The author of The Andromeda Strain has died at 66 in Los Angeles without ever repaying us, and who knows how many other readers, for the sleepless night we spent reading that all too credible sci-fi thriller. But we gladly forgive him. It was a great read, however scary.
The man could spin a yarn, in large part because his sci had so little fi. He was one of those rare writers who could handle science. Or maybe he was one of the rare scientifically knowledgeable types who could write. For whatever reason, he was able to catch the spirit of an age that can be as technologically advanced as it is culturally barbaric.
A fascinating character with many a youthful flaw—a graduate of Harvard Medical School who tended to faint at the sight of needles, a student plagiarist who once handed in an essay by George Orwell as his own and got a B- on it—he would become a prolific writer of best-sellers and general gadfly.
Dr. Crichton infuriated true believers in Global Warming not because he expressed doubts about this latest single-cause theory of all that’s wrong with the world, but doubtless because he did it so well, with a rare combination of scientific knowledge and common sense. He capped one of his skeptical essays about this new gospel by asking, innocently enough, how experts who may now have difficulty predicting next week’s weather could be expected to predict the next century’s.
How sum him up ? Call him an intellectual agent provocateur. He was so good at it he made a sleepless night or two well worth it.
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