Wednesday, November 05, 2008

R.I.P. Michael Crichton

Yesterday author Michael Crichton died in California, he was 66. Crichton is best known as the author of ANDROMEDA STRAIN and JURASSIC PARK, as well as being the creator of the television show ER.

I've told this story a million times, but I got into "adult" books when my Uncle David loaned me his copy of JURASSIC PARK when I was in 4th grade. The book is a terrible, horrible mess of techno-jargon and cardboard characters...but for every 25 pages of boring, there were 15 awesome pages of limb-ripping Dino-carnage!!!

I was hooked.

SPHERE and CONGO are fabulous sci-fi/techno-thrillers...that were both made into horrible movies. Still, Crichton was always reliable at always being on the cutting edge of science. His last few books kinda sucked (STATE OF FEAR, NEXT), and he'd kinda turned into a cranky old Neo-con in his later years (as I'm sure we all will one day become)--but I still feel like I owe Crichton a lot in terms of my love of reading as well as my own writing.

Mr.Crichton, thank you for all that you did--you will be missed.

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