Hooray – Scifi #200 is here – let’s enjoy some retrofuturism with Michael Crichton and then discuss a few other things about the author himself. Take a look:
Interesting takeaways from his talk – having a word processor in the 1970s that required a service contract because it was ‘always breaking down.’ Makes me wonder what the difference between a word processor with a service contract and a subscription-based service like they’re screaming about for Mercedes and Audi. Also, Chricton is both remarkably progressive on some items (VFX, scifi) and regressive (deepfake media and intellectual property rights) in others.
Michael Chricton – of course -wasn’t perfect. If you dig into his history, you become aware of his many controversies – he was a climate change-denier, for example. Married several times. Engaged in creepy, weird battles with book critics.
Not only that – his body of work spanning four decades reveals that he wasn’t much on storytelling craft. Many of his stories regurgitate the Frankenstein ‘new technology will kill us all’ moral panic when they aren’t making tone-deaf observations about minority groups (looking at you, ‘Rising Sun). I’m not defending any of his choices. If we can step away from those imperfections, we can see that Chricton was a thoughtful, intelligent person who knew a lot about where the world was going. It’s great that we still have moments like these that show his flawed, human genius for what it was.
I hope you enjoyed this little adventure of retrofuturism with Michael Crichton. Please feel welcomed to dive down the rabbit hole of every other Sci-Friday I’ve published in the past couple years. Have a great weekend! 🙂
