Balls and Walnuts
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Why I gave up on Crichton
In the Jan 7 New York Times Book Review, Dave Itzkoff has a hilarious, ripping review of Michael Crichton’s new novel, Next. Here’s the opening paragraph:
Though the moment may lack the inherent gravitas of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s encounter with Lincoln, or even Elvis Presley’s private audience with Richard Nixon, surely history should reserve a special place for the day in 2005 when Michael Crichton was invited to the White House to meet with George W. Bush. Imagine: the modern era’s leading purveyor of alarmist fiction, seated side by side with Michael Crichton. Oh, to be a concealed recording system in that Oval Office! Did Crichton confess to his host that he’d been inspired to write “Rising Sun” by a certain Poppy in chief with a propensity for puking on Japanese dignitaries? Did our president tell Crichton he found the dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park” every bit as frightening as our ancestors did at the dawn of time, 6,000 years ago?
The rest of the review is every bit as good.
Now, you might think I gave up on Crichton because of that fateful meeting in 2005 when he entered the echo chamber of Bush’s brain to confirm the president’s doubts about global warming, but I dismissed Crichton more than twenty years ago. Here’s the story, for what it’s worth.
Growing up, I loved Crichton’s Andromeda Strain. As late as senior year in high school, I would have named AS my favorite science fiction novel and movie. What’s not to love? Scientists are the heros. Scientists save the planet from what would surely be a species-destroying plague. As a budding science geek, the book and the movie were pure wish fulfillment fantasy.
From the book, one passage in particular stuck with me over the years. One of the scientists, thinking he’d been exposed to the Andromeda pathogen, demanded another scientist give him Kalocin. In typical Crichton form, the author stops the narrative dead in its tracks to tell the story of Kalocin, a miracle drug capable of curing any infectious disease, but at a horrible cost: by eradicating the body’s population of beneficial bacteria, the drug left the patient vulnerable to microorganisms with monstrous destructive abilities.
Well, never mind the questionable science. Even back then, we knew that broad spectrum antibiotics might give you diarrhea or a yeast infection, but you had little else to fear. But the man has an MD — he must know what he’s talking about! And the clincher: in Andromeda Strain, Crichton provides a footnote to an article in Nature documenting the kalocin story.
Flash forward to my first year of med school, 1983. I’m in our school’s medical library when it occurs to me to check Crichton’s facts. In truth, I didn’t doubt his facts; I was merely curious to read the original article. We had a small fiction rack in our library, and the sight of an Andromeda Strain paperback had jogged my memory. I opened the book, found the literature citation, and headed for the journals.
I suspect you all know how this ends, but I didn’t. The volume and page numbers didn’t coincide. There was no such article.
Mind you, I understood the concept of verisimilitude. But this went way beyond verisimilitude; this was outright deceit. I never touched another one of Crichton’s novels.
According to the Itzkoff review, Crichton is still up to his old tricks:
The author makes no attempt to distinguish his extrapolations from established fact, and even seems to relish the ambiguity. As Crichton helpfully puts it in a disclaimer, “This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren’t.”
This is little better than “Creation Science.” Give the man time, and he’ll take on evolutionary theory.
D.
Feh.
BTW, here’s the original review, for those who want to read it…
I’m with you on this one Doug. After reading “Timeline” I threw my hands up in disgust. Far too much explanation of how it all works, and about 70 percent of it pure bunk. I’m not a physicist, but I was a librarian, anything interesting that came through cataloging I read. (We all did) Interesting could range from the latest knitting journal, to the North American Geological Survey publications (amazingly well written. Seriously, go to a geology library and track one down, they’re amazing.) to stuff from physics. And I certainly knew enough to know that he should have simply waved his authorial hands, lowered the figurative black curtain, and say it was magic.
Feh.
I knew he was skeezy, but not *that* skeezy. Of course, I feel the same way about Dan Brown…
I read his book Andromdeda Strain when I was about ten. (I thought it was OK but even back then tha Deus Ex Machina at the end made me roll my eyes.) I Loved Congo – for some reason that book (to me) is his best. Jurassic Park peeved me. I’d just had the same idea and was sitting down to write it, and here he was publishing the damn book. In a hissy fit I took a time traveling journalist and sent her back to interview Alexander the Great – and my Iskander series was born.
After Jurrasic Park I thougth ALL his books sucked. And I got “Next” for Christmas, (from my son, *sniff* – he’s such a sweet heart – I told him I LOVED Chrichton, now I’ll probably get his whole back list…)
I’m reading Next but it’s Reeelly Reelly Awful.
And don’t even talk to me about Timeline. That book hit the wall and rebounded straight into the trash.
I liked AS quite a bit. The when I was in college, taking Analytical Chemistry, Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy, and Advanced Topics in Genetics, I started reading Jurassic Park (which had just been released to wild reviews) on the commuter train. (Sidenote: I had thee labs that semester and lived 45 minutes away from campus. What the hell was I THINKING??)
Anyway, Jurassic Park tanked big time. Never read anything else. Especially the genetic manipulation part, which was, um, kind of a big part of the book.
OK, I can feel the blood rising. Ought to stop.
I think AS was the last of his scientist-as-hero books, but what do I know? I avoided him like the plague after Congo, and of Congo I only have the dimmest memories. From my knowledge of Jurassic Park etc., the man is a Luddite of the highest order.
Now, if you want to read an author who puts his scientists front-and-center (and does NOT demonize science), read Gregory Benford. Cosm and Timescape are both great. Benford is a physicist (UC Irvine, I think) and knows how to create convincing scientist characters.
I cant get past the global warming stupidity.
Agreed. It’s unforgivable. As if there were a fire in a crowded building, and Crichton were shouting, “Nothing to see here, we’re just toasting marshmallows! Go about your business.”