I truthfully wasn’t even aware that Crichton was struggling with cancer. But apparently, the awful disease has taken him from us.
I remember being charged on Crichton’s work after seeing “Jurassic Park” in 1993. Sure, he already had fans from the days of “The Andromeda Strain,” “The Great Train Robbery” and, later on, “Disclosure,” but the dinosaurs that caught the film-going world’s imagination first drew me to the author’s work.
I picked up “Sphere” (which blew my mind), “Congo” and “The Lost World” immediately. It was painful to see his works ravaged by the film industry, but he made his mark on the small screen with “ER” (one of the most successul shows of all time) and the original treatment that became “Twister” (part of a mid-90s glden age for action movies).
The last time I was really entranced by a Crichton novel was “Airframe” in the late-90s, a project that has failed to make the move to the big screen to date, despite attracting talent like Richard Donner and Sigourney Weaver over the years. I never picked up “Timeline” (though I saw Donner’s awful film) or “Prey” (though it proved to be a constant airport temptation). Perhaps his work on an old script, “Westworld,” will still make it to the screen with the help of “Shattered Glass” scribe and helmer Billy Ray.
The last Crichton novel published was 2006’s “Next,” a genetic research thriller that, like so much of his work, didn’t seem satisfied merely telling a story. Crichton was always more interested in the cautionary aspects of his yarns and how they might be better capture the zeitgeist.
For me, a one-time fan and perhaps likely to dive back in with this sad news, Crichton will be missed.