RIP Michael Crichton
So I just heard of this... He was actually mentioned on NewsBusters. This guy is probably my favorite science fiction writer. I say "probably" because I really haven't read very many, but of all the one's I've attempted to read, only Michael Crichton's I've been able to finish because they were gripping until the very end. Andromeda Strain... Jurassic Park... Timeline... Prey... All were perfectly amazing.
So what do I do after hearing about his passing away? Well, I read his Wikipedia article, of course. The article is pretty... Boring, actually. Only a small bit about his life, and then it's more or less a list of books, movies and shows he's been involved with. (Though I did not know he was the mastermind behind ER... If people told me that earlier, I would have probably been more receptive to trying to watch it!) But then, at the bottom, under Speeches, I hit the motherlode: I'm pretty sure he was a conservative. At least he shows all the classic signs!
He made speeches against the speculative science such as the idea of alien life and global warming... He basically says they can't be proven scientifically and are thus more similar to religions than science. Awesome! He even rips the environmentalists for the same idea... And then he tears into the mainstream media way back in 1994 and calls them out for opinionating instead of reporting and NewsBusters even says he went so far as to predict the fall of the mainstream media and the rise of "The Net" as the primary source of news in the next 10 years. You know what? He was right.
Who was once merely an awesome writer to me is now suddenly far more amazing. What would make it perfect if he was a Christian... I mean, he was at least a conservative, right? He's half the way there! But having been divorced 4 times doesn't paint a good picture to that regard. That, and the fact that most of his stuff deals with evolution and extraterrestrials and such. Then again, I write about life outside of Earth, because I understand it's fiction... I don't know. I tried visiting his site to see, but... Eh, it doesn't say, either. (And seems to be faltering under traffic-related stress.) Oh well... He still sounds like a great guy.