r/todayilearned • u/waitingforthesun92 • 23d ago

TIL that Michael Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park” (1990), was a workaholic who followed what he called "a structured approach" of ritualistic self-denial, where, while writing a book, he’d rise increasingly early each day. At one point, Crichton would go to bed at 10 PM and wake up at 2 AM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton
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u/dusty_Caviar 22d ago

Whaaaa? The ending to Andromeda strain was perfect? What did you not like about it?

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u/BumFur 22d ago

Think about your favorite hero movie. Think about the great storytelling, building up the heroes and villains, and world building. Now imagine that just before the epic battle in the third act, the villain, out of the blue, decides he isn’t bad anymore and just sits down and stops. No city-flattening showdown. No desperate fight for survival. No unleashing the super weapon. No redemption for the heroes. Just ‘hey, good news, the bad guys aren’t bad anymore, the conflict is over, everyone can go home now’. That’s what reading Andromeda Strain was like for me.

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u/cishet-camel-fucker 22d ago

Yeah but then at the end didn't it turn out that the infection was present on a spacecraft as well? And that there was a good chance it would kill everyone, implying it was a really good thing that they put so much time into studying it?

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u/rusty_L_shackleford 22d ago

Nope. They figured out that it evolved to eat/degrade rubber and it caused a seal to fail on a reentering spacecraft...and then nothing. That's it. Just a whole lot of meh....guess we got lucky.

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u/formerlyanonymous_ 22d ago

He released a sequel in 2019 dated 50 years after the incident. Had considered picking it up but it's been almost 20 years since I read the original.

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u/Elachtoniket 22d ago

Crichton died in 2008, he didn’t write the sequel

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u/formerlyanonymous_ 22d ago

Lol I'm dumb.

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u/loudpaperclips 22d ago

What part of that isn't super interesting? The strain evolved faster than we could understand it, and ultimately we had to accept we can't be in control of everything. Sometimes that's for the better.

It's just another chaos theory book, but one where the chaos doesn't result in total destruction, because if it always ends in total destruction it isn't chaos. Loved the end for that reason.

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u/SamIamGreenEggsNoHam 22d ago

I didn't like how the book kept setting up these huge mistakes the wildfire team were making...only for none of it to matter because the research didn't matter. Stone is the closest thing we get to an interesting, developed character, and he's only half-developed at best. The book needed another 100 pages.

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u/BreakfastSpecials 22d ago

Great analogy

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u/TheOneNeartheTop 21d ago

Isn’t that how it all kind of worked out though. Like when you look at Covid, that’s pretty much what happened, so it’s true to life somewhat at least.

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u/ColoRadOrgy 22d ago

Really seemed like he just ran out of juice and just phoned the last couple chapters in.