
Michael Crichton and Computers - adefa
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/programmer/
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kohanz
Thanks for posting this. Crichton was my favourite author when I was a young
boy (I still remember how engrossing _Sphere_ was for me) and to this day I
had no idea that he tried his hand at programming.

~~~
Thirdegree
_Prey_ is one of a very small number of books I never managed to finish
because it scared me at the time.

~~~
ergothus
Interesting - I greatly enjoyed Crichton's earlish work (e.g. Jurassic Park,
Andromeda Strain), but found his later stuff to be terrible in its scientific
basis and _Prey_ was when I stopped reading because I found it too terrible to
just enjoy.

Glad someone enjoyed it, I may have been too picky.

~~~
jfoutz
I enjoyed a bunch of his books. Prey had problems, but i thought it was a fun
read after i stopped worrying about power.

I gave up on him after [http://www.brendan-
nyhan.com/blog/2006/12/michael_crichto.ht...](http://www.brendan-
nyhan.com/blog/2006/12/michael_crichto.html)

It's so dirty and underhanded. He seemed like a really interesting guy from
the window of his books. Perhaps he just got a little off track at the end
there.

~~~
veidr
I don't think it is dirty and underhanded, and I would even go so far as to
say it's awesome.

It isn't like Chrichton defiled some serious work of journalism or science by
slipping in this personal vendetta; as Crowley aptly points out, Chrichton's
works are mass-market novels about 'killer dinosaurs and talking monkeys'.

So what's the harm? Books like that need despicable minor characters to set
the tone, and I think this is perfectly fine way to say, "Fuck you, Michael
Crowley!" It's his novel, after all.

Also, after reading Crowley's article[1] that so incensed Crichton, I think he
probably does have a small penis^W^W^W^W^W^W^W it is not very good. (Neither
are Crichton's books, although I probably read most of them in the pre-kindle
days when you had to buy a paperback at the airport before a long flight.)

[1]: [http://www.newrepublic.com/article/michael-crichtons-
scaries...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/michael-crichtons-scariest-
creation)

~~~
nitrogen
The name is the same, though. I think that's what makes it completely
ridiculous.

~~~
veidr
I agree -- ridiculously over-the top. Zero subtlety. That's why I found it
kind of awesome.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
No, let me give you a true example of ridiculously over-the-top, zero
subtlety.

I once read an obscure sci-fi novel where the bad guy was an evil physicist
named Edward Teller, who wanted to destroy the world with his invention, the
hydrogen bomb. No relation to the real-world Edward Teller, of course. All
characters in the novel were fictitious and any resemblance to real persons,
living or dead, was purely coincidental. It said so right in the front of the
book...

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melling
Michael Crichton once intentionally plagiarized George Orwell while at Harvard
and got a B-

[http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-got-a-b-
at-...](http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-got-a-b-at-
harvard.html)

~~~
Aqueous
According to the Wikipedia entry on Michael Crichton
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton)),
he actually told another professor about his suspicions, and more importantly
his intention to submit an Orwell essay under his own name. If he were to get
caught, informed consent from another member of the faculty may have been a
mitigating factor.

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thorin
If you want to find out more about him read his book Travels, is a very
interesting take on an autobiography type novel. Its one of my favourites but
I don't know anyone else who's read it.

~~~
CamperBob2
That was a fascinating book, all right. The idea that the author of the hyper-
rational _The Andromeda Strain_ could be so credulous is still something I
struggle with. He comes across as someone who automatically believes anything
suggested to him until it's proven wrong.

There were at least two people inside Crichton's head, maybe more.

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hyperbovine
This site is weirdly reticent about the fact that he's been dead for years...

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roghummal
He's a brand.

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hyperbovine
Agreed; it's just a little off-putting to see whoever it is keep flogging the
corpse for more $$$.

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tnecniv
I imagine he rolled over a couple times at the new Jurassic Park

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qmalzp
He was alive for Jurassic Park 2 and 3. I think he'd just be happy his heirs
made a bundle

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sperling75
Which of his books were pioneering or futuristic in how they showed people
using computers ?

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pa5tabear
Prey

"The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific
community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity),
genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing."

~~~
ergothus
Not remotely pioneering though. Being 5-20 years (or more) behind the curve
might be insightful to the average reader, but is in no way pioneering.

That'd be like saying Dolly the Sheep was pioneering in ideas about cloning
humans. The ideas/ethics/concerns were around for decades. That average people
willfully ignored them doesn't make the ideas new.

~~~
SapphireSun
For what it's worth, when I was a kid, I loved Prey and it was my first
experience with nano-technology. You only have to be pioneering to the right
audience. ;)

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Zikes
I remember when someone posted here their javascript project demonstrating how
you could make ads and modals pop up when the user's mouse left the page.
There were a lot of comments about the potential for abuse, but ultimately it
was decided that like all science it could not be inherently evil.

Still, I sometimes wonder if they feel any remorse.

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mattgodbolt
There's a typo in the heading "Chrichton" should be "Crichton".

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adefa
Thanks for pointing that out, should be fixed now. :)

