skyjedi2005 said:
Even as a fan of Crichton's in the 90's now i realize just how overhyped his works are. His body of work is slim compared to other writers. If Spielberg did not make films of his books to make him an overnight celebrity would he have tried harder to write some more good books?

John Grisham wrote more novels than he did and had more bestsellers. That lawyer writer guy and his law thrillers. Still i Like Crichton Better.

I don't think a small body of work is a negative mark on a writer. Just look at the works of John Ronald Raul Tolkien that were published while he was still alive? The list is pretty shallow. He may have a large body of work on stores shelves now, but they are all collections of very rough drafts that he never intended to have published. Sure, John Grisham taks out another novel every six months, all of which are automatic NY Times #1s, but Grisham is basically the "fast food" of literature. He comes up with an interesting story idea slightly different than anything else he wrote before, then he types it out as fast as he can, and they rush it to the publishers, and a few months later it sells over a million copies. People buy it because Grishams name is on it, read it, and forget what they by the time the next one comes out. The best books in the world never wound up on bestseller lists, but many of the most pointless and meaningless ones have.

And I don't think it would have been a bad thing if his books had never been made into films, he was still a great writer, and had I been lucky enough to discover him without having Spielberg's Jurassic Park bring my attention to him, I would have still loved his stuff. I disagree that his later books were not very good. I was not the fondest of some of his earlier stuff , but I particularly like some of his newer stuff, like State of Fear. It is all a matter of preference.