Best-selling author Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, November 4, 2008, losing a private battle against cancer. He was 66.
Crichton did not write literature. I cannot name one protagonist, any antagonist from any of his books I read. Yet I couldn’t put them down, okay I didn’t finish Timeline or Prey. Prey was just too creepy. Still, the worlds he created were rooted in some fact and seemed believable. His writing is to literature what McDonalds is to haute cuisine, it fills you up and come away satisfied, if maybe just a little nauseated.
Unlike a Dan Brown story, after reading a Crichton book I had learned something from his Antikythera-like mechanistic cautionary sci-fi tales.
He was, first and foremost, a storyteller.
Obituaries: New York Times; LA Times; The Atlantic