Books Blog: English Literature & Linguistics

Noted American novelist Michael Crichton, MD (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) died at the age of 66 of cancer.

Having sold over 150 million books intentionally, he is best known for sci-fi action novels The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Disclosure, Rising Sun: A Novel, Timeline, State of Fear, Prey, and Next. Crichton also dabbled in television and movies, creating TV show ER, and the movies Jurassic Park, its sequel The Lost World, Twiser, and others.

Criticisms of Crichton’s work revolve around two themes: scientific inaccuracies around his portrayal of climate change, and his general hostility towards technology and industrial systems. On the issue of global warming, Al Gore said on March 21, 2007 before a US House committee: “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor [...] if your doctor tells you you need to intervene here, you don’t say ‘Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem’.” This was an obvious reference to State of Fear.

The other problem with his work is hatred for technology–all kinds of technology, from standard aircraft construction, to genetic engineering, to computer systems, and even nanotechnology. In a Crichton story, anything that can go wrong in his mind will go wrong, even if the scenarios are ludicrous in actuality. Some would go so far to classify Crichton–although he denies the charge–as a luddite.

Ding, dong the witch is dead. We rejoice that Jerry Falwell, 73, died today in office of a heart attack. Pastor of the Southern Baptist Convention, he has routinely been a bastion of conservative religious racism, fascism, and homophobia. Perhaps the light of learning will burn brighter.

Here are some selected but choice quotes from Positive Atheism and the National Sexuality Resource Center:

• “I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!”
• “AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”
• “The Bible is the inerrant … word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible,without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.”
• “Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.”
• “I do not believe the homosexual community deserves minority status. One’s misbehavior does not qualify him or her for minority status. Blacks, Hispanics, women, etc., are God-ordained minorities who do indeed deserve minority status.”
• “Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan.”
• “[Homosexuals are] brute beasts…part of a vile and satanic system [that] will be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”

Judge for yourself if you’d like to celebrate, or mourn. I’d bet 99% of you should be in the former category, so get your drink on.

87 years old, and the author of such fantastic American novels as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), Cat’s Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions (1973), Kurt Vonnegut just passed away. He died last night in his New York home. Morgan Entrekin, a long time family friend, reported the death as brain injuries as a result of a recent fall.

The International Herald Tribune recounts his most formative memory, the firebombing of Dresden:

The defining moment of Vonnegut’s life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. “The firebombing of Dresden,” Vonnegut wrote, “was a work of art.” It was, he added, “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.”

He also attended Cornell University, my alma mater.