🚀 go-pugleaf

"Pops Mear" <PopsMear@here.usa> wrote in message 
news:b694h4l1b3ther9d8jj3aaaau39l9gepvl@4ax.com...
> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/11/michael-crichto.html
>
> Jacket Copy - latimes.com
>
>
> Michael Crichton, dead at 66
>
>
>
> Author Michael Crichton has died at age 66 after "a private battle
> with cancer." Crichton's career was probably one of a kind: After
> training as a doctor at Harvard and working as a fellow  at the Jonas
> Salk Institute, he became a bestselling author, then a successful
> screenwriter, award-winning movie director and TV producer. The move
> "Jurassic Park," based on his book and on which he shared
> screenwriting credit, is the No. 10 top grossing film of all time.
>
> Crichton first reached the bestseller lists in 1969 with his book "The
> Andromeda Strain." "This book recounts the five-day history of a major
> American scientific crisis," the acknowledgments page begins. It seems
> to chronicle an actual event, including "real" scientific documents
> and transcribed communications of a crisis of Earth's contamination by
> an extraterrestrial  microorganism.
>
>    A man with binoculars. That is how it began: with a man standing
> by the side of the road, on a crest overlooking a small Arizona town,
> on a winter night.
>
>    Lieutenant Roger Shawn must have found the binoculars difficult.
> The metal would be cold, and he would be clumsy in his fur parka and
> heavy gloves. His breath, hissing out into the moonlit air, would have
> fogged the lenses. He would be forced to pause to wipe them
> frequently, using a stubby gloved finger.
>
>    He could not have known the futility of this action. Binoculars
> were worthless to see into that town and uncover its secrets. He would
> have been astonished to learn that the men who finally succeed used
> instruments a million times more powerful than binoculars.
>
>    There is something sad, foolish, and human in the image of Shawn
> leaning against a boulder, propping his arms on it, and holding the
> binoculars to his eyes. Though cumbersome, the binoculars would at
> least feel comfortable and familiar in his hands. It would be one of
> the last familiar sensations before his death.
>
> In my 1970 Dell paperback, that's the end of Page 1. Pow! He sets the
> reader up, gets you right into Shawn's place in that cold night,
> holding binoculars and leaning on that boulder, then he kills him. All
> at once you want to know more: What killed him? What happened? Who's
> telling this story, and how does he know all this? And as he gets
> these questions going, he implies to the reader that they're like
> Shawn in another way: This book is going to feel unfamiliar. But the
> storytelling voice has enough confidence (the storyteller survived,
> and knows all) that you're reassured that you're in good hands.
>
> Crichton liked to put his characters in a scientifically manipulated
> peril. He did it again in the film "Westworld," in which lifelike
> human robots in an amusement park run amok. In "Jurassic Park" too;
> there, re-vivified dinosaurs in an amusement park run amok. Then there
> was "Congo," in which scientists on an expedition are attacked by
> strange gorillas; "Prey," in which nanotechnology goes wrong; and
> "Next," in which genetic engineering goes wrong.
>
> In 2004, Crichton stirred controversy by questioning global warming in
> his book "State of Fear" and making statements such as "I'm saying
> that environmental organizations are fomenting false fears in order to
> promote agendas and make money."
>
> But controversy didn't affect his popularity; as of this writing, his
> official website has been swamped; there's a memorial page there, if
> you can get the site to load.

x2...

Mark in MD