RIP Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton has long been one of my literary heroes. He was the second author I really got into as a child (after Keene's Nancy Drew series) and I did pride myself on delving into the scientific mysteries of his novels while my class mates struggled through a volume of "Goosebumps". I spent many sick days and rainy weekends in his dinosaur populated islands off the coast of Costa Rica, jungles deep in the heart of the Congo with murderous gorillas, a broken time machine in the Dark Ages of Europe, and the cold sinister corridors of metropolitan hospitals with dark secrets.

I soon became a thirteen year old Crichton snob, protesting the movie adaptations of his books because of their unforgivable departure from the storylines in my beloved novels. If my parents were unlucky enough to take me to one of the films, they were guaranteed an earful of whining lament from the backseat of the station wagon, as I educated them on the film's omission of a vitally important Pachycephalosaurus or a wrongfully killed minor character.

Crichton is the author of the popular novels Jurassic Park (for which he is most famous), The Lost World, Congo, Timeline (another favorite of mine) and Sphere. Crichton was a Harvard educated physician, and a screenwriter, producer, and of course, novelist. He passed on Nov 4th, 2008, after a battle with cancer.