The Sword and Laser discussion

DUH!!!!
Have you guys read Jurassic park yet? that book is a total sci-fi classic. I LOVE THAT BOOK!!!! :)
comment if you love jurassic park and feel very strongly that it should be a S&L pick. oh yeah.... please :p

I've read Jurassic Park a few times and it was awesome. Now read Sphere ;)

Yes, I've read Jurassic Park. It is excellent. However, it's been around a while and the author is very well known. And, I think everyone has seen the movie.

I'd like to see us read more current books. I thought Bitter Seeds and The Windup Girl were fabulous choices because they were both amazing new books by wonderful new authors. I'd like to see more of that.

Chrighton writes some good books.

Jurassic one was excellent - 2 and 3 not so much.

Loved Andromeda strain and timeline. Prey and Disclosure wasn't so good.

The thing i dislike the most is the fakery in the plots to force something to happen. its a bit hard to explain without spoilers.

Generic example - creating a physical law ,or instance that time travel is not really time travel but movement between parallel universes and then use a feature of time travel that would not work for moving between universes as a plot line.....

If your read timeline it should be obvious

I did appreciate Jurrasic Park when it first came out, and I've read most of Crichton's other novels. Most lack plot and character development necessary to make a good book, but all are fast paced reads.

I have to agree with Sandi in that I don't think it should be an S&L pick. Not because of its age, but because we've all seen the movie. I'd like to see something older, but less generically popular as the next pick. (My mom, who claims to hate sci-fi and fantasy even read Jurrasic Park.)

God I hated Timeline so much. I threw the book in the trash after reading it, and I hoard books like crazy.

Ala wrote: "God I hated Timeline so much. I threw the book in the trash after reading it, and I hoard books like crazy."

AMEN!!! Every chapter ended with a "cliffhanger." I mean MY GOD, a main character can not be about to die in every scene of the story man!!!

Also Prey sucked horribly, awful awful awful

What about Congo? That book was so bad it was funny.

What about the 1973 "Westworld", staring Yul Brynner as a bald robot cowboy ?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070909/

Michael Crichton not only wrote, but also directed that classic bit of cheese (and I mean "classic bit of cheese" in a fun way :) )

I really enjoyed reading Airframe on a long cross country flight. Added a bit of tension :)

Didn't Michael Crichton say that there was no global warming, and smoking was good for you?

Tamahome wrote: "Didn't Michael Crichton say that there was no global warming, and smoking was good for you?"

Yup. Crichton was quite a Luddite, and it shows in his books.

His understanding of science was pretty awful, too -- I mean Jurasic Park is premised on the idea that Chaos Theory says zoos can't work.

hey steven sorry this kind of turned in to a Michael Crichton haters thread. I really did like Jurassic Park (1 and 2) and Sphere (except for the ending).

To be fair the rest of the science in JP wasnt totally bunk - and chaos theary wasnt used to say the zoo wouldnt work just some of the things they were trying to do.

Steven - I am on balance a Plus 1 for crichton

Sphere would have to be my favorite among Crichton's works.