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The Frankenstein Effect

Entry 891, on 2008-11-17 at 22:44:42 (Rating 2, Comments)

It was sad to read in the news a few days ago that prominent author Michael Crichton had died after a long battle with cancer. I don't like to be negative about people who have recently died but the event did remind me about some of the "not so good" experiences I have had reading his books and watching movies and TV shows he was involved with.

First, I have got to say that as soon as a new Crichton book was released I would go out and buy it because I always enjoyed his writing style. But I have also got to say that he did spoil a lot of potentially good books by pushing his political opinions too hard. One of the good things about his writing was that it was based on real science. Sure, he pushed the limits beyond what is possible now and possibly beyond what is possible at all, but that solid basis made his stories more interesting to me.

I know he was writing fiction and I shouldn't expect everything to be factual but I think that if scientific accuracy is an important part of an author's writing style then he should make an effort to not use subtle (and not so subtle) deflections from that accuracy to make a political point.

Probably the worst example of this was his 2004 novel, "State of Fear". This was a thinly veiled attempt at dismissing anthropogenic global warming. It was an interesting story except for two points: first, it presented the global warming skeptics' (or deniers') position very positively and made the consensus scientific view look ridiculous; and second, he made the story a bit too much good guy/bad guy by making the environmentalists into unthinking bio-terrorists. Sure there are people like that around but they are a tiny minority and the book is deliberately misleading in its presentation of the environmentalists as fanatics.

A common theme of Crichton's books was what I call "the Frankenstein effect". This is the fear of worst case scenarios arising from the application of new technologies. Crichton covered several new technologies this way, including the most famous example, a warning about genetic engineering in Jurassic Park. While its worthwhile pointing out what can go wrong with a new technology it is too negative for me taking an extreme view like this and possibly creating a sense of fear of poorly understood technologies beyond the level of fear and misunderstanding that already exists in the public psyche.

I also found it created a sense of unrealism when he deliberately had his characters do something stupid so that the story could progress. The classic example, often mentioned by computer nerds, is the control of the gates in Jurassic Park. Anyone with a modicum of forward planning would make sure that the gates locked shut if the power was interrupted, not lock open like was the case in the movie and book.

And while I'm being ultra-critical, I have to also say that some of his characters were a bit too stereotyped for me. The computer expert in Jurassic park was a classic stereotype: fat, lazy, sloppy, and disinterested in the rules. I think its just too easy portraying characters this way, although I do have to admit I'm talking about the movie character which might have undergone a bit of dumbing down by Steven Spielberg!

Well after reading all of this blog entry you might wonder why I looked forward to new Crichton novels quite so much. Sure they were flawed, but it was the ideas and the scientific factual background I found interesting. The stories were also fast paced and not always predictable so it was hard to stop reading them. While there was good and bad in all his books I think I would have to say I enjoyed them all and plan to buy his last book which will be released posthumously as well as getting a few of his older books I haven't read yet.

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