring), but I'm thankful for it as it inspired one of the most delightfully stupid cinematic scenes ever in the form of a young female gymnast doing a somersalt and kicking over a dinosaur that weighs several tons.

i read jurassic park in.... 2nd grade? when my parents told me that if i read the book i could see the movie, something they didnt think id be able to accomplish. but i did. all i really took from it was the everyday use of the phrase "jesus christ" which i dont think id ever said as an exclamation before i read the book.

sphere, though. and great train robbery--i remember really loving those, tearing through them. eaters of the dead to some extent, too, in retrospect more interesting as a historical/counter-historical exercise than i realized at the time (or maybe not, i havent gone back to it, heh)

iirc from the eaters of the dead foreword the guy harbored a lot of resentment about how his stuff was reviewed and perceived, by critics and scientists alike, which i think shed some light on why he became a climate change denialist

ha i read it in 3rd grade because my mom wouldn't let me see the movie and i figured this was the next best thing. totally remember nedry's guts falling out during Silent Reading Time or naptime or whatever. looking around the room.

i think i read the junior novelization of the movie first :>

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kyyc2lLHDJ1qbpwb1o1_400.jpg

which reminds me, the way i got into star wars was also through a junior novelization, or it might have been the alan dean foster novelization. then i think i convinced them to buy me the x-wing computer game, on floppy disk, somewhere. when i finally convinced my parents to buy the just-released trilogy on VHS at shoprite, it was a really Big Deal for me.

"hey look it's got eight pages of color photos from the movie" is what i say almost every time i open a book that has, like, plates of nicholas ii in his garden in the middle of it or something, even if i'm alone xp

in the x-wing computer game, i never got past the first mission where you had to blow up 6 freighters or something like that. fortunately you could turn on invincibility and infinite ammo straight from the menu screen

i had tie fighter but i remember being sort of scandalized by the very idea

Crichton was always both of his time and yet always past the shelf date due to no actual pretensions at futurism. It's not really an error, but the quote above about a "West German scientist" made me recheck when Jurassic Park came out -- nearly an exact year after the Berlin wall fell. Which makes it a not-inaccurate reference, but still seems dated.

I took a sci-fi literature class in college and after reading through a reasonable survey of books leaning on the last few decades (John Brunner, Le Guin, Dan Simmons' Hyperion, The Canticle of Leibowitz) we met to discuss the first half of Jurassic Park. The professor admitted that the writing was... not exactly good and we ended up just watching the movie in the next class meeting.

which reminds me, the way i got into star wars was also through a junior novelization, or it might have been the alan dean foster novelization. then i think i convinced them to buy me the x-wing computer game, on floppy disk, somewhere. when i finally convinced my parents to buy the just-released trilogy on VHS at shoprite, it was a really Big Deal for me.

― 乒乓, Tuesday, June 25, 2013 9:40 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i realize that i used the pronoun before the antecedent here. this is the danger of editing your posts on ilx. better go just go with what you had typed out in the first place

I think A Case of Need is an amateur-detective novel about a doctor who is trying to get his friend, who performs abortions, off of a murder rap. But it's been like 15 years, so I am really fuzzy on details...

i read jurassic park in.... 2nd grade? when my parents told me that if i read the book i could see the movie, something they didnt think id be able to accomplish.

ha i read it in 3rd grade because my mom wouldn't let me see the movie and i figured this was the next best thing

http://musicnerdery.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/itchy-and-scratchy-the-movie-the-novel.jpeg

i too read the book because i wasn't allowed to go see the movie, although i did end up seeing it eventually in the theater for some other kid's birthday, happily bypassing my dad's movie rules

-Martin Amis, "Park II"

― slam dunk, Tuesday, June 25, 2013 2:38 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

awww

this book was sent to me at work because the writer's day job is working at Valve...but anyway if you wish there were new Crichton books, this is pretty dead on w/the mix of violence, fast pace intrigue, and cod science:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805096175

Is is shittily written tho

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

is michael crichton the least original author ever

no but he writes the most beautiful prose

The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

this is a p good thread, sorry i missed it

i realised the other day that i'd stuck 'rising sun' and 'disclosure' together in my head, what i realise today is 'airframe' was in there too

like someone was falsely accused of rape by his boss but it was nabd because it was in japan and the tits had just fallen off a boeing 767

After that late night I spent rereading most of Jurassic Park as a .txt file I don't think I can vote for it in good conscience. Would go with Sphere which would probably similarly disappoint me but was a bigger "woah, coooooool" thing when I was a kid... but now I'm remembering that it boils down to a stereotype-breaking black nerd who is secretly a stereotype-affirming angry black man, and a CRAZY WOMAN ON VALIUM, and the bland white guy who has to save the day. Andromeda Strain gets around these problems by having the entire cast consist of white men, though it's otherwise probably his most defensible techno-thriller in terms of ideas and plotting and so on.

What the hell - Great Train Robbery. I'd read that again at a beach or something.

andromeda strain is the first story i think of when i think of deus ex machina

"Changed," Stone said. "Mutated."

"Yes. Mutated to a noninfectious form. And perhaps it is still mutating. Now it is no longer directly harmful to man, but it eats rubber gaskets."

I voted for Jurassic Park because I read it shortly after the film came out and though the "his guts had fallen out bit" was super cool. I went around school telling everyone how the book was super violent and so much more mature than the movie

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I went around school telling everyone how the book was super violent and so much more mature than the movie

haha yep me too. in retrospect though i'm very glad spielberg chose to emphasize the "holy shit dinosaurs are fucking awesome" angle over crichton's "dinosaurs are fucking horrifying and here is why you would never want one near you" attitude.