Congo
Congo is a 1980 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton, the fifth under his own name and the fifteenth overall. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense tropical rainforest of the Congo. Crichton calls Congo a lost world novel in the tradition founded by Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, featuring the mines of that work's title.
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- Yes, I too had the same disparity in recognizing the author as a young 'un, reading CONGO and SPHERE and so on .. Mr. Crichton sure had his finger on the pulse of the technological world we live in. What a wild series of stories he has created .. he was my favourite author until Messrs. Stephenson and Gibson came along ..
Staying on subject, I wonder if we will see a new adaptation of ANDROMEDA STRAIN some time. As a story it seems topical and relevant.
- The Andromeda Strait is one of the best Crichton books/movies, along with The Eaters of the Dead (skip the movie) and The Great Train Robbery. I also have a strange fondness for Congo, but by that time Crichton had gone crazypants.
- Some books, from off the top of my head, that use interesting color film processing or other "photographs saw something humans can't:
- The Sunbird by Wilbur Smith [0]
IIRC, archaeologists use side lighting and IR film + lenses to identify that a stone wall was made out of bricks and then painted over. This hid an entrance to a special place (don't want to spoil too much).
- Congo by Michael Crichton [1]
The protagonists use a camera + satellite link to visually scan a mural and then send the scan back to supercomputers for processing. That mural explains a key point about the jungle where the humans find themselves. Earlier in the story, I believe the one character analyses chromatographic images of jungle canopies to find where the ancient city might be.
Both books are from the 1970s/1980s so fascinating to see this happen using modern technology too.
I would curious if folks are aware of other books where photographic analysis plays a part.
- That reminds me of Congo from Michael Crichton!
- Impure diamonds for semiconductors were a plot device in Michael Crichton's Congo. I never knew if there was much basis to it.
- Sounds a lot like Michael Crichton's Congo
