From archive (archive) Subject: Sphere by Michael Crichton From: wfi@rti.UUCP (William Ingogly) Organization: Research Triangle Institute, NC Date: 12 Jun 87 22:04:52 GMT Summary: Save your money. "Sphere" is a poorly-written book with cardboard characters and inaccurate science; it fails as mainstream fiction and as SF. Some SF is entertaining in spite of its defects because the storyline or SF premise is interesting: "Sphere" fails on these counts, too. My comments are presented as assertions about the reviewed book because I find reviews that are full of "in my opinions" wimpy. All comments are, of course, my opinion: disagree with them if you like, but don't flame me for having opinions. Item (5) below contains mild spoilers, but it's vague enough that I don't think it will spoil anyone's fun. Wait for the paperback edition on this one, folks; it's a stinker. If you really have to read it you might check it out at your local library. "Sphere" fails as fiction and as SF for several reasons: (1) It's full of glaring scientific inaccuracies. At one point, a zoologist says: "...You know an octopus is smarter than a dog, and would probably make a much better pet..." An octopus may be the smartest invertebrate, but it's no match for a dog intellectually. At another point, text starts appearing on a CRT in spiral format (!) and one of the characters starts talking about "askey codes." I'm not very familiar with coding theory, but my assumption is that Crichton really wanted to talk about ASCII codes (my apologies to him if there really is something called an "askey code"). And anyone who knows how a CRT works knows that you can't get spiral text on a plain old terminal. (2) It's full of other inaccuracies as well. Consider this passage: "... The alarm on his chest badge began to beep. He looked down at it. Even in the darkness, he could see it was now gray..." At the time, the character was in a lab with a sealed water-tight hatch about 1000 feet below the ocean's surface. There was no mention of windows, and even if there were there wouldn't be enough light from the surface to see a badge. (3) It's poorly written, abounding in cliches ("...Beth Halpern, the team zoologist, was a study in contrasts..."), flat and uninteresting writing ("...After two hours of monotony, the cluster of ships appeared unusually interesting..."), and unclear or ambiguous writing ("...Barnes hesitated just a fraction before answering [NOTE: a fraction of WHAT??]..."). (4) Finally, the characters are poorly drawn and some of them are downright annoying. It's a pretty sad situation when the reader starts cheering when one of the good guys gets killed off. The single most annoying and unbelievable character in the book is Ted Fielding, an astrophysicist, who is a cartoon character constantly annoying the readers with his cliched quotations from "literature." Check out THIS ridiculous exchange: "'...This is exciting!' Ted said. 'Fantastic! Unbelievable!' 'So,' Barnes said, still watching Harry, 'you should all get a good night's sleep if you can.' 'Innocent sleep, sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,' Ted said. He was literally bobbing up and down in his chair with excitement..." This has to be one of the most hilarious bits of dialogue I've ever seen in fiction. It rivals the dialogue in the movie "Plan 9 From Outer Space." I'd be totally embarrassed if I'd written it. (5) The storyline is basically not that interesting. Somebody finds what appears to be an alien artifact, people are sent to investigate the artifact, the artifact does things to some of the people, there are crises, the crises are resolved, at the end the artifact is still an enigma. Ho Hum. How many times are second-rate writers going to redo this worn old SF theme? Anyone out there want to buy a slightly-used copy of "Sphere?" :-) -- Bill Ingogly From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 2 10:58:13 1993 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: lysator.liu.se!isy!liuida!sunic!uunet!gumby!wupost!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!nobody From: leo@cp.tn.tudelft.nl (Leo Breebaart) Subject: Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@dutrun2.tudelft.nl (UseNet News System) Nntp-Posting-Host: draconis.cp.tn.tudelft.nl Reply-To: leo@cp.tn.tudelft.nl Organization: Delft University of Technology Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 15:56:51 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 199 Michael Crichton Jurassic Park (1991) Arrow Books (UK Paperback) ISBN: 0-09-988700-2 Capsule Review: definitely a good, fast-paced technological thriller, but cardboard characters and a nasty anti-science slant ultimately cause me to be disappointed with a novel I had expected so much more of. "In the future there will be dinosaurs..." I don't think I'll be giving away any spoilers by summarizing the basic plot of this book as: 'people run around, get eaten by dinosaurs'. The book's title and cover blurb already indicate the central theme, and within the first five pages we are treated to (a) a preachy sermon about the Evils of Commercial Bioengineering, complete with references to some disastrous 'incident', and (b) somebody wounded in what the doctor (who knows an animal attack victim when she sees one) is told was a 'construction accident'. After that, only the principal characters are left in suspense for a few pages more. The reader already knows what's going on. As a thriller, this book most certainly worked for me. I read it in one go, and I can assure you that Michael Crichton has done an admirable job. The book is suspenseful, the writing is way above average, the technology and science aspects are integrated well with the main story, and the descriptions of the dinosaurs and how they behave is just plain fascinating. As science fiction, I suspect the book will be unusually palatable to people not familiar with the field: not only do the thriller- aspects always dominate, but the story's single, typically SF, what-if premise: "suppose we can reconstruct live dinosaurs from their DNA", should have enough mainstream appeal to keep non sf-lovers more than interested. Ok, so here we have an SF thriller that I think most people will not fault me for ranking 'way above average' in the general execution department. But that does not mean that I have no problems with it at all. To be precise, there were two areas where I feel the book is seriously lacking. To begin with, I was sorry to see that Crichton often relies way too much on a few cliche'd tricks of the thriller-writer's trade. There is no human depth or reality to any of the major characters, for instance. I suppose you could argue that it is good SF tradition to have the Idea as your hero, and introduce characters for the sole reason of having them around to occasionally explain things to the reader or to get killed in interesting ways, but I was disappointed none the less. This book has a number of principal characters, and we do not get to know them at all. What's even worse is that some of them are outright one-dimensional stereotypes: the senile millionaire who will not listen to the warnings of his employees, the bratty kid-sister to our eleven-year old hero, the security man who cannot believe his hi-tech security system is not completely safe -- not even after several explicit malfunctions indirectly resulting in multiple deaths have already occurred. Etcetera. I am not saying that I expected a profound psychological novel here, but I feel that Crichton could just as easily have focused a wee bit more on the people themselves instead of just on their physical reactions to what happens around them. There are also a few minor writing tricks that irritated me, most notably the use of telegraphed events. Thankfully Crichton never descends to the level of ending his chapters with: "little did they realize how soon the peace and quiet would be violently shattered", but sometime he comes uncomfortably close. For instance, half of the people in the book keep asserting, repeatedly and loudly, how *horrible* it would be if those nasty Velociraptors escaped; while the other half keep insisting just as loudly how *impossible* that event would be, and after a while you begin to wish he'd just let the damned beasts out and get on with the obviously inevitable. Last, and most serious in my complaint about Crichton's basic writing technique is his constant use of both Amazing Coincidences (although most of these I can still accept as inherent to the genre) and Really Stupid Explanations. I don't think of myself as one of those nitpicking types who can only enjoy something if it is totally realistic on all levels, but in Michael Crichton's case I often feel that he's deliberately taking the easy way out. They are really building a dinosaur island with absolutely *no* *weapons* on the entire island, because weapons might damage the specimens? These people are really so rich that they can afford to buy, amongst other things, three Cray XMP's, two gene-sequencers, and the entire world's supply of amber -- yet they are too cheap to construct a storm-proof harbor? They hire a brilliant genetic engineer and he really doesn't know the effect that using frog DNA will have on his dinosaurs? Their dinosaur-counting software is really so badly written that it ... but no, that would be a real spoiler so I'll stop here. Suffice it to say that too many things in "Jurrasic Park" appear to happen only because they advance the story, and, what's worse, in direct conflict with the reality as presented in the book. My second big problem with "Jurassic Park" is more personal. You see, apart from providing entertainment, Crichton also wants to make a general point about science (which he doesn't appear to like very much). This pronounced streak of anti-science runs as a red thread through the book: None Of This Would Have Happened If Science Hadn't Messed It Up. Now that alone would hardly be a reason for me to get angry. The man is not only entitled to his opinions, but let's not forget that he writes in the context of a story where, after all, science (or at least a subset of amazingly stupid and narrowminded people practicing it) *is* to blame for most of what happens. I have no problem with that at all. What bugs me no end, however, is that Crichton tries to drive his point home by preaching, by distorting facts, by mentioning only that what happens to fit his argument, and by not dedicating one single intelligent word to opposing viewpoints (apart from inane comments by those stereotypical, straw men he uses for scientists). The result smacks more of dogmatic propaganda than of arguing a point or presenting a case. Crichton's preaching starts on page 1 with that neat little sermon about how evil uncontrolled commercial bioengineering is, and it continues in the form of a character called Ian Malcolm, a maverick mathematician specialized in Chaos theory. Malcolm plays the part of the man who had predicted all along that the dinosaur experiment was doomed to fail (nobody listened, of course), and the action of the novel is interpuncted with periodical pages of Malcolm explaining at great length how those foolish scientist are Meddling With Things Man Was Not Meant To Get Involved With. Now I don't doubt that you can build a good case against many aspects of science, in particular the perceived refusal of science to take responsibility for what it unleashes on the world. But this case is strong enough that it can be argued fairly. It does not need ludicrous reasoning like the following: "Because there haven't been any [scientific] advances", Malcolm said. "Not really. Thirty thousand years ago, when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. [...] And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water [...] Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago." Yeah sure. And those shiny happy people also had an average life expectancy of what was it, 35 years? Give me a break. A few pages later, Malcolm has gone from explaining how science has accomplished nothing, to explaining why it never can accomplish anything in the first place. In another one of those neat little monologues (these are not excerpts from dialogues or discussions, you must understand), Malcolm states: "But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. [...] There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature." Give me another break, and a fucking *big* one this time, pardon my language. I think I can safely speak for anybody who has ever had any experience in real science, any science, and state that this portrayal of science and scientists is so false that it crosses the line into dishonesty. Humility before nature, indeed! Am I attributing too much author's intent to the statements of what is after all merely a character in an action novel? I don't think so. I feel quite confident that Crichton himself is speaking to us through Malcolm, and *even if he is not* I maintain that this onesided attack on science hopelessly trivializes the real issues at stake. Of course creating new forms of life through bioengineering has tremendous moral and ethical implications. And of course a novel such as this would have been a good place to touch upon those issues, or even to serve as vehicle for presenting the author's case. But doing it in this "ooh those evil scientists!"-way deliberately insults the reader's intelligence, and denies her the possibility of making up her own mind. You may have noticed that I have not said anything so far about the actual use of science itself in the novel. This is not because I don't want to, but because I am totally unqualified to do so. Most of it looked decently researched to me, but then I'd have a very hard time explaining the difference between DNA and RNA myself, and I'm not very familiar with Chaos theory or dinosaurology either, so I best leave this to others to criticize or praise. I *do* know about computers, however, and I cannot say I am overly impressed by his accuracy in that area: the source code fragments he gives are obfuscatory garbage, his state of the art control program has an interface even worse than DOS (happily this poses no problems to our eleven-year old hero, of course), he confuses an object-oriented object with a link module, and as far as that dinosaur-counting software is concerned -- but I already promised I'd keep quiet about that. This is all true nitpicking, though. I'd say his use of computers and computer terminology is more than adequate for their relevance to the story. Well, this review has become quite a bit longer than I originally planned. I'll wrap it up now, and just end by saying that (a) despite the largely negative content of this review I was still totally captivated by the book during the actual reading -- the dissatisfaction came later, so don't hesitate to give it a try; and (b) I hope Spielberg is not going to screw up the movie by making the dinosaurs too cute or the kids too precocious. If he avoids those two pitfalls this might well turn out to be his best movie since years: kids and sense of wonder are Spielberg's strongest points, and both figure heavily in this novel. But if they had wanted true suspense the producers would probably have given the job to James Cameron, so I hold my breath and fear for the worst, yet hope for the best... %A Michael Crichton %T Jurassic Park %I Arrow Books %C London %D 1991 (Copyright 1988) %G ISBN 0-09-988700-2 -- Leo Breebaart (leo @ cp.tn.tudelft.nl) From rec.arts.sf.written Tue Jan 18 17:42:54 1994 Xref: liuida rec.arts.books:74591 rec.arts.sf.written:46491 soc.men:61548 Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.sf.written,soc.men Path: liuida!sunic!pipex!uunet!mdisea!mothost!lmpsbbs!bhv From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris) Subject: DISCLOSURE by Michael Crichton Organization: Motorola, Inc. CCRD Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 08:05:44 GMT Message-ID: <1994Jan18.080544.13140@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> Sender: news@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com (Net News) Nntp-Posting-Host: 137.23.47.217 Lines: 76 Note the Newsgroups line - follow up as you think appropriate. "Disclosure" by Michael Crichton is his latest book - about sexual harassment of a man by his female boss. Since sexual harssment is a topic of some interest to me, I went out and bought this book. Because my interests may affect my review, I'll mention them to those who may not be familiar with my views. I think that it is unfortunate that regulations are so broadly writen - I don't think that the Federal government should be regulating posters on the wall, though I have no objection to the sections which make 'put out or get out' illegal for employers. (I'm also have a strong interest in men's issues, as well). Disclosure appears to me to follow the standard Crichton formula, in which the hero(s) (in this case, a man sexually harassed by his female boss and then falsely charged with harassment) are portrayed as somewhat stupid, even naive. Certainly, it was at times questionable as to how this man allegedly got to the position he held. Crichton does offer us an explanation for his behavior other than sheer stupidity - I'm not sure how much I buy into it, though. (It would probably be a spoiler to say more). Crichton didn't appear to me to make any glaring mistakes with the technology or the legal aspects - at least as far as I could tell. Some of the technology related plot seemed a bit strained for credibility, but it wasn't because of the technology, it goes back to the question of 'how did this man get and hold his position'. Probably the most important point of Crichton's book is that, in his opinion, sexual harssment is a power issue, not a gender issue. He quotes some interesting statistics about gender ratios to support his point of view, thorugh the female lawyer who is reperesenting the man in this case. Several of the female characters are quite sympathetic - the female lawyer, a female judge, a female executive. The main female villain seemed to me to be a bit of a caricature (mostly at the end of the book - to say more again might be a spoiler). A lot of the bias and sheer nastiness that our executive experiences in fighting his case comes from other men - he gets some pretty nasty E-mail from other men instance, (one man seems to think he must be gay, for example) and the executives supporting the female harasser are also men. This all seemed pretty much on target to me. Crichton also mentions the secondary aspects of 'poster' harassment in this book, though it is only a digression. One gets the impression that he has some of the same reservations I do. As an executive, for instance, our hero was resonsible for telling people to 'get the posters out of the locker rooms, I don't care, just do it'. Interestingly enough, though I agree with him on this point and even think that what he described was realistic, it seemed a little weak somehow. Perhaps it was because it seemed to happen a bit too often. It's difficult to tell what, if any, messages there are in this book. Particularly interesting is the afterword section, where he mentions what happens to the various characters. I won't say more for spoilers, but I would certainly recommend reading this part. I will say that Crichton seems to be sympathetic to men's issues and problems, and that I enjoyed reading this book. It's quite rare to have a sympathetic treatment of men's problems in fiction in this manner (IMO, anyway). I also suspect this will 'turn off' readers who have convinced themselves that men don't have any problems. On the whole, I enjoyed reading this book, but I suspect that it was more because of my interest in the topic than any other reason. Readers of Crichton's other books might like it as well. The rest may want to wait and see the movie (I have no information on it, but is there any doubt that one will be made? :-)). I'll probably go and see it myself, if/when it comes out. -- "The power of this battlestation is _insignificant_ when compared with the power of the Farce." - D. Vader. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jun 21 01:48:49 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: ROBERTS@decus.ca (Rob Slade) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: "Jurassic Park" by Crichton Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 20 Jun 1994 19:49:54 GMT Organization: DECUS Canada Communications Lines: 54 Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <01HDPH5JOPXE9BVDQH-rasfr@ARC.AB.CA> NNTP-Posting-Host: remarque.berkeley.edu Originator: mcb@remarque.berkeley.edu Crichton doesn't know an awful lot about computers either. A number of the programming bugs that he cites/proposes could have been lifted from the RISKS.FORUM Digest, but that is why no software house would touch a realtime development project like that without being able to see the hardware. An "assumption" is made that hides an important factor in the story, but this also assumes that, during the whole test period, no animal was ever out of sight of the monitors, that no count was ever done after animals died, and that the veterinarian didn't notice that some of the populations under his care doubled. Crichton also has to fall back on chaos theory to explain what every programmer knows already: some projects are too big. This was amply demonstrated during the "Star Wars" debacle without recourse to black-robed eccentrics. It is likely that the mathematician, Ian Malcolm, is Crichton's alter ego. Although Crichton kills him off, Malcolm is right, cheerful, and personable for all his hurling of jeremiads. He also gets the best speeches, and most of the best lines. One of the speeches Malcolm gets, though, is exceptionally applicable to the hacker community. On page 306 of the paperback version (about midway through the "Control" chapter of "Fifth Iteration") there is a speech about how scientific knowledge is a form of inherited wealth and is acquired without discipline. There may be a germ of truth in that, although it may come as a surprise to many scientists who have put long years into their discipline and research. In the computer world, however, it is very definitely true. The subtitle of Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" may not be true of all of the computer community, but it certainly seems to be the general attitude that the public holds. The computer community has very few "grand old men" but a substantial number of young icons whose only prodigious achievement lies in being able to so trivialize their focus that they can believe that flying toasters are important. (Crichton also doesn't know anything about boats. In a last minute-what else- attempt to prevent an escape of animals to the mainland, Crichton has the Captain order, "Full ahead stern." I guess that means you paint a scary face on the bow before you rush the dock.) %A Crichton %T Jurassic Park %I Ballantine/Fawcett/Columbine Books %C New York %D 1990 %G ISBN 0-345-37077-5 %O USD5.99 / CAD6.99 copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKJURPRK.RVW 940411 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 BCVAXLUG ConVAXtion, Vancouver, BC, Oct. 13 & 14, 1994 contact vernc@decus.ca Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news-peer-europe.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.88.144.6!news.kei.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!ai-lab!news.media.mit.edu!not-for-mail From: "Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor" Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: "Disclosure" by Michael Crichton Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 22 Jun 1998 15:40:39 -0400 Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Lines: 81 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1932 Disclosure by Michael Crichton Review Copyright 1998 Robert M. Slade The majority of the books reviewed in this series are technical in some respect. With the exception of "Eaters of the Dead," "Disclosure" might be considered the least technical of Crichton's corpus. However, there are a couple of points to be made. The plot is played out against the backdrop of the high tech industry. Once again, Crichton has demonstrated that, whatever technical understanding he had when he started the writing kick, he is long out of date and way over his head. A presentation of an Internet message header looks as if it might have been run through PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) first. The domain name is .com.edu, for crying out loud. Are we to assume that the for-profit educational businesses have their own slice of the .edu domain? I will admit that the trick of having what appears to be an email spoof turn out to be a simple piece of social engineering is cute, but does show that the author has no idea how easy it is to spoof SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). DAT (Digital *Audio* Tape) is not that popular as a storage medium and videoconferences, if stored at all, would probably be kept on 8mm, if from a real video feed, or in a QuickTime or MPEG (Motion Picture Experts Group) format file if done over the net. The manufacturing problems are partially realistic, but mostly not. Out- of-spec components from suppliers are always a concern. But hand- placement of chips would not create reliability problems. Hand-placed chips would require old fashioned socketing, which isn't used anymore. You could possibly do hand-placement with through-board standing-wave soldering fabrication. It would simply be impossible with modern surface-mount manufacturing pin densities. Someone who was already worried about air quality would immediately understand the implications of a request for sealed packages, so it is hard to see why he would cooperate, given his involvement. But in any case, CD- ROM drives are removable drives, and as such must be designed to operate in ambient air quality. Particulate aerosols would be a non-issue, for manufacturing defects. The virtual reality system is not unreasonable. Crichton gets a point for knowing one data security insider joke, and another point for not pushing it. The very helpful ability to see who else is in the system, even those accessing the database from outside the VR, *and* to see what they are doing, is a bit much. What Web page tells you how many other people are accessing it at the same time, let alone a secured system? Since the book is all about power, it is odd that one power equation is left out. Tom is the naif, used as the foil to allow the author to get in his preaching about sexual harassment. It is easy to feel for mentor Max's exasperation with Tom, since Tom never really does anything, everything, including the conveniently high access entry card, just drops into his lap. It would be easier if Max ever came up with any ideas, or there was ever any result from his incessant needling. Of course, nothing ever comes of the bad guys plots, either... Meredith, of course, is the ambitious game-player, but seems by the end to be better described as a sociopath. The denouement is very weak, relying on a socio-cultural analysis that would be completely beyond her. Simple forgetfulness might work... Actually Meredith is nowhere near as conniving as Crichton foreshadows. Mark represents those of limited competence, able to deal with their jobs, but not really understanding what is going on around them. Stephanie proves Kipling's point: the female *is* much more subtle and deadly than the male. Bob seems to represent the world, irresponsibly throwing, with failing and basically despairing hands, the torch to those whom it really has not judged. But the real tragedy is Don, who actually produces, who solves the problem. Don who is relegated to his basement lab and his minor revenge easter egg buried in help menus. Don, whose work and job lies at the mercy of the feuding mandarins who do not understand what they are fighting over. Which oversight, on its own, basically proves that Crichton is out of touch. %A Michael Crichton %C 201 E. 50th St., 31st Floor, New York, NY 10022 %D 1994 %G 0-09-954411-3 %I Random House/Vintage/Pantheon/Knopf/Times/Crown %O 800-726-0600 fax: 212-572-4997 abiggert@randomhouse.com %T "Disclosure"