Michael Crichtons

oh this reminds me. I think it was in Minearverse where he came up and some considered him science fiction and others very much did not. I just read in Book Lust where she classifies him as horror, as least she puts Jurrasic park there.

I just read in Book Lust where she classifies him as horror, as least she puts Jurrasic park there.

Buh? That's like counting Requiem for a Dream as horror (and it was, in a year with so few sci-fi/horror contenders).

My bookstore is not for the faint of heart. There are casualties all the time. For instance, many people have been clunked on the head when walking past the A section, from all the Jane Austens swooning and falling off the shelf. The problem was solved by putting them on a low shelf.

And don't even get me started on the Stephen King section....

That's like counting Requiem for a Dream as horror...

This is the result of smoking the bad crack.

The good crack would have revealed that Darren Aronofsky was a directing genius, and that Hubert Selby Jr., having no other connection to the world, was forced to communicate his perceptions of reality via a language that had no punctuation.

In the library in my brain, Michael Chricton does not get shelved with the sci-fi, in spite of every one of his books (that I have read) having fictional science as a major part of the premise.

I think part of the disconnect is that his writing style is very much best-sellerese, which my brain does not parse as sci-fi no matter how much fictional science there is.

I think part of the disconnect is that his writing style is very much best-sellerese, which my brain does not parse as sci-fi no matter how much fictional science there is.

I read a lot of Robin Cook medical thrillers back in the day. They call Dean Koontz the "Master of Suspense" and his books thrillers, despite many of them also having elements of science fiction and the paranormal. I think this "thriller" term may apply to sci-fi written in best-sellerese.

best-sellerese

I stare at this phrase.

It has meaning to me. I am sure of it.

"Michael Crichton" and "anything positive" surely do not reside in the same sentence. Possibly, they do.

This puts my world asunder.

This puts my world asunder.

Well, "anything positive" surely includes his bank balance.

I totally get that and I think best-sellerese is a good basic descriptive. Of course it has to be followed up with something like - suspense, romance, triumph over trauma, family relations, coming of age..., but it gets the point across.

Oh come on, Michael Crichton is clearly science fiction. Bad science fiction, but still science fiction. I refuse to accept that 1984 is not scienc fiction because it "transcends the genre". As a matter of consistency, I refuse to accept that Crichton is not science fiction because he is a horrible writer or because is "tone" is mainstream. Scence Fiction is a category. I go back and forth on whether it is just a marketing category (which section of the bookstore the volume is shelved in) or a meaningful literary category, but at any rate a category. Quality of the writing has zero to do with whether, once published, a book is in that category. And for the most part neither does tone. I don't think there has been a writing tone that has not been used in Science Fiction. I can pretty much say the same of mystery and horror. I suspect the same argument could be made in other genre categories.