Michael Crichton
passed
away yesterday. His early novels and movies showing the potential
dark sides of technology had a strong impact on me in my youth.
The Andromeda Strain
deals with an extraterrestrial virus from a
military satellite.
The
movie Westworld,
written and directed by Crichton, is about a fantasy land where a
gun-slinging robot, played by Yul Brynner, doesn't behave as he
should.
The Terminal Man
doesn't refer to someone
about to die but direct connections between humans and computers. If I
remember right people became addicted to stimulating themselves with
these connections. Addicted to the network? You have to be kidding.
My favorite Crichton book is The
Great Train Robbery
about the meticulous planning and execution
of a massive gold heist on a train in 1855. Not much technology but a
very logical plot line. The movie, also written
and directed by Crichton, not suprisingly follows the book quite
closely.
I haven't enjoyed his later work as much. The mathematician Ian
Malcomb in Jurassic Park comes off as a babbling philosophical
know-it-all who happens to be always right. The ridiculous holographic
database in Disclosure is just embarrassing. These later books
often have gratuitous action scenes just so they might make better
movies.
Nevertheless Crichton knew how to make technology very creepy. Even if
these books were not quite that realistic they got the young me
excited (and worried) about the power of technology and computers.
Michael Crowley of The New Republic has a much less flattering view of the later Crichton:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/books/14cric.html
I didn't read Crichton's last book, but it sounds pretty pathetic in its position that Crichton himself knows more than the great majority of climate scientists.
On the other hand, creating ER was a great accomplishment.
Hmmm. I think I have only read his later books - I certainly haven't read the ones Lance mentions. I always had the feeling that these books were movie scripts in disguise...
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