In Memoriam: John Michael Crichton, MD, 1942-2008

[thatcrazycajun]

Novelist, TV/film director/producer and physician Michael Crichton, as some of you have heard by now, passed away on Tuesday, 4 November in Los Angeles, CA after a long and unpublicized struggle with cancer at the age of 66. He is survived by one child, daughter Taylor Anne, and his current wife Sherri Alexander, as well as four ex-wives, two sisters and a brother.

I delayed posting about his death because of my own mixed feelings about the man and his work. Yes, he patented the medical/scientific thriller with undeniable classics such as The Andromeda Strain (made into movies twice, the latest just this past summer) and the Jurassic Park cycle. Yes, he directed Westworld and created ER, the NBC series that has anchored its Thursday-night schedule for 14 years (and is finally ending its run with the close of this season). And he even ventured into genuine SF with Timeline (also made into a movie); hell, one of my favorite televised SF characters (from the dear, departed Farscape) bears his first and last names.

But in his latter years, he became a right-wing media darling by being sort of an anti-Carl Sagan, attacking environmentalism and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (both causes near and dear to my heart) and pooh-poohing the dangers of nuclear winter, secondhand smoke and global warming. Wikipedia's entry on him details some of the controversies he created with his speeches, articles and public statements, and his anti-green screed disguised as a novel, State of Fear. And he was petty and vindictive enough to name a child-molester character in one of his novels after a New Republic editor who dared criticize his new brand of political science in that magazine's pages. (Personally, until I learned more details, when I first heard of Crichton's death, I figured he'd died of a heart attack when he found out that the Democrats won the elections.)

For his creative gifts and contributions to our literature and entertainment, Dr. Crichton's passing deserves note; and I suppose he has earned a small measure of credit for trying to broaden the public's awareness of science and the debate on public policy relating thereto. And my heart goes out to his family and friends with deepest sympathies on their loss. But I hope you'll forgive me if I don't shed too many tears for his untimely passing; far as I'm concerned, publishing's loss is ideology-free science's gain.

Comments

[almeda.livejournal.com]

I kind of wish he'd kept writing the kind of books I like to read, instead of what he's been writing the last ten years or so. But then, I'm selfish ...