This is going to be Michael Crichton week here on the blog. Before it really gets rolling, I’d like to point out that Michael Crichton has given us some interesting books on cutting-edge science issues.
The Andromeda Strain is one that also became a movie (and a really good movie, at that). It anticipated a coming science issue that I really wish people would pay more attention to.
FORTUNATELY, SOME PEOPLE ARE.
One extraterrestrial bug can ruin your whole civilization.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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Mars and Earth are not in hermetic isolation from each other. Russian Mars landers were not adequately sterilized, and Martian rocks have landed on Earth. It has been calculated that bacteria would survive the trip.
Michael Crichton week. Cool!
“Prey” was pretty good, although it was Jurasic Park a la nanotechnology. It should make a good movie though.
I just picked up “State of Fear” yesterday. Should be finished with it by Wednesday. So far, so good.
Andromeda Strain. Still watchable after all these years…(except for the inaccurate depiction of epilepsy disorders.)
This doesn’t deal with Crichton per se, but with a cool Idea harvested from Science Fiction and vastly applicable to the real world…
Jimmy, have you ever heard of the space elevator?
And on a side side note, Kim Stanley Robison’s “Red Mars” Trilogy is sci-fi WELL worth your time!
One terrestrial bug can ruin your whole day.
Unlike the extraterrestrial ones, they’ve done it.
The Spanish influenza. The Black Death. Measles — estimated to have killed a third of Europe. TB, which goes about more slowly but therefore has a much higher cummulative effect. The multi-attack on the Americas, where diseases that had individually killed large fraction of Europe when they first appeared, got to first appear in the Americas en-mass — estimates run as high as 95% of the population.
Next time you hear about “greedy pharmacetical companies,” consider the appropriate adjective for people who want not to pay for things they want to get. And why there are few if any antibiotics in development, though the bacteria are developing resistance to the ones we’ve got.
Of course, Fred Whipple used to say that the Spanish Lady, the Black Death, etc., were in fact extraterrestrial, brought in by comets.
Justin, it isn’t an elevator, it is a -beanstalk-.
Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park are excellent books…but Crichton has also written some rotten tomatoes–like Sphere, which was just awful.