posted
I just finished reading Crichton's [u]The Andromeda Strain[/u], and its ending was extremely frustrating to me, both as a reader and as a writer. To discuss it involves spoilers, so read on only if you've read it or don't care about having the ending ruined.
That said: Did anyone else finish this book and get the feeling that Crichton just...got tired of the story, and decided to stop, rather than finish?
The entire buildup of the book was that the Andromeda microorganism was a potentially world-killing agent (similar in scope to the T-Virus in the Resident Evil movies, or the disease in King's [u]The Stand[/u]. The scientific team has isolated the organism, they don't know how to stop it, questions are piling up, suddenly one of the team is compromised and the integrity of the entire safe facility is at risk...and then it turns out that the agent has mutated into something harmless and everyone gets to go home. There were all sorts of details that had been built up earlier in the story as critically-important, yet which were all left hanging.
I finished this book at 12:30 in the morning, and I was so frustrated by this ending that I couldn't sleep until I read something else, to wash the foul taste out of my neurons.
How does an ending like this make it past an editor? How does an ending that tells the reader "the past several hours of tension I built up in you were all for naught" make it out of the pen in the first place? I could see the possibility in an established high-volume writer who is just cranking books out for the paycheck, but Crichton wasn't established enough at the time to get away with that. Plus the rest of the book is too well-put-together to be that sort of hack job.
I don't understand how a writer could sleep at night knowing that such a...non-ending was going out under his name.
posted
You know, it might have something to do with Crichton being a "mainstream writer who writes about science for mainstream readers" instead of a science fiction writer.
Yes, his work is "speculative" but it isn't written for or marketed to speculative fiction readers (who would expect a better ending than the one he gave).
I remember reading an article somewhere in which Crichton (or his interviewer) listed how he approaches his "speculative" fiction, and it is intended for people who can't handle science fiction. (Remember the bumper sticker / t-shirt / button that says "reality is for people who can't handle science fiction"?)
I wouldn't be surprised at all if the ending was designed to be comforting to people who can't handle science fiction. (If that's "elitist" of me, I apologize, but I know people like that.)
Crichton is a best-selling author because he writes mainstream fiction that just happens to be "about science."
posted
I haven't read it, but I do know Michael Crichton was a director and screenwriter, too, so maybe he had more experience than you consider. And, sometimes "it'll work itself out" is, unfortunately the message. That's why it became cliché.
It's funny how that works. Some gimmicks used once are cliché, others can be used without that label.
Based upon what KDW writes, I'm more inclined to believe that it was an intentional thing, and that somehow makes it worse in my mind; it's a cheap shot.
KDW, what you say about being a mainstream writer who happens to write about science makes a lot of sense. Being a computer-industry professional with 15 years' experience, I find that when he writes about computer-specific stuff it grates on my nerves, but when he writes about other technical subjects, it's fine. I imagine that it's because I'm a layman in those subjects, and that the reverse would be true: someone versed in another technical field, but a layman in computers, might find his writing on the subject of their expertise to be bothersome, but his computer stuff to be acceptable.
I have a thing with perfectionism; I won't something into a book unless I know enough about it to know that I'm getting it right. Even though I'm conversant with guns, for instance, I did quite a lot of research on the specifics related to the murder weapon in my WIP. I didn't need a whole lot of fine detail, but what detail I needed was critically important. And even if glossed-over details would be enough for 90% of the reading public, I'd have been all twisted up inside if I'd gotten some part of it actually wrong.
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Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain is a product of its times: 1969, cold war angst, nuclear proliferation, man on the moon, a 1968 Asian Flu hsyteria and pandemic, the specter of government chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs gone tragically, scandalously awry, the Vietnam War, experimental literary movements, disestablishmentarianism. Having lived in the era informs the story. Research into the social order of the time might make the story more relevant to a later-era reader.
The novel questions humankind's technological place in the world and cosmic order from the perspective of a techno-thriller mode. It's a milieu story where the greater good is threatened by technology and the unknown, the individual unimportant, jeopardy attaches from technology, technology the only answer if it's up to the challenge; countered by the story's fictive scientific document the Odd-Man Hypothesis--a False Document literary technique--where the fictive premise is only a special type of individual is capable of making command decisions in extreme crises, a dispassionate unmarried, mature male, anethma to a feminist interpretation of the story in an era when feminist movements were ascendant.
The ending, to me was sublime, not disappointing. It gave me hope for the future, hope that has largely worked out fine for the greater good. This individual: fallen into the peripheral margins of insignificance.
posted
He wrote and directed Westworld and that certainly was sci-fi. (If you took away the speculative element, you'd have nothing.)
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posted
Movie science fiction is intended for mainstream moviegoers and not for science fiction readers, though. It couldn't survive if it weren't, because there just aren't enough science fiction readers to support science fiction movies that would appeal only to science fiction readers.
In fact, there are science fiction authors and readers who have complained for years about the poor science in movie and television science fiction and wished that the movie makers would adapt "real" science fiction works for their movies and television shows.
I believe I remember reading in Asimov's autobiography that director after director had optioned "Nightfall," but no one could get it past the "option" stage.
posted
That's not to say that science fiction movies and television haven't appealed to science fiction readers (though there are those in the field who sneer at such things).
I'm just saying that Crichton's efforts are directed toward a much larger audience and so he doesn't ascribe to quite the standards that those who love science fiction for science fiction's sake expect from their science fiction.
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I'm not disputing Crichton's audience, Kathleen--we are in complete agreement--but I felt Westworld should be separated from the "Mainstream with some Science" image. Though it was aimed at wider audiences, it was an attempt at full science fiction. (However laughable and failed that attempt might have been.)
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posted
Michael Crichton is a graduate from Harvard College with, I believe, an undergraduate in anthropology. He then attended Harvard Medical school and received his M.D. in 1969. While in medical school, he began writing. He achieved almost instant success under a couple of pseudonyms. Within three years, he was an established author. I do not believe he has practiced medicine since then.
He pulled "a Sylvester Stallone" and wrote a script for a TV movie with the chance to direct. This ended up giving him the opportunity to write and direct Westworld in 1973, which was the first movie to use computer generated graphics (though very primitive). Although The Andromeda Strain had already been made into a movie, along with a couple of his other stories, writing and directing seemed to permanently bond him to Hollywood like a man in a hard-hat to a support beam.
He has used much of his anthropological and medical background in his stories, including his productions, such as ER.
posted
I forgot to add - I have typically liked his movies, even Westworld. Yes, the acting was like watching a Sony Bono episode of Fantasy Island, but I liked the story. I have read about four or five of his books, and I think they are OK. I tend to enjoy the stories themselves more than his writing style or the characters. I do not often read for the story alone. If I don't like the author's style, I'll just put the book down. He tends to write about things that interest me, which I find to be somewhat of a paradox. There was one recently, had something to do with computers, can't remember what - I hated it so much, I couldn't continue.
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posted
I'd say that JURASSIC PARK worked as full science fiction, too.
I'm not saying Crichton doesn't write science fiction, per se. I'm saying that the science fiction he writes is not intended to fit what science fiction readers expect in the science fiction they enjoy the most. If he writes something that does do that, it's icing. His purpose is to write stuff that will appeal to mainstream readers.
There are mainstream writers out there, including Crichton, Margaret Atwood, and Ray Bradbury, who write speculative stuff, but they don't consider themselves "science fiction writers" because they don't want to be "pigeonholed" that way. (I asked Bradbury in person if he considered himself a science fiction writer, and he said that he didn't. Margaret Atwood was amazed when HANDMAID'S TALE was up for the Nebula. She didn't consider it science fiction at all. And so on.)
There are also mainstream writers who try to write speculative stuff, like P.D. James and Norman Mailer, who don't know how to write it so that it works for science fiction readers. (Example: James's THE CHILDREN OF MEN spends the first chapter (at least) setting things up (exposition like crazy--I quit after the first chapter because it still hadn't gotten to the story yet).) Their stuff can also appeal to mainstream readers because mainstream readers don't read stories the way science fiction readers do.
Another example: part of the fuss over Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT series is because mainstream readers do not understand what OSC says about metaphors in speculative fiction. They read the books and think that Edward Cullen is supposed to be a metaphor for teenage boys. What they don't understand is that metaphors don't work that way in speculative fiction. Edward Cullen is a vampire, period, and is nothing like teenage boys.
Mainstream readers read stories differently from how speculative fiction readers read stories. If you want to sell to mainstream readers, you write like Crichton. If you want to sell to speculative fiction readers, you write differently. If you manage to write so that both kinds of readers like your work, you are doubly blessed, but I submit that that isn't easy to do.
posted
Fascinating bits, KDW, particularly about how spec fic readers read differently than mainstream readers. Excellent points to think about. Going to bring that up at my next writer's group, where we have a mystery/thriller writer, an oral storyteller, a memoirist, and a couple spec fic writers (who are not very prolific or published.)
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From discussions I have heard on the subject, the biggest difference is probably that science fiction readers are more likely to be able to wait for clarification on the speculative elements, or even to enjoy teasing them out from "between the lines" as the story goes along. Mainstream readers who haven't learned how to do that tend to feel lost without more help from the writer.
What Michael Crichton does, if I remember correctly, is basically two-fold: he doesn't throw too many new ideas at his readers, and he makes sure he clarifies those he does throw out so readers don't feel lost. That he is able to clarify without appearing to lecture, for the most part, shows he has a skill many other writers, science fiction or otherwise, might want to emulate.
posted
I tried to post earlier but it got lost somewhere in cyberspace. Here goes again:
*****
"Nightfall" was made into a movie at least once---an awful Roger Corman movie, as I recall---and during Asimov's lifetime, at that. I think it may have been filmed again, but I don't know the circumstances (and am too tired to look right now.)
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I've thought of Crichton as one of those writers who came along in the sixties and seventies, who used a lot of SF "tropes" to make their work better---in Crichton's case, his suspense novels---but who, somehow, eluded the terrible tag of "SF writer." (Not all of Crichton's works are SF by most standards.
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There was remake of Andromeda Strain just a few months ago on TV. I saw a little of it, but not the whole. It was (a) longer, (b) less supsensful, (c) more gory, (d) added a bunch of stuff not in the novel or original movie, and (e) might as well have let the characters say "I hate George W. Bush" right in the added material.
posted
As I recall, I had no problem with the ending of The Andromeda Strain. Underneath all the trappings, it's a mystery story, and at the end someone solves the mystery by finally recognizing the key clue that was revealed earlier in the story.
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posted
Whoo, I'm on a roll for bumping up old threads this week. That's what happens when I join a new forum.
Anyhoo... I haven't read nor seen the Andromeda Strain, but thought I'd take this opportunity to say a couple gripes about the one Crichton stories I have read: Prey.
SPOILER WARNING!! SPOILER WARNING!!
I picked it up about the same time that I was about to write a short story about nanobots. The beginning had me going well enough, but then halfway through it seemed like he stopped trying to make it make sense. Part of it is that I'm a software engineer and so was the protag, so a lot of the technical premise was so clearly wrong. But even if I suspended my disbelief on that, some things really bothered me.
The main character is in a constant state of "huh?" The nano-swarms adapt, every time they see them they've developed new abilities and new heights of intelligence. The protag sees this throughout, yet still throughout, people suggest what the swarms could be capable of, and he says "No that's not possible. They weren't designed that way." Then this impossible idea turns out to be true. That's okay, but when it happens 6 times, I find it hard to swallow.
Also, at some point the bots somehow gain the capacity for mind control. EVERY OTHER little ability they gain, he explains away at great length how it could be possible. Then the bots gain the ability to control a person's thoughts, and the protag doesn't even wonder how. Even if you give malevolent nanobots access to someone's brain, that doesn't imply mind control is at all possible. It's not like the brain has an ethernet jack the bots can break into and override the operating system.
I was happy, however, that he didn't use any of my great ideas I had for my nano-story.
posted
Evolving micro-critters was the Big Idea behind ANDROMEDA STRAIN, too. Interesting....
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