One thought on “Two interesting cheap books: Stuff Matters and Jurassic Park”

1. I guess you already know, Greg Laden, but whilst Jurassic Park was pretty reasonable as a novel in terms of story – and very different from the subsequent eponymous movie – it is rather anti-science and Crichton himself became (?) a Global Overheating Denier writing some very questionable and inaccurate stuff later on.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Criticism_of_Crichton's_environmental_views

   Peter Doran, author of the paper in the January 2002 issue of Nature, which reported the finding referred to above that some areas of Antarctica had cooled between 1986 and 2000, wrote an opinion piece in the July 27, 2006, The New York Times in which he stated “Our results have been misused as ‘evidence’ against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear.”[31]

   Al Gore said on March 21, 2007, before a U.S. House committee: “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor … if your doctor tells you you need to intervene here, you don’t say ‘Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem’.” This has been interpreted by several commentators as a reference to State of Fear.

   Oh & yeah, this was classy Crichton :

   “Michael Crowley
   In 2006, Crichton clashed with journalist Michael Crowley, a senior editor of the magazine The New Republic. In March 2006, Crowley wrote a strongly critical review of State of Fear, focusing on Crichton’s stance on global warming.[103] In the same year, Crichton published the novel Next, which contains a minor character named “Mick Crowley”, who is a Yale graduate and a Washington, D.C.-based political columnist. The character was portrayed as a child molester with a small penis.[104] The character does not appear elsewhere in the book.[104] The real Crowley, also a Yale graduate, alleged that by including a similarly named character Crichton had libeled him.

   Not. :-/

   So, yeah, got some of Crichton’s books already but can’t say I’m much of a big fan of his -and especially his later works – anymore.

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