Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton, one of my favorite authors, has passed away at 66. To me, nobody has made contemporary science, be it nano-technology, genetic engineering or paleontology, more interesting and popular than Michael Crichton.

I became a fan of his gripping and fast-paced narrative style when I first read Disclosure. I remember reading the book, through the night, while working on a quite night shift, telling myself I will do some work at the end of next page everytime I finished a page!

Everytime I finished one of his books, I have realized I have gained much more knowledge about a field that not only did I have any idea about, but also had no interest in, and wouldn't have read it unless it was in such a format.

It is hard to imagine the kind of research that must have gone into each of his books, considering they were usually of completely different fields, ranging from issues relating to abortion, dinosaurs (of course), Japanese domination in corporate America, sexual harrasment, issues relating to flight accidents and media, nano technology, global warming to genetic engineering, to name just a few.

His contributions would be gravely missed. I will leave you with my favorite lines from one of his books.

On your planet you have an animal called a bear. It is a large animal, sometimes larger than you, and it is clever and has ingenuity, and it has a brain as large as yours. But the bear differs from you in one important way.

It cannot perform the activity you call imagining. It cannot make mental images of how reality might be. It cannot envision what you call the past and what you call the future. This special ability of imagination is what has made your—species as great as it is. Nothing else. It is not your ape—nature, not your tool-using nature, not language or your violence or your caring for young or your social groupings. It is none of these things, which are all found in other animals. Your greatness lies in imagination.

The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence. You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making something happen. But imagining it is what makes it happen. This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you—the ability to imagine.

- Sphere, Michael Crichton - 1987.