The day after Barack Obama's election rocked my world, I crashed back to reality with the shocking news that Michael Crichton had died.
It is neither hyperbolic nor rash to say that I am who I am today because of Michael Crichton. Just a week earlier, I was talking about him with one of my friends.
"Michael Crichton is the one person I want to meet before I die," I said.
Spoken too soon.
Every child is fascinated to some degree with dinosaurs, and I was no different. After reading Jurassic Park in third grade, I wrote two book-length stories entitled "Island of Extinction 1 and 2" that immersed me on an island of dinosaurs.
I've since moved on to more original writing, but this intense curiosity that reading Crichton gave me has remained. He taught me that life is best lived when one sees the world as a source of endless fascination. He taught me how to think critically, and that the smartest people aren't the know-it-alls but those who are courageous enough to admit to their own unanswered questions.
He taught me the virtue of simple writing -- a virtue so many, including me, consistently break. He was science's great translator, a friend to the majority who doesn't have access to and can't decipher the difficult language, math, and impact of modern science.
Most of all, he enchanted me with his stories. No one melted pages away like Michael Crichton. And he lived the lifestyle of his novels -- tumultuous, jumping from adventure to adventure, taking risks and throwing himself in harm's way because there might be a story in it.
I can't count the times that I've turned to Crichton not only to be sucked into a new universe, but to help sort out my own life. His essays "Happiness" and "Love Is" still give me shivers. They refresh my perspective. And they do it as only Crichton knows how: not by complicating things, but by showing the simple forces at work behind what was heretofore a mystifying enigma.
What a loss for us all.
Check out minute 44:00-45:30
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