best seller lists

First off, let me just say that i'll enjoy watching The Thing, a 600-pound creature made of orange rock, stop an oncoming 18-wheeler with his shoulder every bit as much as the next guy. But it's not the action scenes that get me excited about a movie like The Fantastic Four, which premieres on July 8. Whenever a new comic-book movie debuts, I get a kick out of seeing how the filmmakers finesse the science.

To the dismay of the many scientists whose work and words are blatantly distorted within its pages, Michael Crichton´s new book, State of Fear, was still hanging around best-seller lists months after its debut. It even came up in debates on the Senate floor. Science has always taken center stage in Crichton´s thrillers—The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Prey—but recently he seems to be taking himself, and his ideas, a bit more seriously.