Pharyngula

All the silly references to chaos theory in Jurassic Park show he doesn't know anything about math either.

Posted by: JP | April 18, 2006 9:26 PM

Sometimes Crichton is a decent practitioner of popcorn entertainment, and I enjoyed both the book and movie of Andromeda Strain on those grounds, despite the "evolution ex machina" ending. If nothing else, it's probably one of the only science fiction movies I can think of where lots of screen time is devoted to scientists trying to solve a crisis through doing labwork and other sciency stuff (inaccurate as some of it may be). Today with the Michael Bay mentality, they'd find in a way to work a chase scene featuring somersaulting cars.

Posted by: Martin | April 18, 2006 9:33 PM

I liked I stopped reading Crichton after Jurassic Park. The damn book read like a screenplay rather than a novel, and the subsequent ones just got worse.

That Andromeda Strain was an interesting movie to some of us probably had a lot to do with its director Robert Wise who was also responsible for The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Posted by: AndyS | April 18, 2006 9:42 PM

Yeah, Jurassic Park was obviously a screenplay.

The worst thing was that he pre-inserted product placements: Land Rovers, Macs, whatever...then you saw the movie, and everything was changed around because Jeep and some other computer company shelled out more cash.

Wasn't such a bad introduction to the economics of the movie industry, I suppose

Posted by: theo | April 18, 2006 9:51 PM

I always thought Eaters Of The Dead was quite good.
The rest? Feh.

Posted by: Proteus454 | April 18, 2006 10:16 PM

Yeah, Jurassic Park was obviously a screenplay.

What was amazing was that when JP was actually made into a movie, Spielberg took what could have been shot straight from the book's pages and made into a fairly crisp thriller and dumbed it down even more. For example, there was the whole "lysine deficiency" thing. In the novel, it's something they've engineered into the dinosaurs to make their survival dependent on eating the GM foods on the island; if they escaped into the mainland they'd die fairly quickly. (Maybe that's not bulletproof biology, but it's the kind of sci-fi story concept an audience can suspend disbelief for just to follow the story, like "warp speed" in Star Trek.) So in the novel it's clear the rich guy and the people running the park have indeed thought about and taken steps in consideration of the dinosaurs getting loose. But in the movie, nobody working at the park appears to have given two seconds' thought to the dinosaurs getting loose at all, the main characters get "duh-whaaa?" reactions from everybody when they even mention "Hey, don't you guys think raising dinosaurs might be dangerous?", and the concept of the "lysine deficiency" is given one throwaway line of dialogue, when one character actually says, "Should we implement the lysine deficiency?" Like it's a fucking switch they can flip! D'oh....

Anyway, if I go on with everything about that movie that sucks, this would be the longest blog comment PZ's ever had, so I'll stop while the night is young.

Posted by: Martin | April 18, 2006 10:25 PM

Never read any Crichton, but I guess the only genre fiction I read is medieval. I do remember a stupid sexist "mommy" thing going on w/ the Laura Dern character in that JP film (like, what's his obsession w/ theme parks gone wrong?). Was that in the book too?

Posted by: Karl the Grouchy Medievalist | April 18, 2006 10:33 PM

has anyone read "State of Fear" - it was just recommended to me by a fellow professor teaching an introductory environmental science course. She had post-it notes strewn throughout her copy and I suspect was using it in class. I haven't read it - is this book crap as well?

Posted by: JLem | April 18, 2006 10:46 PM

JLem, "State of Fear" is the worst of the lot.

And he doesn't just get the climate science wrong in that book.

Posted by: Tim Lambert | April 18, 2006 11:06 PM

Karl: No, the faux-feminist/mommy BS with the Laura Dern character was not in the book. In the book her character has a doctor boyfriend in Chicago we never see and there isn't even a hint of a relationship between her and the character Sam Neill plays. She never spouts that "women will rule the world" bullshit in the book either. What was so condescending and intelligence-insulting about that part of the film was that all of the Laura Dern character's feminist sloganeering was ludicrously dishonest. Because her character's main motivation in life turns out to be to have babies by the Sam Neill character (whom the script takes great pains to underscore doesn't like children, which in the Spielberg-verse makes you a Bad Man who must be Corrected -- this, BTW, was also not in the book). Cue Family Values™ Subplot #3,612.

As much as you can legitimately slag Crichton's novels for, the movie versions often make them look like timeless literary masterworks! But then, Crichton has both script and director approval over his film adaptations, so since he signed off on the changes made to his story, he doesn't escape responsibility for the suckage.

I warned you you shouldn't set me off about this movie!

Posted by: Martin | April 18, 2006 11:08 PM

*snicker* He said "flaccid ending"! *snicker*

Posted by: Bourgeois Nerd | April 18, 2006 11:35 PM

"Filmmakers know that good science, good math, etc. - i.e. reality - make for incredibly boring movies. For example, the next time you watch a Star Wars or Star Trek movie, mute the sound on your TV during the space battles."

Have you seen Firefly? It is quite possible to use the lack of sound in space artistically as well as practically.

As far as Crichton goes, he is best at turning ideas (either ones he generates or gets from elsewhere) into money by adding enough sizzle to sell them. His plots tend to be cardboard thin and his characters flatter still, but he is well tuned into pop culture.

I much prefer Kim Stanley Robinson who does a better job of capturing the excitement of real science (and who for one thing acknowledges the reality of global climate change!).

Posted by: Diego | April 18, 2006 11:38 PM

Re: silence in space-- Joss Whedon knows! And so his Firefly sci-fi series and movie ("Serenity") has silent scenes in open space, even battle scenes, which are pure ballet. But that's only marginally Hollywood.

Posted by: thwaite | April 18, 2006 11:45 PM

"Have you seen Firefly?"

Isn't that that SciFi show that hardly anyone watches?

Posted by: JMcH | April 18, 2006 11:55 PM

No, it was a joke, and I am actually one of the people who hardly watches it. *smirk*

Posted by: JMcH | April 19, 2006 12:23 AM

I don't remember much about his book Sphere, but I do remember thinking "This guy sure seems to have a problem with women."

Posted by: craig | April 19, 2006 12:54 AM

Eaters of the Dead was great IMHO

and firefly and especially serenity are very well done

Posted by: J Max | April 19, 2006 1:50 AM

Actually, I'd say that both Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park were drastically improved when they were made into movies. Neither would be on my list of Desert Island DVDs, but to just kick back and enjoy, I consider them pretty solid material.

Posted by: Blake Stacey | April 19, 2006 1:56 AM

Eh. I read part of Disclosure, but it didn't interest my 13 year old self beyond 1) its value as pseudo-porn and 2) the fact that its author seemed to be the only other human being on the planet at that point willing to admit to themself that sexual harassment wasn't entirely and by definition a men-to-women thing (clearly more policymakers and sheep-attitude-definers need the experience of cheerleading-squad-like numbers of cheerleader-type-personalities hurling every synonym of "homosexual" in the book at them like a shrill, sleazy Greek chorus...).

As for Crichton...meh. I haven't read him in years, and at the time I didn't have the breadth of knowledge to really critique it...but I recall finding Ian Malcolm pretty pretentious and irritating, and wondering wtf all the fancy math stuff had to do with the commen-sense problems the park would present.

You know who's bad about science? Dean Koontz. First, because he shamelessly abuses "mad scientist" straw men like it was the 1950s (and we won't even get into the tired old stereotypes about atheists), and second, because of the tedious blather stemming from his (please circle one)
A. Incredibly boneheaded
B. Deliberately dishonest
C. Both
conflation of quantum physics and New-Age-Christian metaphysics, particularly in the form of characters who "understand the quantum structure of the universe" (is that statement even meaningful or coherent under current theory?) and consequently can apparently, by will alone, circumvent...if not the laws of physics, then the approximations of those laws that define "consensus reality."

Posted by: Azkyroth | April 19, 2006 2:50 AM

I read the Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park at school. I thought they outlined (and exploited) chaos theory in a pretty good way... until (prompted by those books) I actually got a book that was really about chaos theory. Man, talk about a shock!

I still thought he was a passable writer of pulp, though, until I read that time-travel one*. Whoah. What a stinker.

*Not that I read all his book until that one, mind. I think it went A.S, J.P., stinker.

Posted by: outeast | April 19, 2006 3:23 AM

All the silly references to chaos theory in Jurassic Park show he doesn't know anything about math either.

Oh please for the love of {insert deity here} do not get me started...

Posted by: Corkscrew | April 19, 2006 4:25 AM

The Andromeda Strain... Isn't that the book where a virus that lives in space comes to Earth, but finds out it can't live outside the normal values of human pH for some reason, gets pissed off and switches to eating rubber?

At least that's how I remember it.

Posted by: Phaed | April 19, 2006 6:09 AM

Crichton - I read Andromeda Strain when I was young and enjoyed it even though it has the usual flaws of scifi. When I picked up Sphere years later, it was too bad on plot, characters and science to read. Of course I knew more of science, but that wasn't the only reason. I see from the comments that I haven't missed out on much.

Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | April 19, 2006 6:41 AM

The ending of "Sphere" was a real throw-the-book-against-the-wall moment for me. At that point I decided not to read any more Crichton, but for some reason I read "Timeline" several years later anyway.

I should have known better. The weird thing about "Timeline" is that the book admonishes us repeatedly not to think of its medieval characters as stupid just because they lived in an earlier time... and then shows them behaving with unbelievable stupidity, such as when the bad guy imprisons the heroes in a room in which he himself hid readily available weapons.

Posted by: Matt McIrvin | April 19, 2006 7:27 AM

V for Vendetta was an interesting movie, but I wouldn't call it sci-fi simply because it's set in the future. It was nice to see Natalie Portman with an interesting role. I still have to wonder if her best work has already been done. But it's not her fault Leon (aka The Professional) was so great. Stephen Fry was particularly good as the talk show host, I thought.

V for Vendetta makes for a good litmus test. Some people really cannot stand the movie at all. I find it correlates with the "you must respect my authoritay" types.

Posted by: RickD | April 19, 2006 7:46 AM

Johnny Vector, RickD: So you both liked V for Vendetta?

I had been keen to see it before it came out, but since its release I've gone right off the idea. A combination of Alan Moore having dropped it like a hot potato, and the press panning it, and suddenly it doesn't seem like too good an idea any more.

I don't know anyone personally who has seen it, so I'm still in two minds about it. I might just get it at some later point (video shop, download, TV) rather than pay for the cinema experience for a lousy film.

Posted by: Ithika | April 19, 2006 7:58 AM

Ithika:

I just saw V for Vendetta a week ago. Not being at all familiar with original Alan Moore story, I have to judge the movie on its own merits -- and taken by itself, I'd say it's pretty darn good. Like all films in which explosions figure prominently, it should be seen on the largest screen possible. (With theater prices always on the up-and-up, you may wish to smuggle in your own popcorn and a box of Junior Mints.) I was able to tell when a plot twist was coming up and guess which way it was likely to turn, but that's probably because I've spent too many years geeking over movies and thus "speak cinema" fairly well.

The effect of her receiving good lines and good directing made me literally not recognize Natalie Portman. I swear: it was like watching a different actress.

I haven't really kept up with movie reviews lately, but I think the one in The Onion A.V. Club is pretty perceptive:

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/46300

Posted by: Blake Stacey | April 19, 2006 8:14 AM

I've always blamed popular knowledge (misknowledge, really) of the second law of thermodynamics.

I know it's widely misused by creationists as well, but outside their sphere of influence, I've found innummerable individuals who thing that 2nd law predicts that dinosaurs will escape your theme park. It's entropy, man! Closed systems tend toward disorder, your park charges admission and has turnstiles, ergo, it's a "closed" system and we'll be eaten by thunder lizards!

Posted by: Fox1 | April 19, 2006 8:22 AM

Crichton's books often have a central interesting idea that could have been handled so much better than he did.

The jurassic park movie was fun when it came out just for the great effects (quote from the newyorker, I think: "Realistic dinosaurs make up for people who aren't.") - it was quite a long time ago.

Posted by: chuko | April 19, 2006 8:38 AM

Courtroom scenes rarely depict accurate lawyering. ER doctors don't scream orders and sprint around when treating trauma patients.

Actually, yes we physicians do sometimes scream orders and run around while treating trauma patientssometimes. The E.R. can be a high tension atmosphere, chaotic and noisy. Sometimes you have to yell to get people's attention over the ruckus, and seconds can count, which is why we sometimes are running around, particularly when there are multiple victims.

What we don't allow is having relatives in the trauma bay while we're doing invasive procedures or even CPR on the patients, something that E.R. shows with depressing frequency.

Posted by: Orac | April 19, 2006 8:44 AM

Despite whatever is wrong with Jurassic Park, I read it for a science fiction lit class and rather liked it. There ARE things he describes that are accurate but I doubt many Westerners would get it because it doesn't deal with data or plot, it deals with attitude and world-view.

Posted by: NeoLotus | April 19, 2006 9:35 AM

Oh, yeah...I read Andromeda Strain when I was a kid, staying up late with the flashlight under the covers. It seemed very cool then--but one thing that really bothered me at the time (still does, I guess, since I remember it 30+ years later!) was that the alien bug causes some fighter jets to crash, and it turns out to be from the spacegerm eating the pilots' facemasks--which, it is revealed in a chapter-ending Fraught Moment, is a new experimental polymer that is remarkably similar to human skin!!!!!!! But then the incident and concept never appear again...both are dropped like a hot potato/red herring burrito.
He did stick a bit of medical physiology in there, though...one tidbit I recall is that the 2 survivors of the infected town both had body-fluid pH outside of normal reference values (as noted by somebody above), the baby from crying all the time and consequent respiratory alkalosis (too much CO2 blown off), and the old wino from acidosis induced by chewing aspirins and drinking Sterno (!)

On another topic, I'm thinking about developing a non-majors science course structured around screening movies with scientific content, which as noted above is nearly always Bad (e.g. Jurassic Park), and then spinning the course content off of criticizing the flicks. Other suggestions are hereby solicited...thanks.

Posted by: CCP | April 19, 2006 9:59 AM

"While there's certainly room for criticizing Crichton for mis-use of science, I think people need to lighten up a bit whenever their profession is depicted in fiction."

That's a true point, but what's grating is that for some reason Crichton is taken as being more factually correct than most fiction writers (see Bush, GW, consultants on climate change).

I went through a Chrichton phase when I was younger, but the whole thing with Jurassic Park killed it. I thought it was a fun book, but the movie was butchered. Then again, I have a very personal distaste for it, because the movie came out right as I was starting graduate school. I had to endure a thousand conversations that went: "What are you doing after graduation?" "I'm going to grad school to study paleobotany." "Cool, did you pick that because of Laura Dern?" [muffled curses]"Yeah, I'm choosing my life career based on a MOVIE."

Posted by: Carlie | April 19, 2006 10:12 AM

I've finished three of his books, and they were all REALLY fun to read. That's where his skills are. I didn't even realize anything was wrong until I tried to describe the stories to others: ...uh, well...I know it sounds really stupid, but...uhm.

Posted by: wamba | April 19, 2006 10:36 AM

It was that Malcolm character's ignorant rants about science grad students acquiring vast powers with no responsibilities that irritated me no end. Vast powers on a diet of ramen and mac&cheese, I guess.

Posted by: wamba | April 19, 2006 10:41 AM

Blake Stacey:
thanks man!
of course, to use those suggestions I'd have to learn some astronomy and/or physics...(self-paced Physics at Michigan State was great for time-flexibility but I didn't learn shit, long term.)

Posted by: CCP | April 19, 2006 11:00 AM

"I know, it's just fiction, and should be read for fun..."

I'm going to argue that there's no such thing as "just fiction," because the brain is always learning, no matter what we are doing. The conscious, normal brain is never in a state of not learning, even when someone is "just" playing video games or reading the utter garbage from a rotter like Michael Crichton. That's the problem! A good example is the mess that shows like "CSI" have made out of potential jury pools by setting up in people's minds unrealistic standards of physical evidence and reasonable doubt.

(I don't know how many people have told me that this or that program is "just fiction," and then asked me if I, as a belly dancer, take my clothes off--the answer is, OF COURSE NOT--and when I inquire as to what the hell they were thinking, they invariably reply, "That's how I saw it on television/in a movie." And when I reply, "I thought that TV and movies were just fiction?" I get a confused look and an "Oh, yeah. Right." Oh, yeah, right--there's no such thing as just fiction, not matter how stupid, because the brain just sucks up stereotypes. That's another problem.)

And yes, it's terribly difficult to write interesting, engaging fiction that has a sound scientific basis, because it's terribly difficult to write any kind of fiction that doesn't, in some way, simplifiy, distort, fall into clichéd pablum, or just blatantly misrepresent something. However, I think that writing such fiction should be attempted, and that it can be done. It's what I'm trying to do, and it of course has been done by great sci fi writers. I hope I'm successful, but who knows, maybe my stories just plain old suck. We'll see.

Posted by: Kristine | April 19, 2006 11:34 AM

"On another topic, I'm thinking about developing a non-majors science course structured around screening movies with scientific content, which as noted above is nearly always Bad (e.g. Jurassic Park), and then spinning the course content off of criticizing the flicks. Other suggestions are hereby solicited...thanks."

I used The Core for a non-majors geology class. It's so gorgeously bad that even the ones who slept through class could pick out the stupid parts.

Posted by: Carlie | April 19, 2006 12:14 PM

I had a great time going to see The Core with a bunch of geophysics grad students - we made fun of it the whole way through.

Posted by: chuko | April 19, 2006 1:54 PM

I used The Core for a non-majors geology class. It's so gorgeously bad that even the ones who slept through class could pick out the stupid parts.

I am debating using the zinc oxide part of Kentucky Fried Movie (can't show the whole thing for what should be pretty obvious reasons) in this summer's freshman chemistry class - just to see if any of them spor that it's a parody.

...and to lead into a discussion of why they should care about chemistry.

Posted by: Rick @ shrimp and grits | April 19, 2006 3:04 PM

Have you seen Firefly? It is