Michael Crichton was long one of my favorite authors. (As a matter of fact, I was a fan of his books even before he became Michael Crichton! If you're a long-term Michael Crichton fan, you'll know what I mean; if not, I'll post an explanation another time, after folks have had a chance to think about it.)
Alas, he died on Election Day, 2008, reportedly of cancer, though even now not many details have been released by his family. Though it seems he had been sick for a while, the end came suddenly.
I have "Michael Crichton" set up as a Google Alert, and recently came on a couple of strange postings. The gist of them raised the question of whether Michael Crichton may have somehow been the victim of "implanted" cancer. This from a piece on the variety of South American leaders, primarily Hugo Chavez of Argentina, who have reported cancer, and whether some nefarious force (a certain 3-letter agency) somehow spiked him with cancer.
Could such a thing be done? The answer seems to be, "Probably not, but then again maybe yes . . . under certain circumstances."
Some of those articles also included Michael Crichton in the list of "possible" victims of this allegely implanted cancer.
Dubious as that may be, let's just poke around the what-if a bit. First of all, What would be the motive?
Dr. Crichton (MD Harvard Med School, former fellow of the Salk Institute), had a knack for attacking Sacred Cows . . . or at least raising important questions about them and the articles of faith upon which they rest.
PREY: the nanotech industry -- just how safe? what could go wrong?
NEXT: the fledging genetic engineering industry. (First questioned in his JURASSIC PARK)
STATE OF FEAR: the global warming "religion". ("Religion" in this context is not me speaking, it's Michael Crichton. Crichton, in one of his talks, did relate key elements in the belief system of global warming /climate change adherents to similar elements in other forms of religion.) He also had some fun with the media and its role in spreading certain approved orthodoxies.
MICRO: Big pharma, and Little Robotics. Only partially finished at the time of his death, taken over by Richard Preston.
Let's speculate: what might be the motive for silencing a top-selling author who took on big bucks industries such as pharmaceuticals: robotic technology; global warming or global change (and the industries, labs, and bureaucracies who have fingers in that pie; genetic technology, nanotechnology?
What would be the motive? The ancient Romans came up with the phrase "Cui bono?, which translates as "Who benefits?" Or, Follow the dollars: who gains, who loses?
Bottom line: I don't really believe that any industry or bureaucracy or cabal would kill to silence an author . . . at least not outside some dictatorships or oligopolies. (But, then again, stuff happens, doesn't it?)
But if I were Michael Crichton I'd sure be thinking of what a great thriller plot that would make: A cabal of big bucks industries and complicit bureaucracies team up to silence speculative science thriller author before he can attack more of their $acred Ca$h Cow$.