[NewRomeTacitus]

Crichton, like many of us, evolved from the 60's era of fads and knee-jerk liberalism to today's thoughtful conservative who questions not just authority but everything else included. For his latest book "Prey" he studied nanotechnologies, predator-prey behavior studies, distributed intelligence of hives and (as usual) our government's interests in these fields. That he is slammed for deviating from his usual path of science-thriller ("Disclosure") is unfair, because it was a study of how people can use indoctrinated assumptions as weapons when a society never questions those assumptions. Any good father trying to gain custody of his children from a bad mother in a U.S. court would tell you.
Mr.Sagan, on the other hand, became too famous too quickly to withstand the BS that accompanies that phenomenon.
Fame and money have been the downfall of too many talented souls who one would hope to have known otherwise.

RadioAstronomer, people are wary of the SETI project because of the Twighlight Zone episode "To Serve Man".

[RadioAstronomer]

RadioAstronomer, people are wary of the SETI project because of the Twighlight Zone episode "To Serve Man".

I almost missed this. SETI is a receive only endeavor.

[bootless]

Nice analysis of the evolution of Mr. Crichton's writing. I tore through Prey. :-)

As a sidenote, my father, who was an airline captain who retired in 1979, had him on flight after the Andromeda Strain came out (he was also reading it at the time). Dad said he was a good guy.