To some, Michael Crichton’s status as a science fiction writer affords him the right to play loosely with facts, but Crichton has always tried to portray himself as something more than a b-status fiction author. Crichton wants his audience to think him an expert on every subject he speculates on, and this is where he sows seeds of disinformation that are anti-science, anti-progress, and spawn some of the most persistent urban-legends known today.
Crichton’s fiction is dangerous because he works so hard to convince his audience that he has researched his subjects, that cloned dinosaurs, nanobyte swarms, and world-wide ecoterrorism are all within reach. He provides pages of references as evidence that his story evolved out of fact, but the truth is that Crichton works backwards, as many Science Fiction authors do and all Scientists should not. He came up with a fantastic idea, like genetically engineering dinosaurs, and then sought out the research or merely fabricated the methods, like retrieving DNA from fossilized mosquitoes, to give the impression of plausibility.
Science is used to hype-up Crichton’s work. Just as “The Blair Witch Project” used a rumor that the film was documentary in origin, Crichton uses obscure or rejected scientific journal articles to maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief. To this day, people continue to believe the urban legend that we have actually obtained dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes preserved in amber.
Apparently Crichton has come to believe his own hype, as he feels confident enough to criticize scientists for their methodologies. He rejects the Drake Equation and SETI as being pure fantasy and speculation. He fails to understand that the Drake Equation provides a framework for hypothesizing about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and that SETI’s tireless scanning of our skies are observations that help us to define the unknown.
He also rejects Scientific Consensus in this same speech. Facts, he declares, speak for themselves. Of course, looking at the history of Science, we know that facts do not speak, they must have a proponent or several proponents to advocate them. By Michael Crichton’s reasoning, Evolution is nothing but mental masturbation, there are too many variables we cannot answer. Why do we bother?
Crichton reveals an almost absurd ignorance of the Scientific Process in his rejection of speculation, free inquiry, and consensus. The Theory of Evolution attained its status purely through Scientific Consensus and a collective effort to find support for it. There are innumerable variables we do not have in the Evolutionary process, but Scientific Inquiry works tirelessly to find the answers, many of which are impossible to obtain, just like the Drake Equation. Evolution was purely speculation when it was conceived in Darwin’s and Wallace’s minds, just like Spontaneous Generation and other hypotheses that came before it. By his own criteria, Crichton must reject Evolutionary Theory as not Science.
Crichton is a luddite, a person who distrusts technology, and the fact that so many of his books play with variations of the classical Mad Scientist archetype supports this. The story is always the same, scientists meddling in affairs better left to nature wreak havoc, whether with cloned dinosaurs, nanobyte swarms, or weather machines. Crichton is the modern day Nathaniel Hawthorne, decrying human beings as lacking the responsibility and foresight to manage progress and technology.
Crichton is very talented at taking the classical horror-movie template and working wonders and surprises into it, similar to George Lucas application of the classical good versus evil template in Star Wars. These are wonderful entertainment, but they do not rise to the level of philosophical or scientific speculation. The science comes after the fact, to drive the hype and lend credibility to what is otherwise pure fantasy.
Unlike the deep ethical conundrums meditated on in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the film that Bladerunner was based on), Crichton avoids confronting the Scientist’s responsibilities to their creation in favor of fantastic deaths and heroic triumphs. Scientists play with things they shouldn’t, people die horribly, and the audience mistakes the awe and wonder at the special effects for depth of message.
For a story to transcend entertainment and attain status as literature, it must speak to the human condition in the present. It must not merely present philosophical and ethical dilemas, but confront them as well. Crichton’s poses dilemas merely to pose dilemas. He does not meditate on them, explore their complexities, or allow his heroes to engage them with any philosophical depth. There are robots and dinosaurs and they eat people because foolish or greedy scientists meddled with nature.
Crichton is a pulp-fantasy writer posing as a respectable Futurist and Hard SF Author. and he yields a great deal of money and respect from his smoke and mirrors.
Further Reading
Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion
Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion II: Return of the Science