Three Complete Novels by Michael Crichton
★★★☆☆
Three Complete Novels by Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery (1969, 1972, 1975, and 1994 for the three-book collection)
Why does this guy’s name get to be bolded? Because it makes up a full 50% of the cover. They really wanted us to know that he’s the Bestselling Author of Jurassic Park, except I still missed it, because a single Value Village has ten thousand books and I only have so much time before the Outside reverts to a terrible place.
Are you getting bored of all the three-stars, dear reader? Do you wish to see another four or, better yet, five star book review? All in due time, though I fear the next one will disappoint you as well. Three star means I liked it, and enjoyed reading it, and it was not a waste of time. If you want “five star” books, check Goodreads and go read ACOTAR and Fourth Wing and Harry Potter.
I guess I’m reviewing them separately, so you get three for the price of zero!
The Andromeda Strain:
This book had a bunch of multimedia. Cool sciency diagrams, logs, communications etc. For example, a fictional foot scan using only dots and rectangles, and a “scanner printout” that showed a Petri plate’s density in dots and numbers 0-9. I dig the creativity.
The third person omniscient narrator was another interesting design choice. I’m so used to third person limited at this point.
This was a most unfortunate decision, for had they examined the media, they would have seen that their thinking had already gone astray, and that they were on the wrong track.
Page 194. What mistake? You won’t find out anytime soon!
The ending was unexpected but welcome. Spoilers: The virus gets out, and nothing happens. It goes high up into the atmosphere and everyone lived happily ever after, though I imagine the innocent old man is gonna be trapped for secret government experiments for the rest of his life.
There’s a scene where they gas some poor birds for being in the wrong place / wrong time.
Birds have a high metabolic rate. They are creatures that consist of little more than feathers and muscle; their heartbeats are usually about one-twenty, and many species eat more than their own weight every day."
Page 57
Are you going to make it sound sciency and not mention their extremely efficient respiratory systems? It’s not the metabolic system. I searched and apparently it wasn’t known until 1972, three years after this book was published.
I remember reading somewhere that I’m supposed to feed my ‘caw a quarter of his body weight every day - high, I thought - but that he’s going to waste most of it. What “many” bird species eat more than their own body weight? Hummingbirds, maybe? That’s hardly many. (I was right!)
The Terminal Man:
The Andromeda Strain concludes with a fake bibliography, but this one concludes with a (as far as I can verify) real bibliography with about fifty sources.
I had been thinking about the lack of interesting female characters in that one (AFAIK none of the books pass the Bechdel test) and it’s like Michael knew what I was thinking and went, “screw you, here’s your female protagonist, now stop complaining” And so we meet Dr. Janet Ross, a strong, independent, ethically-minded and single psychiatrist with daddy issues.
This book felt prescient on AI and technology in general.
The antagonist/victim has some form of psychosis where he’s convinced that machines are taking over the world, and then he gets surgery that lets people control his brain with computers. I don’t have a specific quote, but it’s kinda the whole book. Tie it in with the AGI/ASI fears, oh no it’s gonna escape containment, oh no PAPERCLIPS!!!
There had been a time when he regarded the little gray box clipped to his belt as a wonderful thing. He relished those moments when he would be having lunch of dinner with a girl and his pagemaster would go off, requiring him to call in. That sound demonstrated he was a busy, responsible person involved in life-and-death matters. […] But after several years it was no longer wonderful. The box was inhuman and implacable, and it had come to symbolize for him the fact that he was not his own man.
Page 272. Now replace “pagemaster” with “smartphone”. Hate those things.
There’s a point on P.311 about how computers, unlike fragile physical machines, never make mistakes. I wonder how the average reader would think about that in 1972? I’d consider myself somewhat more tech-savvy than the average person, and I feel that’s nearly as obvious as the sky is blue, but it was not well known back then.
On P.349, there’s something about the lack of third spaces in Los Angeles. No side-walk cafés, people barely going to church, just driving around in their isolated cars all day. We talk about this now, but hasn’t this been a thing since ancient times? Kids these days - reading those yucky books! Then, watching television. Gaming. iPad brainrot. AI chatbots. Cyclical history.
I liked this book’s cast of characters more than Andromeda Strain, and not just the psychiatrist. There’s her, the two surgeons, the hopeful leader guy MacPherson, and two smart programmer-type guys who don’t take anything too seriously. The victim is psychotic, but he’s still a smart guy with interesting thoughts. And who knows, maybe he’s onto something.
Also. I didn’t get the double entendre of the title until halfway through. Terminal as in computer terminal, geddit?????
The Great Train Robbery
Never have I read a book with such immersive worldbuilding of Victorian England.
The highlight of the book was worldbuilding. The train stuff seems almost incidental, giving Michael an excuse to show us the criminal underworld. There’s dogfighting, laundry thieves, forgeries, a whole lot of child labor, and prostitutes. There’s a sex scene involving a twelve year old prostitute and a banker with syphilis. I don’t think that would fly in Current Year.
I wish there had been plot twists. There were a few near the climax, but they don’t get much page time. Our handsome, charismatic, red-bearded protagonist single-handedly resolves them all. He has a crew, but he doesn’t tell anyone more than strictly necessary.
He felt like a Gary Stu. Sure he had a bit of a temper and some megalomania, but we like those. Mostly everything goes to plan, and he has a great many contingencies in place.
The ending was a bit puzzling to me. He escapes prison (because he is cool like that), goes to America with his mistress (because he is cool like that), and lives happily ever after with all the money he could dream of (because he is cool like that). What’s the moral of the story? Become cool? Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against glorifying crime.
My favorite part was the initial meeting between our ginger and an ugly lady her parents were trying to set him up with. Very rich imagery.
It was a cue; his daughter picked it up neatly. “Really?” she said, fanning herself briskly. “How utterly fascinating.”
Page 500, but the whole scene is better than any individual quotes.
One thing I disliked was the blurring of fact and fiction, but you could argue this is a hallmark of good writing that he could blur it. The narrator goes on some tangents that are barely related to the plot, like the Siege of Cawnpore or the Crimean War. Some facts are verifiable and others are made up. The train robbery was fictional, but he signs off the intro (“M. C. November 1974”) as if it were real. I’m not sure why I disliked it; obviously it’s a fiction book, not beholden to boring truths, but it seemed misleading sometimes?
Lastly, what an amazing quote. Page 645, in which the English believe the French stole the train robbery stuff:
He’s also said to have commented extensively on the French nation, the French culture, and the personal and hygiene habits of the French populace. Mr. Bradford, even more vociferous, expressed his belief in the unnatural fondness for intimacy with barnyard creatures.
Don’t make me rank the books. I liked them all, kinda, and Michael has a good range as an author. The last one especially must have taken a lot of research. 7/10 would read more.