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Michael Crichton
Rank: D
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Summer, 1995
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 7 / 23 / 2006 - Review: I want to go on record as saying, officially, that them monkeys is no good!
Why, I wonder, can't a research team peacefully enter the African jungle to obtain a mysterious diamond that will give its owners unspeakable power, obtain said diamond, and leave without incident? Why, indeed! The answer in Congo appears to be these monkeys that really have it out for people that try to disturb them. They seem to have taken possession of an ancient city where the precious gem is kept, so, I suppose, there was bound to be conflict. Rather than brokering a tentative peace accord, the monkeys and scientists go at each other. Action, action, action!
As a linguist, I should comment on the gorilla Amy that can use sign language. This book was written in 1980, but that's no excuse. Apes can't use sign language efficiently, and can certainly not use it to communicate with other apes (a new species of apes) to figure out what they want. Further, the silver gorillas apparently have their own "language". Right. And Noam Chomsky has actually done something useful in his academic career.
So...I guess that's it. There was a movie made of the book. In fact, I have a special story about the movie. I had a girlfriend at the time, and we somehow tricked our parents into letting us go see the movie by ourselves (how naughty!). It was at the old Super Saver theater in Rossmoor, where you could see movies that were about a month old for $2. It used to be $1.50, and before that $1. Sadly, the theater was put out of business. It was a fun theater (lots of disco lights), and I went there all the time (in fact, I went there by myself to watch The Truman Show once). I was greatly saddened when it closed, and am fairly certain no theater like it will ever grace that orange-colored county of mine ever again. And who's to blame? That's right: Michael Crichton. He's responsible for my favorite theater closing forever. If it weren't for him, there never would have been a movie made of Congo, and it would never have been shown at the Super Saver, and its reputation never would have been permanently ruined for showing such a terrible movie. Michael Crichton, for that and that alone, you are my sworn enemy. Make your time!
Oh, and by the way: Donnie Darko sucks.
- Categories: Pop, Recent, Sci-Fi, Trash
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Michael Crichton
Rank: D
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Spring, 1995
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 6 / 28 / 2006 - Review: Let it be known: This shall be the first of many Michael Crichton (for the sake of these reviews, pronounce it [kʰɹɪtʃtən]) book reviews. Why? Because everyone is a junior high school student at least once in their lives.
Disclosure was made into a movie with Demi Moore, and unless Ashton Kutcher is really wasted (like 24/7), it'll probably be better to watch the movie than read the book. This "book" is, in short, about reverse-sexual discrimination. A female boss tries to seduce a male employee, and then when he rebuffs her, she accuses him of sexual harassment. Shock! Turns out she's an ex-girlfriend (or wife; can't remember). Takes the shock right out of it.
Anyway, like all books (or most—see Wuthering Heights), there's the good and the bad. I'll start with the good. This was in the days when e-mail was still pretty new, and primarily text-based. In Disclosure, there's an entire virtual reality world. They describe a machine you get on which simulates walking (in any direction), and these virtual reality gloves, and a helmet, and it's like instead of your computer having a desktop, it's a house, that you can physically explore! That's why this book gets a D from me instead of an F. That's a cool idea. Still waiting on it in the real world, though.
Now the bad. There's lots, of course. But here's how the conflict gets resolved (ZOMG WTF SPOILR ALRT ROTFL). So while the boss lady is making her move on the employee, his cell phone (still new, remember) is on, and he's making a call to a friend. The answering machine picks up. Recorded on this answering machine tape, then, is the entire encounter. Several months later, the main character remembers this, calls his friend, asks if he still has the message, and it turns out they do (a couple, a married couple), and they've been playing it to all their friends, because it's so funny. Now, sure. Maybe they have a fantastic answering machine that allows you to save messages for several months (this is the mid-90's, remember). And, sure, maybe they really were so entertained by the message that they decided to keep it. And, hey, maybe they actually did gather friends around the machine to listen to it. And maybe no one managed to accidentally erase it. I can accept that. But would they really have never even mentioned it to this guy?! And if they're really playing the message to everyone, wouldn't it eventually get back to him? Mr. Critch: For shame.
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Michael Crichton
Rank: F
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Fall, 1994
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 9 / 12 / 2006
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Michael Crichton
Rank: D
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Winter, 1994
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 6 / 28 / 2006 - Review: Why do this? Why? Think how much time it takes to read a book. Think how many waffles you could prepare and consume in the time it'd take you to finish a four hundred page book. That's a whole lot of waffles! So why on Earth would anyone ever read a book that wasn't any good? I just don't understand it. I will tell you why I read this book. In junior high, I liked Michael Crichton books. I read quite a few. This was one of the first ones I read. In retrospect, I don't think it was worthwhile. After all, there are no dinosaurs in this one. In Rising Sun, the dinosaurs are sinister Japanese businessmen. In other words, this is simply the tired old "Japanese are taking over the world!" 80's stereotype played out over four hundred miserable pages. And the cover of the book I read didn't even have Sean Connery on it. What a worthless endeavor. I feel stupid for having read this waste of trees. Yech. I feel dirty. I'm going to go brush my teeth. While I'm doing that, take some time to not read this book. I think you'll find it's time well spent.
- Categories: Detective, Offensive, Pop, Recent, Trash
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Michael Crichton
Rank: D
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Summer, 1994
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 10 / 17 / 2007 - Review: Hey, I forgot about this one! It actually weren't too bad.
In this one, the dinosaur is a crazy virus the government's cooking up that gets loose in an Arizona town and kills everyone. A crack team of anti-virologists (whoa! that didn't get flagged as a misspelling by my browser!) have to go in there to figure out what happened, and make the town safe again. It's pretty good, for a suspense thriller. The only part that irked me was the guy that gets seizures when lights blink too fast (the main character). Of course, there's a crucial part at the end where he has to do something in the nick of time, but the alarms goes off, and the lights start blinking at just the right frequency to get him to go nutso. Call me old-fashioned, but if blinking lights give you seizures, you don't belong on my football team. End of discussion.
- Categories: Sci-Fi, Short
- URL: <http://dedalvs.com/read/search_key.php?cid=223>
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Michael Crichton
Rank: D
No. Times Read: 1
Last Read: Summer, 1994
Reviewed By: Dave
Date Review Added: 10 / 17 / 2007 - Review: Oh noezz, not moar Crichton!11!!1!1one!!1!1!!!!!!
In this Crichton novel, the dinosaur is a man who has a near-fatal accident, the result of which are seizures. What kind of seizures, you might ask? Why, killing seizures, of course. See, he has a seizure, then goes off and kills someone to satisfy some sort of seizuriological urge. He is...The Terminal Man!
Anyway, all goes well with him killing people, until an evil doctor finds a way to fix him by hooking his brain up to electrodes. Suddenly, he no longer has the urge to kill! But worry not; he gets his groove back! He figures out a way to manipulate the electrodes in his brain so that he can control that seizure-induced urged to kill, and he goes on a rampage, until his life is tragically cut short.
I know I'm probably not the first to describe this novel as a modern-day Gidget, but I hope we can all agree that I'm certainly the loudest. READ THIS MODERN-DAY GIDGET NOW!!!
- Categories: Sci-Fi, Trash
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