Michael Crichton Reaches 'The End'

As a kid, my mother read to my sisters and I constantly, anything from Little Women to Theodore Taylor's The Kay. When I reached the age where I could read to myself at a high enough level, I was excited to finally have the autonomy to choose what fantastical worlds I was going to immerse myself in. Including the requisite Stephen King and John Grisham novels, I began to read the works of Michael Crichton. The Great Train Robbery, The Terminal Man, and The Andromeda Strain all captured my young imagination and held it long enough for me to actually want to learn more about each elegantly incorporated topic that Crichton always managed to weave into his narratives. While his books always managed to land on my library reserve card, I would have considered many other authors to be more influential in terms of my own real world interests. However, that changed in 1990 when Crichton published a novel called Jurassic Park, which I read cover to cover in less 3 days, quite an accomplishment for any eleven year old. That novel and its sequel, The Lost World, introduced me to a topic that was previously unknown to me, molecular genetics, a field in which I eventually earned a Ph.D. and am currently working in. Since then, I have anxiously awaited every one of his many releases, some with more fanfare (Timeline) than others (Next), but always finding a way to captivate my imagination and transport me back to a time when I believed anything was possible. So yesterday, upon hearing the news of Mr. Crichton's death at the fairly young age of 66, I was quite saddened but even more so I was reminded of my origins, the inspirations that have shaped the direction my life has taken and the avenues that I persued in part because of him and his works. While some have described his books as fun summer reading with no more impact than a romance novel, I am proof of a life well spent inspiring youthful imaginations.