Pirate Latitudes

I am about half way through Pirate Latitudes and I think it is a delightful book. It is a bit out of sequence, in this blog, since I have been trying to be somewhat chronological in my review of his work. But, it is also current and people are talking about it. So, I wanted to get some initial impressions recorded.

Most of the reviews I have read have damned the book with faint praise. It is good, they say, but not up to Crichton's level. Others have warned, somewhat ominously, that I wait till the end before making a judgement. The implication being that it will be disappointing.

I think they may be missing the point. If you read Pirate Latitudes expecting another Jurassic Park, you will be disappointed. If you read it as a novel that he polished and released rather than a work that was published postumously, you may be further disappointed. But if you look at it in the right context, I think you will enjoy it much more.

I mentioned earlier that with some of his mystery fiction, it felt like Crichton was trying to write in the style of some well known mystery authors. The more I read, the most I become convinced that this is a pattern in his work.

I am also about halfway through The Great Train Robbery which is very different from his other works. It feels, in this book, like he is trying to write in style of serious historical fiction, perhaps like Barbara Tuchman, but not quite that serious. Pirate Lattitudes feels like he is trying to write romantic historical fiction, perhaps in the tradition of Mary Stewart, Jane Auel, or an abreviated James Michner.

I don't want to overstate or over specify here because this idea needs a lot more work and a lot more investigation. However, if you view this book as an attempt to write in a style and genre outside of his normal fare, the book becomes much more impressive.

Scientists are Human

In the last post, I emphasized the fact that science is a process. Over time it produces good results, but at any given moment in time, it can be way off. Another, factor that we tend to forget is that scientists are human. While this statement is obvious, we often forget to acknowledge the implications of it.

Scientists are people just like people who are not scientists. They have hopes and aspirations; goals and objectives. They have families, social ties, and political leanings. They have beliefs and assumptions and inclinations. And sometimes these things get in the way of their science.

Just like the process of science is self correcting over time, the biases of one scientist are compensated for by opposite biases of another science. And, again over time and over a large number of people, it sorts itself out.

Consider the scientists in Jurassic Park. There is Henry Wu, a young scientist trying to make his mark in the world. There is Dr. Grant who's primary concern is funding for his digs. There is Ian Malcolm (a mathematician actually, not a scientist) who's primary concern is supporting his theory. And there is Dennis Nedry, the computer scientist, who does not feel that he gets enough respect.

Martin Hollis, in The Philosophy of Social Science offers the observation "The schoolroom image of modern science is one of unprejudiced Reason exploring an independent realm of nature." It is a 'schoolroom image' because it does not hold up in reality. And it certainly does not hold up with these characters.

This is another theme that Crichton explores repeatedly. We cannot take what 'scientists say' and accept it uncritically as though it were the unvarnished and absolute truth. It is not. Over time it does seem to get better. But at any given moment in time, what 'scientists say' is really just another data point.

Science is a Process

Science is, first and foremost, a process. It is a process for producing reliable knowledge about the natural world. Certain tenets of this process increase the likelihood of reliable knowledge. Claims must be based on evidence. Claims must be falsifiable. It must be possible for scientists to test the claims of other scientists. And so on. Over time, due to these and other tenets of the scientific method, the process of science tends to produce reliable results. However, this does not mean that what a given scientist, or group of scientists, happens to believe at a particular moment is true. There are endless examples of mistakes made along the way. Sometimes the entire community believes something that turns out not to be true. Sometimes the entire community rejects something that does turn out to be true. Sometimes the entire community just changes it mind on an issue because there is a better way to look at it. And, there is nothing wrong with this. It is the way science works. The goal is not to be right at every step along the way. The goal is to be as close as you can be every step of the way while ensuring the most reliable knowledge over time.

"Over time" is the key phrase here. And problems arise when people take something that scientists believe at a give moment in time as gospel. It is not. Over time, as the process continues, it becomes more reliable. But, sometimes it takes quite a while to achieve any degree of reliability. Imagine taking a Thanksgiving turkey out of the over when it is half cooked and serving it for dinner. Since the process of cooking is not finished, this would be a really bad idea. Similarly, taking claims from an ongoing scientific debate as gospel before they have had a sufficient opportunity to be tested and refined is also a really bad idea. And it is an idea that Crichton brings out repeatedly.

Grave Descend

Grave Descend is the second John Lange book to be reprinted by Hard Case Crime. John Lange, of course, is a psuedonym of Crichton's. A couple weeks ago I commented on the exceeding poor writing quality of Zero Cool. But Grave Descend is much, much better. It falls quite a bit short of Ross MacDonald or Robert B. Parker. But, as far as your run of the mill detective stories go, it is quite good.

Grave Descend was published only a year after Zero Cool and it feels like it was written by an entirely different author. This, I believe, supports my claim that Zero Cool was a pastiche. I will go even further out on a limb and say that in places Grave Descend has a distinct Ross MacDonald feel to it and maybe there was a bit of mimicing going on there as well.

It would be fun to get the other Lange books and try to further this line of investigation. Unfortunately, those that remain appear to be quite pricey and I am not going to have immediate access to them. Hopefully, I will stumble on to one or two of them at used book stores or libraries. Or maybe more will be reprinted over time.

But, as of Grave Descend, we can say that Crichton can write a reasonably good detective story and had he stayed with it he probably would have ranked up with the best. Although these books are a bit rough around the edges they are no more rough that the earlier works of many of the masters. But, that was not his fate. Grave Descend was published in 1970. Few people today have heard of it and enven fewer remember it.

A year earlier he published a very different book which most people have heard of, and most people remember. In fact, it would begin to define him as a mainstream science fiction writer and a philosopher of technology. That book, of course, is Andromeda Strain and it would launch Crichton on the path toward literary significance.