Don’t Look Up: Finally — at long last — we’re celebrating a Michael Crichton Christmas. For those tuning in late, Crichton specialized in cranking out fast-paced sci-fi-techno thrillers that all but read themselves. In his books, Man’s wannabe Godlike hubris was always getting rewarded with a heavy dose of karmic comeuppance.
I say “finally,” because almost all of the 200 million Crichton books sold over the course of his prolific lifetime — Andromeda Strain, Coma, Prey, and all the Jurassic Park tomes from which that interminable film series derives — were first purchased as Christmas gifts.
It’s been widely noted that the name of the most recent COVID strain to cast a pall of uncertainty over the planet — Omicron — is something straight out of Crichton. Except, of course, he would have gotten it right — the way Joe Biden, in fact, already has — by dubbing it “Omnicron” instead.