Micro

I was looking for something other than Stephen King to listen to as my in-the-car audio book, and I came across this: the last book by Michael Crichton. I thought this would tell me if the rest of his work would be worth checking out, but as it turns out, it was finished by Richard Preston, and a lot of the problems I had with this story was the writing style.

First off, this sounds like the first story of a writer with potential: an interesting idea that the writer didn't know how to put into words. This has a lot of words being repeated in the same sentence and it just sounded odd. All in all, it reads more like a movie script someone barely put effort into converting into a novel.

This is a shame, because the actual story is a good idea: take the incredible shrinking man trope, add in some bits of reality ensues, and then throw them in an area with the most dangerous insects known to man.

It starts out promising, with some detective being killed by miniature machines, but it quickly becomes banal when we are introduced to our heroes. They're pretty much cardboard cut-out archetypes, with no real development. There's a romance that comes out of nowhere, and they're killed off so frequently I couldn't care about them. Also, screw that Danny Minot character. I don't know if it was Crichton or Preston, but inserting a character just to mock sciences you don't like is childish.

I think I might have liked this if it were a movie, where the visuals could make up for it. As a book, however, I'd say pass it.

Different Seasons

I might have finished the audiobook of The Running Man first, but this was the first King book I made any real progress on. It's a collection of four novellas written in between knocking out big novels.

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (Hope Springs Eternal): Yeah... seen the movie? Then you've read the novella. Sure, there are some differences (Red is a white Irishman, Tommy lives, there are several wardens and captains instead of just Norton and Hardly) but it was mostly untouched in adaptation.

Apt Pupil (Summer of Corruption) It's funny that out of the three novellas that got movies, the one I liked the most was the least known adaptation. It involves a young boy learning his neighbor is a former Nazi officer and blackmailing him into learning about the Holocaust. And really, I should stop there. Because I cannot summarize this story in a way that does it justice. It simply needs to be read.

I saw the movie during Christmas break. I'm going to review it here since not much changed, but what did made it obvious why the movie isn't well known. Essentially, it had to be toned down, so the psychological nature of it wasn't as effective. Oh well.

The Body (Fall From Innocence): The basis for the movie Stand By Me, it focuses on four boys going on a hike to see a dead boy's corpse. I was left wondering what the point was. I may need to look through it again.

The Breathing Method (Winter of Discontent): Okay.. this was weird. It starts with a man being invited to visit a club that might be an Eldritch Location, then segues into another story about a doctor in the Thirties advising a pregnant woman on her health habits. This is closer to the horror that King usually write, but I still don't get why it was a story in a story.

Yes, I liked Different Seasons, but I think the first half is much better than the second half.