Michael Crichton Dead at 66
By Jesse Singal - Nov 5th, 2008 at 2:06 pmNEW YORK—Michael Crichton, the million-selling author of such historic and prehistoric science thrillers as “Jurassic Park,” “Timeline” and “The Andromeda Strain,” has died of cancer, his family said.
He died Tuesday in Los Angeles at age 66 after a long battle with the illness.
Chrichton was a brand-name author, known for his stories of disaster and systematic breakdown, such as the rampant microbe of “The Andromeda Strain” or dinosaurs running amok in “Jurassic Park,” one of his many books that became major Hollywood movies.
Sad news. I definitely enjoyed his books in my younger days.
He was also a climate change denier that wrote a fictional novel about scientists making the whole thing up for kicks. He was invited to a White House press conference to discuss his views on the most important crisis humanity has ever faced.
Sorry he passed away, but he is, and will always be a tool.
(ok, Jurassic Park was pretty good, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea came up from his belief that dinosaurs walked alongside humans 4000 years ago)
November 5th, 2008 at 2:10 pmI read Jurassic Park when I was in third grade. It was my first adult novel. I followed that with Congo (not good), Sphere (scary as Hell; awesome), Disclosure (not that good), The Lost World (inexcusable), Timneline (bad), and Airframe (terrible).
So, I didn’t like a lot of his books. Really, only two were enjoyable.
But this is the man who taught me how to read like an adult. The person who made me ignore RL Stine when my friends were reading Say Cheese and Die. That’s incredibly valuable and I will miss him.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:43 pm