Comments on: Brotherton on Crichton

By: John

John — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:34:19 +0000

RL Says:
“If Crichton wants to talk about how to write fiction or get published, I’ll listen. The man obviously knows how to do that. When it comes to global warming…ehh”
Im dito with Al Gore about the global warming bit.

By: neveu

neveu — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:33:31 +0000

My biggest problem with Crichton is that the guy’s writing is ABSOLUTELY HUMORLESS.

By: Ronn! Blankenship

Ronn! Blankenship — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:29:38 +0000

MarkP Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

Is Jurassic Park *the book* antiscience? I think that was a theme added by Spielberg in the movie.

– - –

Slowly but Surly Says:
July 24th, 2008 at 5:58 pm

I think there was a big differnce between the book & the movie. I assumed that Crichton had less to do with the move, which was full of typical Spielberg stupid.

– - -

The problem I had with the JP movie was the ending, which, according to the feature on “The Making of . . . ” which gets tacked on whenever they show the film on TV these days to fill out a longer block of broadcast time, was entirely Spielberg’s responsibility (as if it weren’t obvious to anyone who as I did read the book first before the movie came out.)

Book: Man brings back dinosaurs through technology, something goes wrong and dinosaurs get out of control, Man fixes the problem with technology (military lands and uses bombs and nerve gas to wipe out dinosaurs).

Movie: Man brings back dinosaurs through technology, something goes wrong and dinosaurs get out of control, Man is totally helpless to do anything about the problem and the characters are saved at the last minute by plain dumb luck when the dinosaurs turn on each other.

Seeing parallels to contemporary real world situations is left as an exercise for the reader , though ISTM that the ending of Chrichton’s book comes closer to Phil’s oft-expressed sentiment of “We (humans) did this ourselves!” than does the Spielberg’s ending for the movie.

By: Jose

Jose — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:38:38 +0000

No L Ron?

By: CanadianLeigh

CanadianLeigh — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:56:16 +0000

May I put Robert J. Sawyer out there. I have really enjoyed reading most of his work. I agree with Greg Bear as well as pretty well all the above mentioned authors.

By: Mike Brotherton

Mike Brotherton — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:10:59 +0000

Ah, yeah, Greg Bear! His best stuff is very good indeed.

By: paul

paul — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:57:51 +0000

Won’t somebody please put Greg Bear on their list of good sci-fi writers?

By: L. DeCaprio

L. DeCaprio — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:46:14 +0000

What does “anti-science” even mean?

It’s just a propagandist euphemism.

No one know all the answers, except for the All-mighty.

By: Mike Brotherton

Mike Brotherton — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:06:32 +0000

I like to think I’m writing pretty good, scientifically accurate novels and following a great tradition. The other sf writers I like include Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Alastair Reynolds (another astronomer), David Brin, Jack McDevitt, Greg Egan, Gregory Benford, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress. The classic three as well: Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein. Mark Alpert’s book FINAL THEORY is a science fiction thriller like Crichton’s, but it gets the science right and is overall science positive.

By: Kevin White

Kevin White — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:42:31 +0000

I like Eureka, but science advising? It looks like that amounts to “give us some vague techno-jargon that we can use in this scene to support our plot devices.”

By: RL

RL — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:18:24 +0000

Grep Agni and KC: Thanks. Lucifer’s Hammer was one of my favorites a long time ago but once again I could not remember the authors name.

And, boy, is my spelling bad today…oh, well.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:58:33 +0000

PS: Phil, I thank you for turning me on to Brotherton.
I’ve added his site to my list of hard SciFi writers.

GAry 7

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:53:34 +0000

Isn’t it interesting that in the old, low tech societies(ie, tribal), manhood tests were designed to separate those who could not control their instinctive reactions(read fear/emotions) from their intellectual control. Those who allowed their instincts to rule them were not considered to be human. In some tribes, this made them acceptable as FOOD. In others(a bit more compassionate) they were merely exiled from the tribe.

Anti-intellectualism is tantamount to being anti-human. Our most singular difference from other animals IS the ability to ignore our instinctual feelings(USE the fraking computer, Luke. It’s a whole lot faster,,,)

Our species is so young, it’s understandable we would have a desire to return to the simple times, where our reactions are gut based and the difficult, rational control systems can be ignored. Of course, should that become a species norm, we would no longer be anything “special” in the world. Just one more animal in a continual stream of animals, doomed to die when the hard laws of an insensate, uncaring universe dictate.

HUMANS have compassion. HUMANS are kind. WE set standards of decency. But then, that’s what thinking, intellectual beings do and that is often directly opposite to the dictates of animal survival.

Think and be human,,,

Gary 7

By: KC

KC — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:51:45 +0000

RL:

There’s also Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Niven wrote the Ringworld series and he and Pournelle wrote The Mote in God’s Eye, Lucifer’s Hammer, and Footfall.

By: Grep Agni

Grep Agni — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:26:53 +0000

RL:

Though not as well knows as he should be (IMO) Greg Egan kicks ass, especially in his short stories.

By: RL

RL — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:03:32 +0000

Ah! After a quick google, I have heard of Phili K Dicks work even if I don’t remember him. Good stuff. Thanks.

By: RL

RL — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:46:38 +0000

HooDoo: Thats a good list although I don’t think I’ve heard of Philip Dick before. I’ll google jim. I heard Asimov speak once. Very interesting and selfdeprecating. He had just written his 200th book. He said some hadcasked him if they were amy good. He said who cares! Do you know how hard it is to write 200 books!? Pretty funny. Maybe you had to be there.

I wonder how they’d do on this blog given any woo that might be in their stories or lives.

By: The Hoodoo Man

The Hoodoo Man — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:29:25 +0000

@ RL

Issac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury. There are plenty of them.

Also, Star Trek > Star Wars.

By: Robbie

Robbie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:21:20 +0000

If anything, Crichton has been anti-politicians and business men, especially big business, in his books. Again, if you think Crichton is anti-science then you don’t have the reading comprehension I had when I was 12.

By: RL

RL — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:01:38 +0000

Jose, it’s a sincere question. A lot here think Crichton is bad. Who then do the BAblogees think is considered a good pro-science (fiction) writer?

BTW, many consider Star Wars the ultimate antiscience movie.

By: slartibartfast

slartibartfast — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:47:50 +0000

Really, all of you people who hate him take a minute and think. Does your name have New York Times Bestseller next to it? I think I’m done with this blog, theres too much hate in the world already

By: Jose

Jose — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:45:02 +0000

Let me ask this question. Is there anyone that the bloggers on this site do like? Is there anyone that is really without woo that writes an interesting book that is popular by any measure?

Oh come on. Is this a sincere? Nobody’s hates Michael Crichton because he’s successful and gets his science wrong. They hate him because he’s an irresponsible ass. Star Wars is more successful than anything Michael Crichton has ever done, and the science is far worse than anything Crichton has ever done. But I’m going to go way out on a limb here, and say most of the people here are still star war fans (At least of episodes 3-5).

As far as Crichton’s lectures, personally, I tend not to listen too much to people who want to lecture outside of their field of expertise.

I won’t listen to him either, but I can’t ignore that he’s got the ear of the president and other powerful people who are more than happy to exploit his bad science.

By: Papabear

Papabear — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:33:22 +0000

Crichton’s scinece might be flawed, and I don’t like the way he touts himself as an expert, but films like Jurassic Park,as others have stated, got a lot of kids interested in science. I thought timeline was a mediocre book at best….but it’s one of the things that got me digging around for physics related stuff on the web. Some of the general public needs to learn to not be so accepting of some people as experts, but Crichton has gotten a lot of people interested in science.

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:17:53 +0000

Miachale Crichton novels woth poor science ? – you should read Matthew O’Reilly Ice Station or Contest – they are best seller thrillers, but they gave them away with the newspaper here !
I was so unimpressed with the physics. Suspension of belief is one thing, but suspension of brain is completely different …

By: RL

RL — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:00:57 +0000

Let me ask this question. Is there anyone that the bloggers on this site do like? Is there anyone that is really without woo that writes an interesting book that is popular by any measure?

I don’t really have a problem with Crichton. After all he is just an author writing fiction. I haven’t seen him as anti-science. The heroes in Jurassic Park were scientists. (The park owner was not a scientist, I believe). So were the heroes in Congo. The heroes in Runaway were tech-saavy detectives (the bad guy used technology to kill, but so what. A lot of good Doctor Who episodes do the same). I’d have to say that I’ve enjoyed many of his books. Quite often I end up saying in surprise, “He wrote that?”

As an aside, an even more common theme is that man (an to some extent, nature) will overcome technology when pitted against it.

As far as Crichton’s lectures, personally, I tend not to listen too much to people who want to lecture outside of their field of expertise. If Crichton wants to talk about how to write fiction or get published, I’ll listen. The man obviously knows how to do that. When it comes to global warming…ehh. Just like the way I try to ignore rock stars and actors who get on soap boxes or say, astronomers, who want to expound on things like politics and the like.

But I understand its not easy. After all, I’m responding to this blog…maybe its just a sign that work is boring today.