Quote:
Originally Posted by Renegade334
The problem is that those ideas are tied with current trends, technology and themes that might disappear, become common/boring or fade in the background in the decades to come (in State of Fear he even discusses an ironically similar topic, where he likens ideas to trends, which by nature rise and fall, become popular then get quickly forgotten when they fall out of context).
Books like 1984, have themes that can remain valid even decades into the future because the bottom line, the message deep beneath can transcend time. But, let's imagine, 50 years from now: will people still be highly concerned/fascinated about tampering with DNA of long-lost species? Climate change? Uncontrolled artificial intelligences and nanomachines? I can't say - because as MC said it himself in one of his books (either SoF or Timeline), people have absolutely no idea about what the future is made of.
General fears and passions, however, need not worry about that. They can remain pertinent no matter which decade or century they're applied to.
|
That is true for his post-JP works, but some of his early works reads like a re-telling of classics of old.
The Andromeda Strain is comparable to
The War of the Worlds, Circhton admits that he based
Eaters Of The Dead on
Beowulf mixed with true accounts of an early Arab Embassy to the Vikings,
Congo is a 20th century version of
King Solomon's Mines and AFAIK everything in
The Great Train Robbery is basically true and he paints Victorian England more vivid and colourfully than say Doyle. (Crichton even included quite a long passage involving a character with a 12-year-old child prostitute in that one, something that is true but most author today will shy way from mention.)