#11056: — 12/14  at  12:22 PM
RealClimate was very civilized about their critique, but Crichton comes off looking like what he is: an ignorant layman with a bias trying to argue science in the major leagues. He's a lot like the evolution deniers.

#11057: Arcane — 12/14  at  12:31 PM
Crichton does sometimes get ahead of himself, but I don't find the scenario that he lays out to be implausible. Sure, maybe some of his "science" is bad, but there are all kinds of anti-civilization, anti-human, eco-anarchists out there who are absolutely insane. I could imagine some of them doing something like that.

Just look at the eco-terrorist groups, like Earth First!, Animal Liberation Front, and Earth Liberation Front. Or study some of the "deep ecology" movements that call for the extinction of the human race. Another thing with growing popularity among some of the more extreme of the environmentalists is "anarcho-primitivism," which basically calls for the destruction of civilization. Heck, they even have journals titled that way, like "Green Anarchy: The Anti-Civilizational Journal of Theory and Action" or the website Green Anarchist, subtitled "For the destruction of Civilization."

These guys are generally on the fringe of the fringe, so I don't worry about them much. But it makes his scenario plausible, so...

#11058: — 12/14  at  12:32 PM
Yep, it's very much like evolution denial as Crichton merrily cherry picks all sorts of evidence to support his conspiratorial thesis about those eeeeeevil climatologists. Crichton accuses those who are concerned about global warming of being doom-sayers, but he overstates his case by at least two orders of magnitude. I am very thankful that RealClimate is setting the record straight in their review.

#11061: — 12/14  at  12:44 PM
Arcane, people who are the sort of wackos you fear don't go in to climatology, they go into anarchy. Look at the case of Noam Chomsky, who is quite outspoken but isn't the sort of person who goes around fomenting global terror. FWIW, Arne Naess, who coined the term 'deep ecology' back in 1973 isn't a nut case either and he certainly didn't call for the extermination of the human race.

#11062: — 12/14  at  12:46 PM
Crichton can't write about people. His characters aren't well developed. He writes about ideas and sometimes quite poorly. How thankful I am to learn that I wasn't the only one totally iritated by the mathematician dique-wede in JP. However, I can forgive him the bad science because of Rising Sun and Eaters of the Dead.

#11063: Hank Fox — 12/14  at  12:52 PM
I liked the Jurassic Park movies. I was willing to overlook anything and everything to see those stunning images of "real" dinosaurs walking around.

Aside from JP, though, most of the Michael Chrichton movies suck as much as his books do. I'm sure I enjoyed "Plan 9 From Outer Space" more than "Sphere," for instance. Walking out of the theater after seeing it felt like coming home and discovering that my house had been burgled -- I kept thinking "Oh, if only I hadn't gone to see that stupid damned movie, I'd still have all my stuff."

There was a hole in the book "Timeline" (and I think the movie, too) big enough to catapult a dead horse carcass through: the time travel gag was explained away as not-really-time-travel. It was a transfer to a sort of parallel timelike dimension rather than the real past. And yet the main reason they went back to rescue their professor was because they found a pair of his glasses in an archeological dig. Argh.

#11066: — 12/14  at  01:00 PM
Hank, Agreed all around. I managed to read Timeline, Airframe and Disclosure before giving up on MC. I agree, the dinosaurs in JP the movie may be the best entertainment to come, indirectly so, from the man. The writing seems aimed directly at that mythical US adult with an 8th grade reading level.

#11067: Arcane — 12/14  at  01:01 PM
Timeline was dumb. There is no better way to describe it.

#11068: Hank Fox — 12/14  at  01:03 PM
Yeah, those darned eco-extremists. This world would be a much better place if those people would only do some good stuff, like use child labor in sweatshops, or market products known to have killed millions, the way our good honest corporations do.

I just can't wait 'til we have a nice orderly world where corporations are safe to do business, and all them radical, evil protesters are locked away in jail.

#11074: — 12/14  at  01:45 PM
I thought the pop-science math guy was much more irritating and self-rightious in the movie than the book.

#11077: Evan Murdock — 12/14  at  01:58 PM
I liked the dinosaurs in the movie; mind you they had nothing to do with M.C., and everything to do with animators. But the Chaos stuff was infuriating, particularly with Jeff Goldblum as the architypical "brilliant but cool" scientist. The worst part is that I meet people like that.

#11080: Chloe — 12/14  at  02:34 PM
I like a lot of movies that are based on his novels. And, well, I've been called a "neo-Luddite" for less... But I don't think that's an accurate appraisal of all his stories. Just because someone writes fiction about what could happen or what could be, doesn't mean they're saying it is, or will be.
That said, knowing the authors true attitude about global warming does shed some light on what motivates his story.
However, if you buy into that kind of nonsense, you're just making his fiction be evidence for truth.
Let's not get caught in that trap.
It's like these people who seem to get their kicks pointing the finger at fringe extreme animal rights activists who blunder around embarrassingly with some of their tactics. Does that mean it's OKAY to torture animals? Many times that's exactly what they're trying to say - "animal rights activists are crazy violent, & people-hating, therefore we shouldn't believe animals should have rights...", in some weird leap of logic. Yet those same people are often aghast if you suggest that the pro-lifers who murder doctors who perform abortions are a valid argument in favour of abortion.
There's absolutely no reason to argue with fiction with vehemency.
However, yes, it's ridiculous to think of this author as a science author, when clearly he writes fiction. That should be pointed out more, in my opinion. Just so it gets to all the ignorant, misinformed, or confused. What he writes is not science - it's fiction!

#11082: Hank Fox — 12/14  at  02:36 PM
Just a little side note re: eco-terrorists:

<bold>Pentagon to Jettison Environmental Responsibilities</bold> http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/121504X.shtml

The new policy would also significantly cut Pentagon compliance with anti-pollution rules by dropping requirements that it obey "regulations, Executive orders, binding international agreements" and other federal "environmental, safety, occupational health, explosives safety, fire and emergency services, and pest management policies." In its place, the Pentagon would pledge to only abide by "applicable law and DoD policy."

#11084: — 12/14  at  02:47 PM

but there are all kinds of anti-civilization, anti-human, eco-anarchists out there who are absolutely insane. I could imagine some of them doing something like that.


There are all kinds of loons out there in the left-wing fringes. And that's where they are -- out in the fringes.

Contrast that with the right-wing loons who constitute the heart-and-soul of the Republican party, and are now running the US government.

If the Democrats were in power today and were as kooky as the Republicans are now, they'd be putting whacked out vegans and animal-rights activists in charge of the Dept of Agriculture, HHS, etc...

There will *always* be nuts out on the margins (right or left). Unfortunately, in the case of the GOP, the nuts aren't out on the margins -- they *are* the GOP.

#11088: — 12/14  at  03:33 PM
Chloe, if people didn't pay attention to people like Crichton we wouldn't have to argue with them. Unfortunately, people listen to and believe someone who says things that they agree with. (Conservatism Bias and Confirmatory Bias; look at the Slate article about fallacies and illogic in investing at http://slate.msn.com/id/2110977/).

#11089: — 12/14  at  03:39 PM
My Dearest Caerbannog:

Regarding Vincente Fox's boy, currently residing at 1600 Pennslyvania Ave, I can voice no defense. Guilty of allowing an unopposed invasion, and squandering lives and treasure.

But the loons certainly are not the core of the party. Rank and file Pachyderms are pretty ordinary folks with stolid views. They're not as fun nor as trendy as your garden-variety Volvo driver. But they are effective at keeping the sewers open and electricity coming through the wires. They might not run a nice boutique but I'd much rather have them running the hardware store. Democrats want the house to be pretty and stylish. Republicans want the foundation to hold up and the windows to seal. We're just ordinary folks like yourself, minus the polish and with a sensible coat.

By the way, I looked up your user name in a Gaelic dictionary and couldn't find a match. Maybe Basque....

<courteous bow here> Richard, Doomed of Aztlan

#11093: — 12/14  at  05:01 PM
From what I've read of Crichton, it seems that he believes that all of the world's evils are caused by science, business, and aliens. All of the books I've read have one or more of the above that causes the Bad Thing to happen.

#11094: — 12/14  at  05:11 PM
Richard, the head of the Republican Party, namely the President, is a fundamentalist Christian who believes that everyone who does not believe exactly as he does -- everyone; Muslims, Jews, Catholics, atheists -- is going to hell. I find his views to be extreme.

#11095: — 12/14  at  05:21 PM
I remember reading Jurassic Park in the seventh grade and thinking it was ewbr-kewl. I remember reading it again in college and thinking, Jesus H, this guy's a maroon. It wouldn't have been so bad if his glib treatment of chaos theory hadn't inspired bright but unlearned thirteen year olds across the nation to start talking about chaos theory.

#11097: — 12/14  at  06:39 PM
Outside of Jurassic Park, the only novels that I read that were written by Crichton were Andromeda Strain and Terminal Man.
*spoiler*
Thinking back on both of them, they were 'cautionary' tales, definitively NOT pro-science.
The McGuffins in Andromeda Strain were a long polymer eating virus(?) that was sensitive to pH extremes and a level-5 containment (with nuclear last resort sterilization) that was rushed to completion. They escaped the first because the virus mutated rapidly and the second by hitting the abort at the last minute. The catch was that the virus was brought to Earth by a returning high orbit satellite.
The premise in Terminal Man is that psychotic episodes can be arrested with electric stimulus, in this case stimulation of pleasurable sensations. Daring-do to the rescue again.

In both cases, Mankind was meddling in thing he was not 'meant' to mess with.

#11108: — 12/14  at  08:59 PM
This book should have been called "State of Denial." Crichton goes farther than ever in revealing himself to be an ignorant and politicized fringie.

(Note to those of you who compared him to an evolution-denialist: you're more right than you think. In his autobiography "Travels," he pronounces all of science to be "a religion," and specifically doubts the germ theory of disease. Then again, this is the same autobiography where he recounts his own personal story of demonic possession and exorcism... vouches for spoon-bending as proof of psychic powers... oh yeah, and relates a conversation, an actual literal non-metaphorical back-and-forth speaking conversation that he claims to have had with a sentient talking CACTUS.)

In addition to his woefully incomplete science, Crichton also uses a lot of the typical rhetorical tricks used against the environmental community. Some tried-and-false gems he tosses, in the guise of the omnipotent narrators who basically tell what passes for a story, include:

"Conserving nature is foolish / dishonest, since extinction and change are constant!" Thus writes a former M.D., presumably dedicated to the conservation of human life--what a foolish endeavor since extinction and change are constant! I also assume that Michael Crichton M.D. was paid for his services with money, which he put in a bank account--again, what a silly thing to do in a world where nothing matters since change and extinction are constant!

Another low-blow he uses in SoF is that "by spending money on the environment, you're not giving it to the poor!" Well.... yeah. That's how money works. By spending it on ANYTHING, you're not giving it to the poor. Same thing goes for military spending (remember what Eisenhower said?), the space program, publicity campaigns for Crichton's latest hack-work, and lots of other things that get way higher funds than environmentalism. So why single that out? Simple: to try to get the presumed bleeding-heart supporters of environmentalism so consumed with guilt that they'll abandon it. As one newspaper reviewer put it, the author "is wise to cloak his anti-environmentalism in the rhetoric of a third-world do-gooder, but rest assured that Red Riding Hood can see the wolf's tail sticking out of grandma's robe."

#11109: — 12/14  at  09:07 PM
Richard:

I think you might find Caerbannog if you watched some more "Monty Python". ;)

#11110: Webster Hubble Telescope — 12/14  at  09:14 PM
I read TimeLine by picking pages at random from the book; this works for time travel books because any incoherent sequence is as good as any other. Agree bad book.

The big plot-hole in the State-of-Fear book (from what I can gather) is that he wants us to believe that eco-terrorists can control the climate yet industrial pollution has no effect.

And why does he name the villain Nick Drake? It's bad enough to go after ecologists, but to go after late sensitive singer-songwriters?

--
Wasn't Caerbannog the vicious flesh-eating rabbit in Monty Python?

#11113: — 12/14  at  09:31 PM
Well, I enjoyed Jurassic Park when I read it (although I probably enjoyed Congo more). There's one thing that redeems his stuff: the film of The Andromeda Strain and the character of Dr. Ruth Leavitt. Now I know he wrote the character as a man in his novel, but indirectly, due to his writing, we're now privileged to have the most brilliant, most crotchety and fantastic female scientific role model in the history of cinema. (I realise this is staying far into genetic fallacy territory here, but she's so great you'd forgive a much more egregiously distorted source than Crichton).

#11118: — 12/14  at  11:38 PM
"Wasn’t Caerbannog the vicious flesh-eating rabbit in Monty Python?"

Well, that was the Beast of Caerbannog, which was the cave's location.