Dustin Dye answers “Why so much hate for Crichton's writing...”

Buck Wilde asked this question about Sphere:

Why so much hate for Crichton's writing style? All through the reviews, people are saying the writing's shitty, or it sucks. I don't think he's revolutionizing the craft or anything, but jeez, take it easy.

Dustin Dye I personally like Crichton's style, and I've read almost every one of his books, including his non-fiction and a number of his works under pseudonyms …moreI personally like Crichton's style, and I've read almost every one of his books, including his non-fiction and a number of his works under pseudonyms (although nothing published posthumously). I understand the criticisms though.

Strengths:

Integrating science into fiction. He naturally provides just enough of the scientific basis to suspend disbelief and move the story forward without bogging down the narrative.

Action. His action is (usually) easy to follow, more so that many so-called "action" writers (Ian Fleming, every Star Wars expanded universe novel). The action flows naturally in the story, and is never over-long.

Cautionary tales. He took a long-view of technological progress and was cautiously optimistic. He seemed excited about what was possible, but painted worst-case scenarios in his books and movies (Westworld).

Weaknesses:

His early prose was clumsy (The Andromeda Strain). His later books got increasingly bad (Timeline had an interesting setup, but failed in execution, State of Fear was laughable climate-change-denier propaganda, Next was stupid and appealed to literally no one). Sphere was written during his prime, and is a good example of his style, although Jurassic Park was his masterpiece.

Character development. Norman in Sphere was probably his best-developed character in any of his books, but we still only learned enough just to move the plot forward. Sphere was probably the only book where the action was driven by the characters, rather than the other way around. Crichton was good enough as an action writer to compensate for lack of character development. Too many writers can do neither (particularly fantasy/sci-fi writers, whose purple prose is a pathetic attempt to hide this fact).(less)

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