Michael Crichton | Fantasy Literature: Fantasy and Science Fiction Book and Audiobook Reviews

The Andromeda Strain: A mediocre novel about extra-terrestrial bacteria

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

When Michael Crichton wrote The Andromeda Strain, he was not just writing a mediocre novel about extra-terrestrial bacteria. He was founding a (sub) genre of SFF that found a massive mainstream audience.

The techno-thriller has all of the pacing and suspense that we might expect of a John Grisham novel,

Congo: On the Edge

Congo by Michael Crichton

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

Michael Crichton’s Congo (1980) is an adventure story that should recall Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1912) and Henry Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1885).

Sphere: Crichton elevates his use of character

Sphere by Michael Crichton

[In our Edge of the Universe column, we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.]

In Sphere, the follow up to Congo, Michael Crichton asks the question: how do you top a techno-thriller that pits a team of parachuting scientists against extremely intelligent apes that protect a remote area of jungle in Congo?

Travels: A journey abroad, within, and on the astral plane

Travels by Michael Crichton

When Travels begins, Crichton is a student at Harvard Medical School, sawing into cadavers with his peers. He nearly faints at the sight of blood, but he is a talented and diligent student. Crichton shares the objections and concerns that would ultimately drive him from medicine, a decision perhaps made easier by the fact that he had already begun to experience success as a writer of spy novels. However, more than anything, it seems that Crichton began to doubt that doctors are capable of helping people.

Jurassic Park: Crichton has improved his formula

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

In our Edge of the Universe column we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

It’s difficult to talk about Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, though not because the novel’s plot and characters are especially complex. They aren’t.

Alan Grant is a paleontologist who is asked to vet a new theme park that has brought dinosaurs back to life.

Micro: The “micro-world” is an exciting place to visit

Micro by Michael Crichton

In our Edge of the Universe column we review mainstream authors that incorporate elements of speculative fiction into their “literary” work. However you want to label them, we hope you’ll enjoy discussing these books with us.

In his introduction to Micro, Michael Crichton explains that children today are “cut off from the experience of nature, and from play in the natural world.” Crichton’s purpose, it would seem, is to take the seemingly mundane world and reveal the wonderful details that don’t make it onto Wikipedia and computer models.

Dragon Teeth: Palaeontologist wars

Dragon Teeth by Michael Crichton

As anyone who reads the dust jacket will realize, Michael Crichton’s Dragon Teeth (2017) is about dinosaur fossils and the obsessed palaeontologists who traveled into the American frontier during the Gilded Age to gently dig them up. Sadly, it’s not about dinosaurs eating people.

William Johnson is a student at Yale. The son of a wealthy Philadelphia family, Johnson goes west to win a bet against his rival. He joins Professor Marsh, an eccentric and paranoid man who specializes in the bizarre new science,

SFF Author: Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain: A mediocre novel about extra-terrestrial bacteria

Congo: On the Edge

Sphere: Crichton elevates his use of character

Travels: A journey abroad, within, and on the astral plane

Jurassic Park: Crichton has improved his formula

Micro: The “micro-world” is an exciting place to visit

Dragon Teeth: Palaeontologist wars

Subscribe to all posts:

You can subscribe to our new posts via email, email digest, browser notifications, RSS, etc. You can filter by tag, keyword, post author, etc. We won't share your email address with anyone and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.

Support FanLit

SFF Deals

Recent Discussion:

Subscribe to all comments: