RIP Michael Crichton

[wayfriend]

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Michael Crichton, a best-selling author, died in Los Angeles on Tuesday, his public relations firm said in a news release.

He "died unexpectedly," the release said, "after a courageous and private battle against cancer."

[Cameraman Jenn]

Very sad. I read that earlier. My thoughts go to his family for their loss.

[Cail]

Holy shit, I just saw this....

[Seareach]

yeah. whoa!

[Fist and Faith]

Wow. Something of a giant in his genre, eh?

[wayfriend]

Wow. Something of a giant in his genre, eh?

A tyranasaurus rex.

I liked his movies more than his books, but some of his books were pretty good. Didn't he start with The Andromeda Strain? I remember that being a movie like 35 years ago.

[Cail]

Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.

[Holsety]

Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.

Going by Jurassic Park they tend to action-pack and trivialize his works, but that is a sort of acceptable tendency in book adaptations of films (see Jaws).

Personally haven't read much of his stuff, but a shame to see him go pretty early.

BTW a tale which (IMO) is pretty rad:

Crichton admitted to having once, during his undergraduate study, plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. According to Crichton the paper was received by his professor with a mark of "B−". Crichton claimed that the plagiarism was not intended to defraud the school, but rather as an experiment. Crichton believed that the professor in question had been intentionally giving him abnormally low marks, and so as an experiment Crichton informed another professor of his idea and submitted Orwell's paper as his own work.

I'm sure some sticklers would jump on something like this as bad, but piss off. Anyway, I always find it clever when people resubmit famous works to see if they spark anything on the reader's radar. Usually, if I read 4 or 5 papers by a friend for a particular class (being asked for comments for peer review or whatever) I tend to pick up on at least a FEW idiosyncrasies. I hope a professor grading my work would pay enough attention to be able to tell if I stopped using my own words, but I suspect some of mine wouldn't (though I'm certainly not bold enough to risk getting caught for plagiarism just so I can check).

Then again, if he was part of a large seminar class I guess it would be unfair to expect the teacher to be THAT mindful of his individual writing style.

[Cybrweez]

yea, this was pretty surprising. He really was a giant, 6' 9"! No idea he was so big. Read only 'State of Fear' and 'Next', both were very good.

holsety, if I were a prof, and had to read hundreds of papers in any semester, not sure I'd pick up on anything. That's alot of papers.

[Avatar]

Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.

I walked out of Sphere, and that might even have been the best adaptation.

(Y'all know theres a gen disc thread on this too huh?)

As I said there, I liked his books, if not his science.

--A

[Holsety]

holsety, if I were a prof, and had to read hundreds of papers in any semester, not sure I'd pick up on anything. That's alot of papers.

I guess it depends. I've had this one english professor for three classes now, he's read at least 12 longer papers (say 8-10 pages), and a huge amount of 1-4 page papers (one per class session), and he tends to give back a copious amount of comments on the longer ones, and I've talked with him about a number of papers while I was writing them. I am pretty sure if I plagiarized there's a fair chance he'd pick up on it since he seems to have a pretty good idea of how I write by now.

But as for my entry level bio class first semester where there were something like 35 kids in my lab group, I doubt my prof would have noticed (not to mention that my lab reports were less distinctive than my papers for my english classes are, and were rather drab for the most part).

It says Crichton's thing was for a politics course, those can get pretty large I guess, not a big surprise if the prof was just overworked.

[Farm Ur-Ted]

But as for my entry level bio class first semester where there were something like 35 kids in my lab group, I doubt my prof would have noticed (not to mention that my lab reports were less distinctive than my papers for my english classes are, and were rather drab for the most part).

Oh, man, I spent years TA'ing general chemistry and organic chemistry, and it was pretty damn obvious whenever someone was cheating, either on a lab report or a test. Did I care about it? Now that's another question. Usually, the ones who were doing it were getting D's anyway, so I'd let it slide.

[matrixman]

Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.

Going by Jurassic Park they tend to action-pack and trivialize his works, but that is a sort of acceptable tendency in book adaptations of films (see Jaws).

Personally, I thought Jurassic Park the movie improved on the book, at least in the areas that were important to me. The book was, honestly, a very depressing read. The story dragged, and nearly every character was unlikeable. I do not care to ever read the book again. Meanwhile, the movie was sheer exhilaration from beginning to end, and I could actually sympathize with the characters. And since it was Crichton himself who adapted the novel for the movie, that showed how adept he was as a screenwriter.

[wayfriend]

Personally, I thought Jurassic Park the movie improved on the book, at least in the areas that were important to me. The book was, honestly, a very depressing read. The story dragged, and nearly every character was unlikeable. I do not care to ever read the book again. Meanwhile, the movie was sheer exhilaration from beginning to end, and I could actually sympathize with the characters.

Yep. That's where I am. JP the movie was a good sci-fi action/adventure pic. Get some popcorn. JP the book was a rather dull and unintelligent. Like the DaVinci Code, it seemed to be a sci-fi novel that was dumbed down into a beach reader.

[Avatar]

Good point. Jurassic Park was an exception, also partly due to the fact that I saw it a few times long before I read the book. So I wasn't predisposed to complain about what was incorrect.

--A