Michael Crichton R.I.P.

Coming as a bit of a shock to a lot of people (including me), best-selling author Michael Crichton died yesterday at the age of 66, losing a battle with cancer that most of the population outside of his inner circle didn't even know he was waging. You can read the Associated Press obituary for him here.

At one point in my life, I'd have named Crichton as one of my favourite authors. I think it's safe to say that if I haven't read every one of his novels, I'm probably in the 80 - 90% range in that regard. One of this earliest works, The Great Train Robbery, is wonderfully written and completely wrapped me up in its story despite having no science fiction angle (unlike the vast majority of his work). Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park are two other faves of mine from his bibliography.

Over the past decade or so, though, the quality of his tales seemed to dip (or maybe my reading bar got higher... hard to know!) I found that I was still picking up each new release (or rather, Vicki was, and I was getting them for Christmas) but I was spending more time lamenting his destruction of my willing suspension of disbelief with his poor execution of what were truly interesting concepts than I was in the enjoyment of the words on the page. With State of Fear, as noted in the AP obit linked to above, he ventured into the territory of "Climate Change Denouncer" and began to really lose me as a fan. At first I bought some of his arguments about Global Warming being pseudo-science but then the irrefutable evidence started to mount against that, and that cost Crichton a considerable amount of credibility with me and many other readers. It's too bad, because over the past few years he was probably getting as much press for that poorly-reasoned stance as he was for his impressive body of work.

And even if you didn't enjoy his novels, you also have Michael Crichton to thank for the terrific TV show, ER (now in its final season). That alone would make his life time well spent!