Crichton- Author (NO SPOILERS)
Pierce Brosnan335
Posts: 46MI6 Agent
Michael Crichton is a great author. (wrote jurassic park ect.) he came out witha new book Next I was wondering if anybody's read it. Spoiler free please also if anybody else read any other of hiss books. or you can simply post you've never heard of him. He also directeda few films (WestWorld)
Comments
I have to second that...I vowed never to read another Crichton book after Timeline and like a sucker I bought Prey off the 'bargain books' section and regretted it. He has some great ideas, but his characters seem like hollow automatons who are just bizarre masters of ceremonies for the scientific aspects of the plots...kind of like the robots in Westworld.
I will give him some credit, though. I watched his film The Great Train Robbery and listened to his director's commentary...it was very interesting and enthralling as he detailed not just the making of the movie, but some of his 'secular' insights into the filmmaking industry.
But you know the clearest sign of his 'selling-out' to the movies. When he wrote the sequel to Jurassic Park, he had to bring back all of the characters he killed in the book, because they survived in the film version, just so they could make another film - creating one of the worst, dis-jointed book sequels in the history of writing IMO.
When he wrote The Lost World he didn't "ressurect" any chratcers. Also you guys he is one of the only authors that actually researches what he writes about. He makes good books in my opinoin
You're the fan, not me, and I will defer to your knowledge. But I do seem to recall that in the novel Jurassic Park the character of Malcom dies while ruminating upon 'Chaos Theory' whereas in the film Jeff Goldblum's character survives. In The Lost World Crichton brings Malcom back under the pretense that the tales of his demise were greatly exaggerated.
Malcom was just hurt. he had injury but got off the island nublar perfectly fine except for the leg injury.
Duh, the doctors performed miracles. Out of a moment of boredom, I got out my old edition, and it says
Thats pretty safe to say he snuffed it.
Also, Im glad that very little of the novel of the Lost World made it into movie - altought we did get a modern day remake of King Kong.
That's fine-stick to your guns.However,Crichton stole a title from a superb novel about a hidden portion of the world still inhabited by dinosaurs in the 20th Century without so much as a by-your-leave.In my opinion,Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Lost World--published years before the Crichton book ever came into fruition-- is far and away superior to the later book.
The very least Crichton could've and should've done was come up with an original title for his own story.But that's just my opinion.
Next he'll be titling his newer books Gone With the Wind and The Godfather...
The last part wasn't funny. I'm not aking it seriously but come on Gone with the wind. Thats a bad comeback. By the way The Lost World was a good book. Not trying to start a fight. Just saying in my opinion. Also Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes was better then The Lost World anyway. I mean I didn't even hear of the book till you mentioned it.
One of the earliest and best versions was the 1925 silent film which Doyle actually lived to see. The effects in this piece were done by a certain Willis O'Brian, the man responsible for King Kong.
Published in 1912, two years before Burroughs gave us Tarzan.
Apologies for coming off blunt, Pierce. Science fiction and Heroic fantasy from the late 19th and early 20th century I've always loved.
Just to add to this literary footnote: Doyle's The Lost World was an adventure starring his other literary Creation: Professor Challenger, who if I remember correctly, first appeared in an Doyle's adventure novel The Poison Belt. Doyle (in a wierd kind of way) was a "Crichton" of his time, expounding on scientific themes taken to extremes, much like HG Wells. The Poison Belt involved the imminent doom of the Earth as it's orbit took it straight through a wandering band of radiation or something in the cosmos. Interesting idea ( even if it had a bit of a cheapskate ending).
I'm not trying to start a fight either.In fact,I think it's great that you've found an author who writes books about subjects you like and that you enjoy his stuff.At the end of the day the most important thing is not always who you choose to read but that you read.
Maybe sometime you'll check out Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.It's a period piece(set only a few years before the First World War) but it influenced any number of later stories and films about dinosaurs existing in some undiscovered land in the Modern World.King Kong drew some inspiration from this novel, and I suspect the original Doyle The Lost World novel proved to be somewhat influential to Crichton when he decided to write his Jurassic Park stuff.Perhaps Crichton's re-use of the long established Conan Doyle title,for one of his own dinosaur stories is meant to be taken as an homage to that earlier science fiction novel.