Techno-Thrillers discussion

Went out on a limb and added Crichton to the to read list for June. It releases June 3, 2024.
Put in Recursion as a to-read recommendation for May. Many have read it, maybe a chance to share your thoughts in review or discussion.
Put in All Systems Red as currently reading for the rest of April. It mixes the Bond-esque … ok, more like Chavez from Tom Clancy beat down with some cyber tactical shenanigans the type of which is in its own class. It is in space, not … Earth realistic per se, but a thriller, and a short novella. Easy to bang this out in the remainder of April.
From there, will do polls of members to queue up stuff to read by month.

Steve wrote: "Went out on a limb and added Crichton to the to read list for June.
It releases June 3, 2024.
Put in Recursion as a to-read recommendation for May, for those who haven’t."

Another posthumous release for Crichton? I will definitely have to read this one. I've read all of his books since The Andromeda Strain.

Will start All Systems Red tonight! Kinda excited to see how well Patterson does with the Crichton book.

I’m leery of these posthumous things too, but I liked the last ones. Loved Pirate Latitudes. I have been more disappointed with the posthumous Clancy stuff, but that was sort of whole new stories from scratch with the same characters/world. In this case, it sounds like Crichton had reams of notes to set up the eruption situation, so I’m hopeful. My favorite part is usually the 2nd or 3rd chapter where he goes down the science rabbit hole. I gather he rewrites those several times to make sure that he can flow like a fire hose, connect the dots, while not belaboring anything long enough to bore/lose anyone. That’s a very delicate balance and the core of his magic.

Hope you like Murderbot book. If you respond like me, … you won’t read Recursion in May. You’ll just hammer through the entire Murderbot series instead.

Cheers

I agree. It is sad that we lost Crichton so soon. I loved his writing style. I passed on reading Disclosure because of the news about the story when the movie came out. There was a lot of discussion about whether a woman can assault a man. So, I assumed that was the main point of the book.
But, after reading it, I found that it was only a minor part of the story and there was a reason for it. The book actually was pretty good and delved into VR technology.
I also read Airframe, which I'd skipped because I didn't think the subject would interest me. That was also a good thriller.

Now, I just need to read his early books he wrote under other names. My favorite, aside from JP, would be Eaters of the Dead aka The Thirteenth Warrior.

I feel the same as you about Eaters of the Dead.

I read all of Crichton's non-pseudonym titles except: Twister, Westworld, Jasper Johns, and Electronic Life.

I think I liked all 19 of them, with the possible exception of Terminal Man. There was a stretch there where the best part of the holiday break was getting the latest Crichton novel, sitting down, and just mowing through the whole thing, feeling sublime.

My top 8 from Best of Michael Crichton:
- Jurassic Park,
- Lost World
- Eaters of the Dead / The 13th Warrior
- Pirate Latitudes
- Timeline
- Micro
- Travels
- Airframe

Can't really justify Lost World at #2 other than I just remember hitting a real joy-of-reading emotional peak.

Two of those were published posthumously. So, ... I pre-ordered a hardcover of Eruption to arrive on June 3rd. I've been an audiobook guy for over a decade, and I can't even remember the last time I read a big hardcover, but definitely looking forward to it. Wish it came out on a Friday, not a Monday.

Damn. I’m going to be on business travel the day the book comes out and the hard back arrives to my door. Maybe I can have it sent to the hotel?

Oh, man! I’m somewhere between fired up and trying really hard to stay calm and not think about what I’m missing this week. Just saw Eruption on display in the airport. I’m waiting until I get back home from a business trip, and a brand new hardcover will be waiting in the mailbox when I get there. I did break down and read the Prologue while standing in the bookstore at the airport. And, coincidentally, I saw in the news today that a volcano is erupting in Hawaii today that hasn’t erupted since 1974.

Really hoping this is my book of the year.

Dang it, I need to finish up my current read so I can get to Eruption! As I type this, it's the #2 top seller in the entire Kindle store. No small feat, millions of competitors.

Jed wrote: "Dang it, I need to finish up my current read so I can get to Eruption! As I type this, it's the #2 top seller in the entire Kindle store. No small feat, millions of competitors."

What’s your current read?

The Florentine Deception by Carey Nachenberg. not my favorite, I was tempted to dnf it early, but I'm in deep now

for some reason the spoilers seem to be visible to me. don't think I can hide them either. but anyway, I'm digging into the book now!

Jed wrote: "for some reason the spoilers seem to be visible to me. don't think I can hide them either. but anyway, I'm digging into the book now!"

Sorry to hear that. It should say (view spoiler) and not show anything unless you choose to click on it. I just deleted those posts. It was just me complaining about all manner of minutiae in the writing, which probably had more to do with a long travel day, canceled flights, and sleep deprivation—me being grumpy—than the book itself. Sorry for spoiling. The tags were working correctly for me.

I wonder if the spoiler problem was due to me being on the Android mobile app? On Windows/Firefox desktop they seem to be working. No worries, I didn't really read them because I saw what was happening.

OK, tentatively venturing out with a spoiler tag again.

Prologue: (view spoiler)[What is the black stuff? I thought … oil? No, it would catch fire if rising magma was pushing it up. Gas, no for the same reason. It says the military did something terrible … so nuclear? No, not a black sludge. When have we really seen something nuclear. What is pushing it up? I assume rising magma, or extreme heat from below from magma, or … it is something alive and spreading, or channel Prey and something nano and spreading. Nano doesn’t sound like a military accident that inflects a tree, but after reading Shift, it does come to mind. Is it on the outside climbing the tree, or on the inside blistering out as it goes? It doesn’t say. I assume inside. What is it? No idea. Thought it’d be fun to write down guesses as I went, guess I weed out, before I actually find out. (hide spoiler)].

Ch. 20 & 21: (view spoiler)[This is where the terrible military mistake comes out. Some lab looking for defoliants … like Agent Orange, testing things out, found Agent Black. It doesn’t say anything about radical chemistry experiments or genetics or such, which wouldn’t have been too powerful back then. It implies this thing was an existing chemical, presumably on the shelf somewhere (they never say) that they tested and realized it could end the world. Ending the entire world? Just found it? OK … that conveniently adds maximum drama but … come on … at least make an effort at something remotely credible. This is an automatic, immediate 1-star deduction to me. The technology that is the premise of a techno-thriller doesn’t have to be perfect—doesn’t have to presage some technology that actually is made to work in the future—but it has to be plausible. Is this just me? Here we have a scientist say oh, … Eureka, … this can/bottle of household cleaner or engine lubricant … if a fly eats it and vomits …. Armageddon. That’s over the top for me. Not a showstopper. An eye roller. A mandatory 1-star deduction. (hide spoiler)]

Ch 31: The Cutlers. A TV celebrity vulcanologist duo. Like Steve Irwin … The Crocodile Hunter, or Bear Grylls. But, it seems they are characters you love to hate. I can’t think of any such celebrities in real life off the top of my head. Can you?

I’m wondering if they are destined to die later? Thoughts. They are written to be a bit difficult to suffer. Just a straw man. There is a volcano involved. Are you feeling that?

We’ll see. I got 2 to 1 odds they die later as of Ch. 31.

Just finished. The ending was infuriating. (view spoiler)[A ridiculous, perfunctory deus ex machina that essentially invalidates the rest of the book. The kapa-thin characters could have just hung out together drinking Kona Big Waves at a bar in Hilo, and the results would have been the same.

I really dislike the "nature is wiser/more powerful than science" trope, especially in a techno-thriller. That's why we read the books, because of the science. A techno-thriller where science and technology ultimately don't factor in the conclusion is just ... pointless.

I'd like to think that whatever fragments of this book that Crichton's widow found (which, who knows, maybe was just a wrinkled Post-it note with "What if volcano but also plague?" written on it in Sharpie), this ending wasn't among them, and was instead invented by that hack Patterson or, more likely, one of his army of hired ghostwriters. (hide spoiler)]

I don't mean to sound uncharitable when I say I didn't like the ending of the book. I also didn't like the beginning and middle.

2 stars, only for the Hawaiian language lessons sprinkled throughout this hot mess. A hui hao.

I’m happy to hear your thoughts Tom.

It didn’t have the science blitz typical of Crichton. There are sprinkles but not a blitz. It had more drama … seemingly for drama sake … than I care for. At 70% of the way through now, I haven’t got it at 2 stars. For me, 2 stars generally means I hated it or abandoned it, … or maybe it was so boring as to be unreadable (usually that’s a 1 star); or, I strongly disagreed with some immoral message or something. I don’t have 2 stars on this one but I haven’t hit the climax … which is presumably an eruption unfolding. That said, I definitely don’t have it at 5 stars, as mentioned in a previous post. So, 3 or 4 stars depending on the ending. I’m leaning toward a 4 but the ending certainly matters. The average rating right now, with 3,000 ratings so far, is 4.12.

Ch. 60: This billionaire character Brett seems a case of drama for drama sake. But, even if it isn’t necessary, … it is not entirely unrealistic. It is very much like Elon Musk wanting to be the hero of the kids trapped in a flooded Vietnam cave and getting so pissed off at the real scuba diver hero, who in Musk’s mind stole the glory that should have been his, that he called the diver a pedophile in the international news. I believe he used the term “pedo”. Obviously, that entirely unsubstantiated claim said more about Musk than the diver.

Ch. 63: At some point earlier in the book my thinking was … (view spoiler)[when they mentioned encasing things in concrete and dropping them in the ocean, why couldn’t they do that with the Black Death. They are building dikes to divert lava, why night encase the containers in concrete and drop them in deep part of the ocean. There will be no flies to activate it there. (hide spoiler)]

Tom wrote: "Just finished. The ending was infuriating. A ..."

Just finished it. Have to agree with Tom, … the ending was a somewhat disappointing, … especially after all the buildup, and every chapter starting with x hours to eruption. I’ll have to decide on a number of stars and write a review … but will sleep on it and do it tomorrow or another day.

It was still fun to get caught up in the ride of a Crichton novel. I haven’t read a real hardcover in years but opted to do it again for nostalgia sake, remembering Christmas after Christmas reading the latest Crichton hardcovers right when they came out. This one fell well short of his typical science blitz … and had more thinly plotted, over the top drama than I’d care for … but it was still a fun ride … most of it. I think the fun part is … brainstorming what could happen from here … more so than what actually happens.

I also have to decide if Extinction or Eruption is the better book.

Steve wrote: "I also have to decide if Extinction or Eruption is the better book."

I've just started reading Extinction, and although I don't know exactly where the mystery is headed yet, I'm enjoying it so far. I can't imagine it ending up worse than Eruption, but you've got me worried.

I'm with Tom on the ending, both the (view spoiler)[deus ex machina and the nature-always-wins trope. I guess Crichton did that in Jurassic Park, too, but it feels way more obnoxious in Eruption. There literally was no point to the research, data, the building demolition lady, etc. (hide spoiler)]

I'm also sick of the (view spoiler)[government-keeps-secrets-to-prevent-panic trope. It's not only tired/cliche, in this case it was repeatedly counterproductive and stupid and therefore frustrating. They could've started evacuating Hilo two weeks before! Solved the toxic waste problem decades before! (hide spoiler)]

Finally, it felt to me like Patterson half-assed it. I know he outsources most of his books these days, so maybe he's lost his edge. Presumably he actually wrote this one, but sometimes it's puffy, clunky. Weird scene breaks, tiny scenes. Odd detours.

All that said, I didn't hate it. I've been fascinated with volcanoes since Mt. St. Helens blew in 1980, so I loved the topic/setting. I wish I could give it 3.5ish. 3 seems too low, 4 too high.

Jed wrote: "I wish I could give it 3.5ish. 3 seems too low, 4 too high."

Jed, I’m in the same spot.