THE TERMINAL MAN (Michael Crichton)

On November 4 2008 I lost one of my favourite childhood authors. Truth be told I only started reading Michael Crichton as a pre-teen when Jurassic Park became the phenomenon it was, however, it would be the start of a relationship with an author I prejudged as being a member of that populist section of the literary world so often relegated to the shelves of international airports. His Jurassic Park was only a window into the scientific foresight he was able to bring to the majority yet it led to a series of books that would lead him away from where his strengths lay, that is, the world of the medical and scientific thriller.

Crichton's early work is the stuff of mind-bending foresight. Many may have explained the happenings in his books as being fortuitous, considering the way the world, the medical one in particular, has developed; however, his devotees will point towards his almost endless research and experience in the field to explain his innate ability to predict what many of us had not even considered until some thirty years later.

Writing as Jeffery Hudson, A Case Of Need was published in 1968 and pre-empted his transition into the world of scientific thriller and television medical drama with a combination of the two. What amounted was a taut thriller and investigation into the world of the hospital and the ethical decisions which doctors and medical institutions are faced with each day. He followed that with The Andromeda Strain, a science-fiction masterpiece that investigated the effect an extra-terrestrial micro-organism has on people infected with it. Published in 1969 it too identifies Crichton's understanding that the seemingly far-fetched is never out of the question when science can be used to explain everything that might occur.

In 1972 Crichton released two books, Binary under the pseudonym of John Lange, and The Terminal Man under his own name. Set in the University Hospital in Los Angeles in the seventies, Crichton's Terminal Man is a moral tale about the marriage of technology, medicine and ethics as a man suffering from violent seizures is prepared for an untried surgery to correct the messages his brain receives during the violent episodes. But what lies at the heart of this story isn't the technical wizardry being explained but rather the vested interests each of the parties hold.

The Terminal Man is an insanely paced thriller that never shies away from fusing together the scientific detail required to substantiate the story and the action required to keep the reader turning the pages. It's far more than an airport novel and suggests that Crichton, at least in my eyes, whilst much-loved, has probably been undersold within the literary world.

Sure, Crichton is no Pulitzer winner but his contribution, to me at least, is an important one for his writing is of a quality rarely seen in action-packed popular fiction and his following work would help solidify him as one of my favourites.

Thanks Mr Crichton.