Michael Crichton has died of cancer at age 66.
He was the first author I read. I was probably ten or eleven, I was at my grandparents’ house in JB, of all places. Somebody left a copy Congo. It was an old, wrinkled copy. I read the first few pages and hardly understood a word, I was unaware of it at that time, but I was hooked – I went on and read almost all of his other books.
Until today I do not really know who’s copy of Congo that was, I suspect my mother probably borrowed from an uncle, or someone.
A year or two later Jurassic Park came out. The whole family went and saw it. I recognized the name Michael Crichton in the credits, but I also saw another name – Steven Spielberg, who was credited as the “director”. At that time I didn’t really know who Steven Spielberg was but I asked my father what does a director do. He said he was the person who’s in charge of the movie – the person who made the movie. So that was the first moment I learnt that movies were made, and were made by a person. There and then I told my father I wanted to be a director. But well, I didn’t. The point is I wouldn’t have known about making movies if it weren’t for Michael Crichton and his stories.
So thanks Michael for all the stories. Alas, you’ve really left us.
(And to cheer things up, here’s the obligatory xkcd comic)
No, it's been over 15 years, buddy.
