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His follow-up was a vastly different piece of work, a surprisingly thorough exploration of American-Japanese relations and the culture clash between the same, all wrapped up in corporate crime investigations. The ending has been criticised as weak (admittedly, the movies is better), but only calls attention to the great stuff that preceded it from the first page as Crichton teases the reveal of the Dinosaurs for over a hundred pages, before bringing us on a journey back in time as disaster unfolds. Featuring some of his best characters, especially the leather clad mathematician Ian Malcolm with his monologues on chaos theory and the conniving dreamer that was John Hammond, it was with a vicious predator called Velociraptor that Crichton really made a master-piece of science-fiction. Crichton captures the majesty and attraction of the dinosaur species, and humanities fascination with them, in a truly remarkable way, while keeping the science of their resurrection within the bounds of believability. Certainly a bit of an experiment from the writer, Crichton choose to stick to more grounded science for the most part after this.Ĭrichton was already well-regarded, if not very well-known, before his most famous work was published, but it really was Jurassic Park that put him on the map. Sphere lags a bit in the middle, but builds to a good climax involving various characters losing it in the face of the objects enigma, even if the plots resolution may seem a little under-whelming. It would not be the last success he had with animal characters.Ĭertainly his most mind-trippy book up to that time, as the reader gets sucked in, along with the characters, to a mystery surrounding a strange sphere at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. A real page-turner, that combines the limits of contemporary science in the chosen topics (sign-language with apes and the scientific applications of diamonds) with a hell of a race-against-time story (and some awesome locales and settings that are rarely used in fiction), Crichton creates what I think is an under-appreciated gem of an animal character in the gorilla Amy. Probably one of Crichton’s more original works, the story of a sign-fluent gorilla leading an expedition to King Solomon’s mines is one of his best.
#Michael crichton sphere 68090 movie
The movie version with Antonio Banderas is, in my opinion, an underrated classic. Crichton makes all the right choices in regards to keeping what should be kept, cutting what should be cut and ending the story at the right point. What’s better is that it all somehow works when it really shouldn’t, the narrator telling a version of one of literature’s greatest myths in a way that almost makes you think it all really happened. Probably the strangest book to comprehend, being a mishmash of genuine historical writing, the Beowulf myth, and Crichton’s own desire to place earlier ancestors of Homo Sapiens into a story, as the antagonists in this case. An enthralling heist story, with a genuinely fascinating main character, Crichton gives us a perfect vision of Victorian society and its seedy underbelly that other authors have strained to do better than. Also comes to the end quite quickly, but as was becoming typical of Crichton, it was an exciting, page-turning end.Ĭonsidering his earlier stuff, this bit of historical fiction comes out of left field, but it is excellent. Not quite as thrilling as some of his other work, The Terminal Man makes up for it with a really good villain and some good stuff about computer AI interactions, in scenes that pretty much steal the show. The actual climax is an excellent bit of heart-racing narrative too.Ĭrichton’s MD background comes to the fore here as the Doctor hero tracks down a man made deranged by risky surgical procedures. It all ends a bit suddenly, but it has good characters, a good plot, and trips along nicely. Crichton’s staple of science groups being the heroes starts here, and this is one of his best examples, the theoretical “perfect group” to decide when to commit to a nuclear strike. Just to be clear, Crichton has published more books than this, under other names and including non-fiction works, this is just a list of his well-known fiction.Ī really good mystery plot mixed with sci-fi elements.
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Having read and reviewed Michael Crichton’s last book a little while ago, I thought that I might give a rundown on what I think about his bibliography (and why it is that I like him so much).