Official Discussion Forum for the works of Stephen R. Donaldson
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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."
Wow. Something of a giant in his genre, eh? 
A tyranasaurus rex.Fist and Faith wrote:
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).Cail wrote:Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.
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).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 walked out of Sphere, and that might even have been the best adaptation.Cail wrote:Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.
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.Cybrweez wrote: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.
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.Holsety wrote: 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).
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.Holsety wrote: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).Cail wrote:Heh, I didn't think the movies made from his books were very good.
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.matrixman wrote: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.