Science of Michael Crichton: An Unauthorized Exploration into the Real Science Behind the Fictional Worlds of Michael Crichton by Kevin R. Grazier

Author:Kevin R. Grazier [Grazier, Kevin R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-02T05:00:00+00:00

Did they really talk that way?

The Plot

The story begins with the appearance of a mortally injured man in the Arizona desert. He is raving and suffering from strange injuries. The weaving of his clothing is odd—disconnected as if woven from multiple pieces. He seems discordant, oddly and physically disunited. Indeed, some of his blood vessels are misconnected and his fingertips, cut off from his blood supply, are falling off. (In the film, the writers even had his cardiovascular system misaligned, which would have killed him instantly and probably gave Dr. Crichton heartburn). He turns out to be a noted physicist who was reported missing from a New Mexico corporate lab run by International Technology Corp (ITC) which mysteriously researches commercialization of quantum physics. Robert Doniger, an arrogant, brilliant, driven, and unpleasant scientist, runs ITC. He is the type of scientist found in virtually every Crichton book. Fiction requires conflict, and these characters, who by no means are absent from the real world of science, are perfect literary foils. ITC, the stereotypical evil multinational, has developed a method of time travel working with the latest research.

Meanwhile, a group of Yale archeologists are digging around the site of the fourteenth-century fortress and monastery in Dordogne, funded by ITC, the scene of a (fictitious) English defeat in the Hundred Years’ War. The battle was between the forces of Sir Arnaut de Cervole, a mercenary, and Sir Oliver de Vannes, an English knight. De Cervole was a real person, known as the Archpriest. Vannes is apparently fictional although there is a town by that name in Brittany. The company wants the archeologists to recreate Castlegard as a theme park (shades of the dinosaur cloning in Jurassic Park) and is funding the work so that it can claim that the replica citadel and town were absolutely perfect. Or so it says. When the lawyer representing ITC mentions places and buildings that she could not possibly know about, things the archeologists haven’t yet excavated, the chief scientist, Edward Johnston, grows suspicious and insists on speaking to Doniger. He flies with the lawyer to New Mexico and promptly disappears. Sometime later, the young scholars working with Johnston discover a set of modern bifocals in the ruins, and a manuscript containing a plea from Johnston for help which was written 700 years ago.

ITC has found a way to transport people and information back through time and they sent several, including Johnston, to 1357 Castlegard. But there are problems with the technology. The physicist found in the desert was one of the victims. There are transcription errors that build with multiple journeys. Johnston is trapped back then.

Three of the four young scientists are sent back to 1357 to rescue Johnston. At this point the book falls apart, turning into a conventional chase against time with Crichton saving his characters with excessive good luck, miracles, and fortuitous arrivals of deus ex machina, occasionally breathtaking and eventually tiresome. No one appears to break a bone—you either die or you don’t. Meanwhile

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