“There is no one in the wings that will ever take his place.”Ĭrichton was still in Harvard Medical School when he wrote his first bestseller: “The Andromeda Strain,” a fast-paced, scientifically and technologically detailed 1969 thriller about a team of scientists attempting to save mankind from a deadly microorganism brought to earth by a military satellite.
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Spielberg, who was a new contract TV director at Universal in the early ‘70s when he first met Crichton and was assigned to show the writer around the lot, described him as “a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels.” It’s like losing a very good friend as well as a client of so many years.”ĭirector Steven Spielberg said in a statement Wednesday that “Michael’s talent out-scaled even his own dinosaurs of ‘Jurassic Park.’ He was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs again walking the earth.” “I respected him so much intellectually and as a writer. “His brilliance was indisputable, and he had a grasp of so many subjects - from art to science to technology. “There was no one like Crichton, because he could both entertain and educate,” Lynn Nesbit, his agent since the late ‘60s, told The Times on Wednesday. He was 66.įor nearly four decades, the 6-foot-9 writer was a towering presence in the worlds of publishing and filmmaking. And before long, as he later put it, “the writing became more interesting to me than the medicine.”Ĭrichton, the doctor-turned-author of bestselling thrillers such as “The Terminal Man” and “Jurassic Park” and a Hollywood writer and director whose credits include “Westworld” and “Coma,” died in Los Angeles on Tuesday “after a courageous and private battle against cancer,” his family said in a statement. He became so adept at cranking out his thrillers that he wrote one in nine days. Still, it's a Crichton novel, so in my mind it still ranks high in this genre.When Michael Crichton was attending Harvard Medical School in the late 1960s, he had a secret life that he kept hidden from his fellow students: To pay his tuition bills, he began writing paperback thrillers in his spare time under two pseudonyms. It's true, there are the pedantic footnotes that take the reader out of the first-hand account in order to share some insight into the anthro-facts, but I actually found the Author's note and Appendix to be more entertaining than the actual story. I can understand why Crichton chose to emulate the writing style, to fictionally continue the true story of Ibn Fadlan, but it just seems like all the action in the novel goes by too fast without enough of the unique Crichton-esque, techno-thriller style descriptions behind Viking culture. The way Ibn Fadlan writes is a kind of short hand, short sentences accounting for events he encounters on his travels. It basically boils down to the method in which he tackled the subject matter here, a continuation of an Arab traveler's first hand account of the Germanic tale of Beowulf and the Vikings. He writes with an undeniable narrative energy.īoth the background as to why Crichton wrote the book, as well as the story itself are both highly interesting, though Eater's of the Dead is certainly not in his top five.
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He is a connoisseur of catastrophe., Like Stephen King, like Robert Ludlum, Crichton knows how to keep a story moving. A master of plausible and frightening scenarios…. Michael Crichton is one of our most gifted popular novelists. He is a connoisseur of catastrophe."- Los Angeles Times A master of plausible and frightening scenarios. "Crichton knows how to craft a tale, one that keeps the reader turning the pages."- Houston Chronicle "Michael Crichton is one of our most gifted popular novelists. But it is not until they reach the depths of the Northland that the courtier learns the horrifying and inescapable truth: he has been enlisted by these savage, inscrutable warriors to help combat a terror that plagues them-a monstrosity that emerges under cover of night to slaughter the Vikings and devour their flesh. He is appalled by their Viking customs-the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness. A refined Arab courtier, representative of the powerful Caliph of Baghdad, encounters a party of Viking warriors who are journeying to the barbaric North. From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, an epic tale of unspeakable horror The year is A.D.