I liked old Crichton, but I thought Timeline, Airframe, and Prey were a little dopey, though they kept my interest. If Next isn't very good I think it fits the pattern. But I may pickup a paper back because I know I'll be able to blow through it in a night or two. Give Crichton his due, he can crank out a page turner that a lot of people read ... and watch the movie.
An interesting observation that I heard at Worldcon in two different panels by two different people. The endings of Crichton's stories are always the same as the beginnings. The characters' goal is always to put the genie back in the bottle and return the world to the way it was. The writers who said this (it might have been Brin and Benford) felt that this is the antithesis of science fiction. Science fiction is about dealing with a changing world. Sometimes the change is for the worse, sometimes for the better, but change is inevitable.
The English major in me says that Crichton is anti-science because of this. The science is always very cool, but the people are not competent enough to handle it, and the world is ultimately better off without dinosaurs or Japanese businessmen. The Common Sense person in me says that cool science + crisis + mostly happy ending = bestseller. Crichton is not anti-science (how could he stand to do so much research if he were) he is pro-selling books.
