Michael Crichton (1942–2008)

"Americans are eager to sell. It amazes the Japanese. They think we're committing economic suicide." (pg. 45)

I should have known better than to doubt Michael Crichton. Rising Sun looked, on the face of it, like an outdated and middle-ranked thriller. Despite the author's reputation, it certainly wasn't one of his most praised works and, what was more, it has been regularly accused of being a racist, or at least a reactionary, polemic. Even leaving aside my scepticism about that last point, show more as we're in a 'boy who cried wolf' situation regarding accusations of racism nowadays and it usually just means someone's said something interesting or mildly controversial, I had read that the book sacrificed its plot and characters for clumsy digressions into economics and anti-Japanese slurs.

All of which is complete bollocks. I ended up doing a complete 180 degrees on my impressions of Rising Sun, going from complete scepticism (picking up the book in a why-the-hell-not moment, more than a year after buying it in a charity shop) to being completely engrossed in its plotting and its purpose. It is a fine piece of thriller-writing – as you would imagine from someone who had just finished writing Jurassic Park – and it has a substantial message besides.

I won't go into that message too much, because, by God, Michael Crichton will, but suffice to say it's about the Japanese economic influence on America. "Business is war" to the Japanese, as Crichton repeatedly says (pg. 152), and his novel goes into shady and ruthless Japanese corporate practices, predatory investment strategies, the collusion and weakness of American regulators and businesses, and ultimately the almost wholly negative effect this has on the working man, the American taxpayer. "We don't make things anymore," one character laments (pg. 217), and though we've long been conditioned by our bought media and our political betters to scoff at this train of thought, it's a legitimate viewpoint. In the Fifties, a single paycheck could support an entire family and a house (pg. 109), and that just isn't the case anymore. And it's not an 'aw, shucks, what can ya do?' dilemma; Crichton shows how this is because of very definite economic and corporate practices.

Trade deficits, purchasing power, corporate takeovers and the like might not sound like the most compelling ingredients for a thriller, but Crichton leans heavily on the ruthlessness and the high stakes of the game and it's often arresting to read. Even if it's sometimes an over-simplification, there's a sort of thrill you get from thinking you're getting the skinny, the inside scoop. And as for this 1992 book being outdated, well, consider that accusations of racism are thrown at some of the characters to silence and intimidate them (which is about as contemporary as it gets in 2020), or that you could replace every mention of 'Japan' with 'China' and get something completely up to date, and even more concerning.

Aside from the stimulation these ideas provide in Crichton's pages (and the polemical asides and info-dumps are much more naturalistic and entertaining than most reviewers allow), Rising Sun is just a cracking good thriller. Crichton's writing style, even when discussing a difficult concept, is clean and simple, and the pages fly by. The murder of the young woman in the offices of a Japanese corporation is, commendably, kept front and centre throughout: the reader cares about the mystery and it's not just an excuse, a starting gun, for Crichton's story. There are some stellar plot twists, and the importance of Japanese cultural mores allows for some original dynamics between characters (as well as being something of a crash-course in Japanese etiquette). The characterisation is better than your average thriller, though I felt the protagonist, Peter Smith, was not very credible as a detective – he always seemed to be slow on the uptake. This, however, is in large part because of his role as an audience surrogate. He asks simple questions and has things explained to him because someone has to perform that role, if the reader isn't to lose their way.

Ultimately, however, it's the message that decides whether Rising Sun succeeds or fails, and whether it endures into our own times. Though its sun seems to have been eclipsed by Crichton's more well-known works, the labels of 'controversial', 'problematic' and particularly 'racist' are deeply unfair. The book is a provocative and well-written thriller that delivers an earnest and important message about American decline. Far from being racist, Crichton even raises the important point that most of this decline is self-inflicted (see my opening quote) and America needs to step it up, both in hard work and in countering its naivety and ignorance. "In no other country in the world… would you hear people calmly discussing the fact that their cities and states were sold to foreigners" (pg. 44). To which I can only say: Hello, America, greetings from England. It's just about the only point Crichton gets wrong. show less

Very good. The short chapters make the pace feel fast even during the sections when little is happening, and the story is written in such a manner that the reader (even should you not have seen the film the novel spawned) cannot help but know with certainty how bad things are about to get long before the characters do -- well, excepting perhaps Ian Malcolm. This gives an underlying tension that further adds to the page-turning feel of the story, which is particularly impressive considering show more the novel's rather many academic asides about everything from computer history to mathematical paradigms.

My main complaint, I suppose, is the almost complete lack of emotional ramification for traumas and deaths. Whenever a character dies, people (even people with no experience with such things) behave with a stiff upper lip 'well, that's a shame, let's soldier on' attitude that I might buy from hardened veteran soldiers or explorers mentally prepared for danger, but that seems a bit off from academics, engineers and lawyers who have been told they're to tour an unopened amusement park. They're afraid for their own lives (and to some extent, that of others), and you feel that fear, but there's no tangible grief following the loss of human lives at any point in the story. Even the two children seems not at all traumatised by the things they go through, quipping and quarreling again as soon as immediate danger is over, and happily petting dinosaurs even after they've multiple times survived attacks by other animals -- often of the same species. I didn't exactly mind any of this, as lengthy hand-wringing of how sad and horrible this and that was doesn't exactly make for exciting reading -- but it did take a tiny bit of believability away, and it also made it harder to differentiate supposedly hardened characters from the ones less used to danger and hardships.

But this is a minor concern. I spend so much time on it only because it struck me as odd, not because it weakened the story much. Crichton is otherwise excellent at making things feel horrifically real, including the terror the characters experience over and over again, and the ebb and flow of the threats throughout the book works wonderfully. All the thumbs all the way up. Between this and "The Great Train Robbery", I'm two for two on highly satisfying and memorable Crichton novels, and am considering making a point of trying out more. show less

The main take-away from Timeline is that time travel, despite its ubiquity in fiction, is really hard to get right in a story, even for a thriller writer as able as Michael Crichton. Timeline won't be remembered as one of his best. It does have an easy Saturday-afternoon popcorn-film sort of charm, the sort of thing I would have lapped up as a child back in the Nineties, but it struggles to hit its plot points naturally.

The warnings come early on, when a random day-tripper in modern-day show more America almost immediately recognises a strange map as being a floorplan of a medieval monastery, and a young kid in a waiting room overhears a conversation and pipes up with everything he knows about 'quantum foam'. This forced storytelling continues throughout: one of the characters, for example, trains regularly in medieval combat, just because he likes it, so you know it is going to become useful when he is one of those cast back in time to medieval France. Much of the story is untidy (the old man at the start, who triggers the plot, is part of an arc that is left underdeveloped) and many plot pivots are put down to chance and 'bad luck'. The denouement of the story provides hasty comeuppance for its villains and unfulfilling development for its protagonists (though André's contribution to the Epilogue is rather affecting).

All in all, the features of the story – interesting in isolation – are cobbled together as a sort of potluck. Time travel is always fun, but this book never rises above such disposable, pulpy fun. Crichton is always willing to bring science and research into his stories, and he makes a game attempt here with quantum computing and medieval verisimilitude, but he acknowledges at the end of his book that time travel "rests firmly in the realm of fantasy" (pg. 490). Timeline, unfortunately, proves to be a potboiler. show less

Jurassic Park. JURASSIC FRIGGIN' PARK PEOPLE.

Now if you know me you know that this is one of my top 10 movies of all time. Action packed with dinosaurs ripping people apart and some legendary characters like Muldoon hunting some raptors and Dr. Ian Malcom dropping knowledge about Chaos Theory. I was 8 years old when it released and I can still remember sitting in that dark theater watching the Tyrannosaurus Rex step out of the paddock and hearing her deafening roar shake the room.

And with show more that said... I think the book was better than the movie. Wait! Don't shoot me just yet!

The story that Michael Crichton wrote in this awesome novel plays out very differently than the movie. The book seems more action packed and Dr. Alan Grant and the kids get into way more precarious situations. Characters behave and have different roles in the book. John Hammond is the protagonist and not he's not such a likeable character. I don't think anyone really liked him in the movie either but in the book he's a dick.

Biotechnologist Henry Wu plays a way bigger part here compared to his 5 minutes on screen in the baby raptor scene. Crichton goes into more detail about how the DNA splicing process works so things do get a bit technical.

Dr. Ian Malcom's speech on how the earth will survive despite the mistakes and follies done by mankind is one of the best I've ever read. I enjoyed his character in the movie and here he sounds like a true scientist.

Both mediums have their individual charm. I enjoyed the book and I thought it was great and it would've been cool to see the book be adapted a bit more than where Spielberg took it HOWEVER the film is still damn amazing! show less