Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Ebay Alert 5/23/12


Magazines

1989 POPULAR MECHANICS Magazines - 11 Issues The May 1989 issue contains the article “Spaceport America” by Michael Crichton

Playboy November 1968 Contains a “Jeffery Hudson” short story - “How Does That Make You Feel?”

Time magazine - 1995 cover story

Signed Books

A Case of Need

Jurassic Park

Electronic Life

Jasper Johns – 1977 edition

Travels – Franklin Library First Edition

John Lange Novels

The Last Tomb (originally Easy Go)

Binary - hardcover

Binary and Scratch One – paperbacks

Monday, May 21, 2012

Michael Crichton Ebook Wishlist


Now we have 18 of Michael Crichton’s published books in digital format—the 17 novels published under his own name and Travels, one of his five nonfiction books (if you count the different editions of Jasper Johns as two different books, which I do).

So all we need are the rest of the nonfiction books:

Five Patients (1970)

Jasper Johns (1977)

Electronic Life (1983) – If there’s one book that should be an ebook, it’s this one.

Jasper Johns – revised edition (1994)

The eight novels wrote under the pseudonym “John Lange”:

Odds On (1966)

Scratch One (1967)

Easy Go (1968) – later republished under the title The Last Tomb

Zero Cool (1969)

The Venom Business (1969)

Grave Descend (1970)

Drug of Choice (1970)

Binary (1972)

The novel Crichton published under the pseudonym “Jeffery Hudson”:

A Case of Need (1968)

And the novel Michael Crichton wrote with his brother Douglas Crichton – published under the pseudonym “Michael Douglas”:

Dealing Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1970)

See the first edition book covers for all of Crichton’s books! (courtesy of my good friend Pavel)

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Travels, Eight Novels Now Available As Ebooks


Michael Crichton’s autobiography Travels (1988) is now available as an ebook, along with eight of his novels:

Rising Sun (1992)

Jurassic Park (1990)

Sphere (1987)

Congo (1980)

Eaters of the Dead (1976)

The Great Train Robbery (1975)

The Terminal Man (1972)

The Andromeda Strain (1969)

Nine of Crichton’s novels have been available in digital form for some time now:

Micro (2011)

Pirate Latitudes (2009)

Next (2006)

Next (enhanced ebook)

State of Fear (2004)

Prey (2002)

Timeline (1999)

Airframe (1996)

The Lost World (1995)

Disclosure (1994)

Travels is my favorite of all of Michael Crichton’s books. (See the letter I wrote to him.)

And it was Crichton’s favorite as well:
The book that I most enjoyed writing was TRAVELS, because it was autobiographical (so I knew the subject matter very well.) As I finished each chapter, I had a sense of relief, as if a weight was lifted from my shoulders. And I wrote in a very slow and orderly way, over a five month period. I really enjoyed looking back on my life and writing out sections. It was like no other book I've worked on. But they're all different. Every writing experience is different.
I’m delighted to have an ebook (in addition to the many editions I already have). But here’s something strange.

From the copyright page of Travels ebook:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

That’s a very peculiar disclaimer for an autobiography. The ebook of The Andromeda Strain has an identical disclaimer. As most of the new ebooks were novels, I imagine that the people responsible for creating the digital editions just assumed that Travels was fictional as well.

Fascinating Fact: Jurassic Park was first released as an ebook in 1992. More on that soon!

Friday, May 4, 2012

Michael Crichton Essay – Mac Computers


Here’s a find I’m very happy to share.

Recently I was reading the Walter Isaacson biography on Steve Jobs. I remembered that Michael Crichton was a Mac user. (Check out the tribute from Macworld.)

After some digging, I discovered (in a web archive) an essay that Michael Crichton had written about the Mac for the Apple website.

Two excerpts:
Why have I been so loyal to Macs?
One important reason is they’re better designed. By which I mean simpler — simple design is always the most difficult to achieve. I want objects in my environment to be simple and clear, because I don’t want to be bothered figuring out a coffee maker or a TV remote. In fact, I refuse to be bothered.

-----------------------
But let’s face it, I make my living on a computer. I spend all day in front of it. And in the end, the real reason I prefer Macs is because they stimulate my creativity more than other machines.

It’s difficult to say why this occurs, exactly. For one thing, they reek of innovation, and when I sit in front of one, I feel innovative, too. I like working on them. They’re playful, they don’t take themselves too seriously.
And I do a lot of playing around when I work.


I’m very grateful to late great Steve Jobs and the brilliant folks at Apple for what they contributed to the work of Michael Crichton.

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