Science Fiction Book Club
Interview with Gilberto Diaz-Santos (August 2024)
Gilberto Diaz-Santos is a Coordinator of Teaching and Learning at the Community College of Vermont. A Michael Crichton fan for more than three decades, he recently published the article “Recreating Facts and Documenting Fiction: The Legacy of Michael Crichton’s Narrative.”
John Grayshaw: What makes Crichton interesting from a critical perspective? What first drew you to his work?
My first encounter with Michael Crichton's work was in the early 80s, when I enjoyed late-night TV showings of Coma, Looker, The Great Train Robbery, and The Andromeda Strain. At the time, however, I wasn’t paying much attention to film credits. A decade later, while teaching English at the School of Math and Computer Science of the University of Havana, a colleague from the Computer Science Department, Dr. Katrib, handed me his copy of Jurassic Park as he thought I might find some passages useful for my classes. I never asked where or how he got the book—finding contemporary English paperbacks in Cuba was, and still is, a challenge; typically, they’re passed along by someone who found a copy left behind by a tourist or received it as a gift from abroad.
Reading Jurassic
Park changed my professional life in many ways. As I devoured the novel, I
couldn’t avoid thinking about how to incorporate passages into my lessons, a
practice I’ve continued ever since. Then, my collection of Crichton’s works
grew slowly, thanks to hunting trips to secondhand shops whenever I traveled to
Canada or the UK for professional conferences.
What has kept me hooked for nearly three decades is Crichton’s masterful blending -or blurring- of fact and fiction. I recall reading The Andromeda Strain, about a year and a half after Jurassic Park and being struck by how convincingly real it all seemed—right down to the references which included published works by some of the characters. Intrigued, I went to the library—this was before I had access to the internet—and discovered that the referenced works and some of the journals listed didn’t exist at all. Instead of feeling deceived, I appreciated the clever joke and became a more critical reader and thinker, skills that are invaluable in today’s world, where we must constantly fact-check things we hear or see.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Crichton was concerned with the impact of technology on humans, especially human-machine interaction. Did he read any cyberpunk, or did he have an opinion on it?
Given his wide-ranging interests and his engagement with contemporary scientific and technological debates, it’s likely that he was at least tangentially aware of authors like William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. He explored the intersection of technology, corporate power, and societal impact in The Terminal Man, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Disclosure, Rising Sun and Timeline which somewhat intersect with cyberpunk’s focus on the dark side of technological progress. Again, while we can’t definitively say that Crichton was aware of -or even influenced by- cyberpunk, there are thematic overlaps that suggests he was at least operating in a similar intellectual space.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Did Crichton consider himself to be a science fiction writer? Did he engage with the genre much, e.g. did he know any SF writers or meet any SF fans?
Crichton was often reluctant to be called a science fiction writer as he felt that the term SF didn't accurately capture the full range and depth of his work. In an interview, he once said, "I don't think of myself as a science fiction writer at all. I write stories that interest me and that involve technology and science, but I don't think that the label science fiction fits."
While it is true that most of his stories are about, or include elements of, science and technology, there are others like The Great Train Robbery, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, Pirate Latitudes, and Dragon Teeth that lean more to the adventure genre. So, confining him to a particular genre, especially since he also wrote non-fiction, can be a bit tricky.
In other -academic- circles, Crichton is considered a FASP author. FASP stands for fiction a substrat professionnel, and obviously the term was coined by French scholars to identify contemporary works of fiction that have been created, produced, or supervised by people with inside knowledge of the specialized domains fictionalized. Some FASP authors are Tom Clancy (military weapons and operations), Robin Cook and Michael Palmer (medicine), Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs (forensics), and John Grisham (law). In a recent publication, I argue that Crichton is a very peculiar and special case because while his main background was in medicine and anthropology, he successfully wrote about several other disciplines as substrats professionnels.
John Grayshaw: Who were some of the writers Crichton grew up reading? Who are some writers that were his contemporaries that he enjoyed/admired?
He was an avid reader; one of his biographies says that he would read 300 books a year. But that wouldn’t mean cover-to-cover. At some point he said that he would spend a lot of money on books on a great variety of topics that sounded interesting and even not very interesting. And he would read fragments and then put that book aside or read three books at the same time. No doubt that is how he continued to hone his research skills for his next book project. For example, according to the Bibliography section of Timeline his research for the novel involved more than 200 titles, 81 of them about the medieval world.
The first writer he really liked was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and it’s obvious that H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines had a great impact on him to later write Congo. He also read Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Hemingway, Orwell. However, I strongly believe that given his background in medicine, anthropology, and science writing, with a deep interest in the intersection of science, technology, and society, it is very likely that Crichton read the works of scholars like Bruno Latour, Steve Woolgar, Thomas Kuhn, and Clifford Geertz. Crichton’s portrayal of scientists, whether in an actual laboratory setting (The Terminal Man, The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park) or in the field (Sphere), and the implications of their work, could suggest that he was influenced by or at least aware of the ideas presented by Latour and Woolgar. Additionally, the theme of “paradigm shifts,” inspired by Kuhn, permeates Crichton’s exploration of disruptive scientific discoveries and their societal impact -one of Jurassic Park’s episode is titled “Almost Paradigm”. Finally, while Geertz’s influence might be less direct, Crichton’s novels consistently delve into and revisit the cultural implications of science and technology.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Did Crichton keep writing reviews of books throughout his life or did this type of work peter out after his own novels became so successful?
He was the book review editor for the Harvard Crimson, he also reviewed movies, and one of his fiction works “reviews” the works of Jasper Johns, but I am not aware of any other explorations in this genre. I would believe that in the early 1970s a lot was coming to his plate: more novels, screenplays and film directing, so eventually fiction writing became his top priority.
John Grayshaw: Did Crichton have any particular writing habits or routines he stuck with?
All of his book projects took several months, or even years, of extensive research, browsing, and note-taking. Pirate Latitudes, for instance, published posthumously in 2009, was a project he had been working on since the late 1970s. Early in his career, he realized that his writer’s block often happened because of not knowing exactly what he wanted to say. So, he wouldn’t sit down to write until he had thoroughly thought things through and had a clear plan in mind for what he wanted to say.
In various interviews, he mentioned that he had no set routine or regular workday. He found that being still slightly sleepy helped his creativity, so he preferred to start writing in the morning, typically after making a cup of coffee and having a cigarette. Sometimes, he would work for up to sixteen hours a day, producing as many as ten thousand words in a single day.
There’s an interesting anecdote that highlights what might have been once thought of as a ritual. In 1978, while working on a movie script at Claridge’s Hotel in London, his process involved typing, cutting, and then pasting pages together. Without a tape dispenser handy, he improvised by cutting several strips of tape with scissors and hanging them from the knob of a drawer. When he returned to Claridge’s a year later, he found that in his new room the staff had meticulously recreated this setup, with rows of Scotch tape strips hanging from the desk drawers.
Ed Newsom: The early seasons of ER which focused on the process of becoming a doctor were brilliant. I like to imagine this was Crichton's influence. How much involvement did he have with the series, and for how long?
ER was several years in the making and without a doubt it was the final product of someone with extensive experience in busy emergency rooms. Crichton was first a resident at the Boston City Hospital, Boston Lying-In Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital. He wrote about his experiences with such accuracy that when a A Case of Need was published -under the pen name of Jeffery Hudson- other residents would comment that the author was someone who knew Harvard Medical School very well. Next, he published Five Patient: The Hospital Explained in 1970, a work of non-fiction where he focused on the hospital experience and treatment of those patients and on what he thought might happen with several areas of healthcare in the next few years. Then in 1978 he used his own experience as a resident in a medical ward again when directing the movie version of Dr. Robin Cook’s medical thriller Coma. No wonder that in 1994, he was more than ready to turn the manuscript he had written two decades before into a great success.
But it wasn’t an easy journey; producers back in the 1970s were not very interested in the screenplay of ED (for Emergency Department) which Crichton had intended as a sort of “quasi-documentary” showing a typical day in the emergency room; interestingly enough, the first episode of ER is titled “24 Hours”. It was the combination of Crichton’s literary success, the involvement of Spielberg -who suggested shooting a two-hour pilot rather than a feature film- and that of Amblin Television that made the project come to fruition…and success. Along with John Wells, Crichton was credited as Executive Producer until his death in 2008.
However, as I’m answering these questions now, there seems to have been a new “plot twist” around ER. Michael Crichton Estate is suing Warner Brothers Television (WBTV), producer John Wells, actor Noah Wyle and others over breach of contract which include how Crichton is credited in a new series, The Pitt, about which the news says has great similarities to ER.
Ed Newsom: Writers sometimes create characters who are stand-ins for themselves. How much did Crichton identify with ER’s John Carter?
I am aware that Dr Carter has been identified as Crichton’s “avatar”; Actor Noah Wyle might not be that tall, but his face resembles a young Crichton. However, Dr Carter could also be Robin Cook’s young Dr Peters.
Contemporary characters seem to be more of a composite of several real-life personalities rather than an exact stand-in for their creators. For example, in the “Acknowledgements” of Jurassic Park, Crichton explicitly says that mathematician Ian Malcolm was inspired by the late physicist Heinz Pagels. A similar acknowledgement, however, was not made in the case of Dr Jeremy Stone of The Andromeda Strain whose academic credentials had a lot in common with those of Joshua Lederberg: both held chairs in bacteriology at Berkeley; won Nobel prizes in their thirties; wrote to government entities about dangers of spacecraft returning to Earth, eventually working for NASA; and became strong voices in scientific circles.
However, when you read Travels you realize that many bits of Crichton’s personal life experiences are spread out in his characters, even if they do not have a leading role. For example, when Congo’s primatologist Peter Elliot loses his footing on the edge of a ridge, and crashes down a slope and into the midst of nine gorillas, it’s a recreation of Crichton’s own encounter with silverback gorillas near Zaire. Both, Crichton and Elliot stood motionless and tried to control their breathing until the gorillas lost interest in them and moved off. Another example is when mathematician Ian Malcolm explains to attorney Donald Gennaro how the dinosaurs would not fit in the contemporary environment and says “The stegosaur is a hundred million years old. It isn’t adapted to our world. The air is different…The oxygen content is decreased. The poor animal’s like a human being at ten thousand feet altitude. Listen to him wheezing”, which is a direct reference to Crichton’s ordeal when climbing the Kilimanjaro- he felt really elated when he reached the summit, though.
In sum, I would say that Crichton is not just one but many of his character who recount some of his life experiences but also who voice his own –and often controversial- views on topics such as abortion, euthanasia, animal cruelty, genetic manipulation, sexual harassment, US-Japan economic relationships, air travel safety, climate change, and the role of the modern media among so many others.
Ed Newsom: Did training as a doctor give Michael Crichton an analytical nature or was he always like that?
I would agree that his training as a doctor contributed to that analytical nature. But listening to his patients was even more interesting because he often thought about how to use complaints and symptoms in his books. So, in addition to being focused on providing good treatment and care, he couldn’t help but envision his next literary project. The fact that he also studied -and taught- anthropology, did science writing postdoctoral work at the Jonas Salk Institute, and had regular contacts with people from different walks of professional lives definitely allowed him to broaden his intellectual curiosity and pursuits, and to perfect his research skills, and eventually his storytelling.
But as a medical student he also acquired the skills of moving from one project to another or those of dealing with more than one project at a time. In one interview he said “Medical training is a prolonged period of time in which you acquire one new skill after another… Inevitably, you become very adept at picking things up very quickly: technical procedures, jargon…” No wonder he was able to successfully keep several balls in the air.
Ed Newsom: Why didn't Crichton become a doctor?
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and then did a postdoctoral stint at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies. However, in his memoir Travels, he explains that in the summer of his third year he was already considering quitting. On the one hand, he was disappointed with several aspects of medical training and medical care, and he was feeling numbness in his right hand and shoulder that could be associated with multiple sclerosis. On the other hand, he had been writing thrillers to pay for his college bills; he would write during weekends and once he completed a book in ten days. At some point the writing inevitably became more interesting and rewarding than medicine. He received an Edgar Award for A Case of Need – he wished that nobody in the hospital would see the ceremony on TV or read about it in the news- and the filming of his The Andromeda Strain was about to begin. No doubt that it was a good decision; and surely, we’ve seen Crichton use his medical skills in his writing.
John Grayshaw: What were some of Crichton’s hobbies other than writing?
Crichton was a fervent traveler with a deep enthusiasm and passion for exploring the world, both geographically and culturally. His wanderlust took him on journeys for both leisure and research for his novels. In fact, his 1988 memoir is titled Travels. If he were alive today, it's easy to imagine him eagerly boarding a SpaceX or Blue Origin shuttle. He loved hiking, scuba diving, and tennis. Beyond physical activities, he was fascinated by visual art, architecture, and even the paranormal.
Damo Mac Choiligh: How did Crichton get into the business of directing films?
Curiously,
everything started when young writer Michael Crichton was invited to the set of
The Andromeda Strain and a young director named Steven Spielberg was
asked to show him around the MGM studio. Andromeda’s director Robert
Wise allowed Crichton to watch the shooting and also invited him to sit in at
the dailies. He also watched Paul W Williams and Blake Edwards film two of his
novels, Dealings and The Carey Treatment (A Case of Need)
respectively. Since Crichton thought he could do this, he continued to hang
around sets and learn from the likes of Jeannot Szwarc, Spielberg, and Arthur
Penn -from whom he learned the difficult task of directing actors.
He subsequently wrote a script for ABC television based on Binary, which he had written under the name of John Lange and under the condition that he would direct it; Pursuit was released in December 1972. A year later, he convinced MGM to let him direct his own screenplay for Westworld, and then in 1978 he directed Coma, based on the novel by Robin Cook. Coma opened doors for him further and he directed The Great Train Robbery in England and Ireland. In his memoir Travels he recounts having a hard time with his British and Irish crew, as they did not fully trust him nor were they following his directions…until they watched Coma and decided that he knew what we was doing. Actually, he enjoyed directing very much but as his books became more successful, especially after Jurassic Park, there was higher demand from both audiences and publishers, and he focused on writing.
John Grayshaw: Some critics of Crichton claimed his novels were written with eventual movies too much in mind. What do you think?
Definitely. There are several ingredients or elements to consider here. One, his stories are built around immediate life-or-death stakes, with a sense that things will go wrong at any moment, which keeps readers, or viewers, engaged. His scenes and locations are described vividly and in detail, whether they are medical wards, laboratories, under-ground or under-water facilities, or the lush and dangerous landscapes of the Virunga region or Jurassic Park. And these visual details makes his plots easy to translate from the printed page to the big screen. Think, for example, of how the Spielberg movie recreated several pages of genetic engineering techniques as a short cartoon for kids. His novels are structured and paced like screenplays with short, punchy passages or chapters that build suspense and maintain a fast tempo, jumping from one location to another or from one perspective to another, which mirrors the way film directors and editors might cut between scenes. And also, his dialogues is often snappy and functional, helping move the plot forward like in a film script. For example, he often resorts to exchanges between experts and novices, where the expert uses a technical term or makes a specialized statement, then a “what is…?” question is asked by the non-expert, and finally a simplified or illustrative response is given by the expert.
Since he had the chance of becoming a director, a role that he enjoyed, and the chance of directing his own screenplays barely four years after his first work was made into a movie, he definitely wrote with the movie version in mind, whether it would be taken to the big screen by him or by renowned directors like Spielberg, Barry Levinson, or John McTiernan.
John Grayshaw: Did Crichton have favorites of his own works?
That is always a difficult question for writers, producers, musicians, movie directors, especially when there is so much good material to choose from. Every project is a different experience, whether enjoyable, challenging, exhausting. But think I read somewhere that it was A Case of Need.
Ed Newsom: A major theme running through much of Crichton's work is how systems fail. Why did he gravitate toward this? Was he pessimistic by nature?
Crichton was always fascinated by cutting-edge science and technology and about their possibilities. But he was skeptical about unrestrained or undisciplined enthusiasm with their power and potential. And enthusiasm is a human trait, and not always a good one when we want to push some limits. I would then think that he was worried about how his characters with their talents but, above all, with their arrogance, could make things go wrong. So, yes, A Case of Need, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Westworld, Jurassic Park, Sphere, Timeline are among many examples in which systems fail; but these are systems created by humans and it’s mostly the flaws of the characters what make things go even worse.
One interesting example is Airframe where things take wrong turns not only technology-wise. It was not exactly a systems failure on Transpacific Airlines 545 which almost caused the aircraft to crash but the “intervention” of an uncertified crew member who manually outmaneuvered what the autopilot identified as an issue which could be fixed automatically. And at the same time, it was the stubborn and reckless behavior of a news producer who was willing to sacrifice truth or compromise the journalistic integrity of a story in order to advance her career and achieve personal success.
In Jurassic Park, for example,
Crichton explores the belief -and
sometimes the obsession- that humans can fully control or master nature -and
society- through technology; ten episodes of the novel are titled “Control”. The
park's creators believed they could control genetically engineered dinosaurs
through technology, and that they could monitor their lives in the confinements
of the park, but the systems to exercise that control inevitably failed
Jurassic Park is probably the best example where Crichton, greatly influenced by James Gleick’s bestseller Chaos, delves deeper into complex systems and explores the unpredictability that can arise when overconfidence in scientific prowess, technological complexity, and human ambition can lead to catastrophic consequences. So I wouldn’t say that he was pessimistic in the traditional sense but that he adopted a realist's perspective, acknowledging both the wonders and dangers of technology and cautioning that while failure is almost inevitable in complex systems, awareness, humility, and ethical considerations can guide us toward better outcomes.
Damo Mac Choiligh: Was Crichton a genuine climate-breakdown skeptic? Did he have doubts about the science behind it? Was he surprised by the backlash against ‘States of Fear’?
State of Fear was not his only work that got some backlash; Rising Sun was also highly criticized as a Japan-bashing book. But I cannot talk much about that since I moved the States about eight years after he died; obviously, I missed a lot of what the media said about his works, especially about State of Fear. I would probably say that it was not much about doubting the science behind climate change but about how data is interpreted and used -with great participation of the media- especially in predicting future events.
Personally, I learned about the term “climate refugee” having heard it so many times in Vermont in the last few years. So, we have new Vermonters who wanted to leave high temperatures…or city noise behind. But in July 2023 we had huge floods which brought a lot of destruction and financial losses to many of our towns. And this July, exactly one year later, torrential rains hit some towns again and other places in the state or in Connecticut. So, I wonder if those who moved up here are now reconsidering their decision.
The average person today has experienced the realities of climate change, and that includes someone with the intellectual, and practical, breadth and depth that characterized Crichton. Probably, what made him uncomfortable was, as he responded to a similar interview question twenty years ago, some “fundamentalist tinge” in environmental thinking and how data has been used to predict things that did not happen in reality, like the Y2K fear (an example he provided)…or more recently the red wave in our 2022 election cycle.
Ed Newsom: Crichton is sometimes perceived as a research hobbyist who wrote books to fund his temporary obsessions. Is this a fair portrait? Was the learning more important to him than the writing? In the early books he seems more invested in the stories than he is in the latter works.
I wouldn’t say “obsessions” but rather “intellectual pursuits”. The fact that they may seem “temporary” may be due to at least two reasons. One is that he had a wide range of interests; his novels are mainly centered around failures of complex systems and human beings; but he also explored topics such as animal behavior, life on the frontier, corporate culture and sexual harassment, manipulation of images. The other is that he did not like to do the same thing twice -his movie or TV scripts, for example, were not exactly like his novels-; so obviously he was moving on from project to project.
Most of his stories required a lot of reading and research; sometimes travelling, to the Caribbean or to Africa, was also part of the research. While this research and learning was important to overcome his writer’s block, it was also important to be able to explain complex matters or intricate technical details to the average reader, and doing this in ways that blend science and fiction rendering a great story which would entertain and educate readers.
I’m not sure which novels you are referring to as “latter works”. Pirate Latitudes and Dragon Teeth are two of his works that have been published posthumously, but these were book projects that started in the 1970s. And recent projects that have been completed by other authors…I’m not sure how much Crichton is in them.
John Grayshaw: Another criticism was that his characters are much less developed than his stories. What do you think?
I have heard that many times. From a young age he was interested in stories in which the individual personalities didn’t matter. In one interview he said, “Once an oil spill starts, I don’t think it matters who the president of Exxon is, whether he’s a good or bad guy…I was interested in the oil spill itself.” He even “recycled” names and last names such as Harry, Karen, Ross, Stone, Hammond, Levin/Levine/Lewin/Leavitt, so his focus was obviously on developing the story rather than the characters.
To me, probably the only character that really
evolves during a Crichton novel is Eaters of the Dead’s Ahmad
ibn-Fadlan; learning the language of Northmen, whether they were Scandinavian
or Rus, or some of their customs or skills, like shifting weapons from one hand
to the other, is a sign of character development. Maybe the very circumstances in
which he was part of this journey put him in a position to share -different-
values and a common enemy.
However, I’d like to share here a different perspective. I would say that Cricton’s characters have already developed, at least professionally, before they enter the story line with their backgrounds and research/procedural methodologies, interpretation of phenomena or scenarios, biases, pressures, ambitions… Crichton’s introductions of his characters are something that I have used in my teaching because they often read like a Linked In or website bio. Take, for instance, how he describes Dr Jeremy Stone in The Andromeda Strain or systems engineer John Arnold in Jurassic Park. In class, I have asked students to read those introductions and rewrite them in CV or resume formats, and the results have been really amazing because it is about interpreting information that has been written as fiction but is echoing professional writing.
And it’s very interesting that these characters, or most of these characters, hardly change during the story or even after an undeniable failure. One example is John Hammond, who kept thinking that nothing was wrong with his park and that Ian Malcolm’s analysis was quite incorrect, even when compys were all over him, chewing his neck. Or Disclosure’s Meredith Johnson, who left DigiCom feeling no remorse for cutting corners or harassing her assistants, but just thinking that she had been used and “screwed by the damn system”.
John Grayshaw: How much do you think his height, he was 6’9”, affected his personality and writing?
In his memoir, I sensed moments when he associated his height with occasional clumsiness and even embarrassment. During a trip to Thailand, for example, he unwittingly became the center of attention in an open market. “[Four or five hundred people] were all laughing at me, pointing and laughing…I was on display,” he recounted. His thin and tall frame posed challenges, from squeezing into a circular bathtub to being near Buddha statues —appearing taller than the revered “Enlightened One” was not a good thing.
I imagine him
as a composed and soft-spoken individual, with great aplomb and attentive
demeanor, listening to and processing other people’s stories or diverse
viewpoints. And he might lecture you on any simple or complex topic by humbly
starting “I’m not entirely certain, but…”
And your question happens to be a bit funny because at some point I daydreamed of inviting him to deliver a talk at the School of Math and Computer Science, and I still picture my students very amused at the contrast between Crichton, towering at 6’9", striding alongside me, a mere 5’3", through the corridors of the University of Havana.
John Grayshaw: Four books have been released posthumously. Is there an end to how many more we’ll see in the future?
That would be a great question for Sherri Crichton, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more books yet to come. He would often work on several projects simultaneously, which could involve finishing a novel or movie script while also gathering ideas, browsing, and taking notes for future projects. Given his prolific nature, it's likely that drafts and notes remain on hard drives or tucked away in his office.
For instance, Pirate Latitudes and Dragon Teeth were discovered on his computer and published posthumously in 2009 and 2017, respectively. These were likely completed or nearly finished projects that only required minor editorial work. Additionally, some of his unfinished works were completed by other renowned writers, such as Micro by Richard Preston and, more recently, Eruption by James Patterson from notes that Crichton was probably making through years. I have yet to read Eruption, but I must admit some hesitation. While I greatly enjoyed Preston’s The Hot Zone—even finding points in common with Robin Cook’s Outbreak — and respect his credentials, I couldn’t get past a few pages of Micro. It simply didn’t feel like Crichton’s writing. Perhaps it had to do with my own expectations, but I found very little of the captivating style that keeps me returning to Crichton's works. Well, many years ago I also put down Sphere because the first copy I could get hold of was a Spanish language version; so I postponed this reading until I could find the original English language publication.
I’m a bit skeptical about how well another “voice” can truly sound like a distinctive one. It’s a bit like the band Journey: while Arnel Pineda does a remarkable job of replicating Steve Perry’s vocals, I still prefer Perry’s original sound.
(Note from John Grayshaw: I reached out to Sherri Crichton and asked her this question about future posthumous releases. We have previously talked over the phone and through email, but she has not, at this time, responded).
John Grayshaw: What are some of the most interesting things you’ve found in your research of Crichton?
In a previous answer I mentioned that I found first in Jurassic Park and then in Andromeda, Rising Sun, Disclosure, and Airframe a lot of interesting material that I could use in my English for Science and Technology (EST) classes; I still have assignments and learning modules which I haven’t used yet.
Since my background is mostly in applied linguistics, not precisely in literary studies, and since I worked for many years teaching English to students of Math, Computer Science, Chemistry and Biology, I was very familiar with the specialized discourse analysis literature in the area of EST which Crichton uses in his works in a very peculiar style. So, I sort of revisited almost five decades of his published works of fiction and some non-fiction and looked at them from an angle not fully explored by literary scholars, media critics, or even FASP researchers.
The Andromeda Strain is probably the first and one of the best examples of how he blends techniques used in both fiction narrative and in the discourse of science and technology. This book is structured like a typical fiction paperback but is framed by Acknowledgements and References sections, giving it a scholarly -and authoritative- feel. Other later works have Introductions, Conclusions and Recommendations, and passages that read like short literature reviews. Within the narrative, Crichton explores both real and fictional ideas, theories, hypotheses, methods, and experimental procedures; he defines, classifies, exemplifies, compares and contrasts, uses chronology and highlights causality-results. The story’s realistic atmosphere is enhanced by maps, graphs, tables, microscope and computer-generated data, transcripts of radio communications and other -fabricated- “top-secret” documents.
This combination of narrative resources is then used in his following works, whether the plot centers around technology, like Jurassic Park, or around a field trip to find rare diamonds in the lost City of Zinj (Congo). For someone with an academic background, Crichton creates the impression that one is reading a novelized account of real scientific or technical event, enriched with the factual and occasionally classified data that are never included in published research or news reports. While the average reader might not see these works this way, they will always get to the end the story with a deep feeling that what they have read is based on events that happened in real life.
John Grayshaw: What is Crichton’s legacy? Why was his work significant
at the time? And why is it still important today?
Crichton’s legacy, for his readership as well as for contemporary or aspiring authors is his distinctive narrative, his idiosyncratic deployment of identifiable traits of academic or professional writing to document his fiction with scientific verisimilitude. That is why I titled my article Recreating Facts and Documenting Fiction. Of course, to do that an author will need to have the intellectual curiosity as well as the research skills and discipline that he had.
The themes that he discussed in his novels and films are timeless. Perhaps for my youngest daughter, a data science major in her senior year, some of the technology he described might be a bit “outdated” but the issues that he discussed still remain and will remain relevant.
