“These considerations lead me to believe that the first human interaction with extraterrestrial life will consist of contact with organisms similar to, if not identical to, earth bacteria or viruses. The consequences of such contact are disturbing when one recalls that 3 per cent of all earth bacteria are capable of exerting some deleterious effect upon man.”

​— Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain
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An American military space probe crashes twelve miles outside a sleepy Arizona town. Within hours, everyone is dead except an infant and a senior citizen. In response, U.S. officials mobilize Project Wildfire, a top-secret emergency protocol to handle deadly outbreaks. They summon a team of elite biophysicists and rush them into a five-level, atomic-warhead-laden lab in some undisclosed, underground location to study the bacteria found on the space probe. Time is ticking. Mark Kelly and the other three scientists must work to contain The Andromeda Strain—without contaminating the lab—or the world. Nukes are set to self-destruct as a fail-safe, but would that even be enough?

Inspired by the the protocol for oil spills in oceans and declassified military procedures for handling deadly disease outbreaks, Crichton's first techno-thriller(published 1969) is a relentlessly paced mystery that seems all too plausible in 2019. His calling card here as it was throughout his career was to stay within the realm of what was possible, or at least "what's not known to be impossible" and marry current, unconventional scientific ideas with a thrilling situation. Andromeda didn't quite sweep me up like his later works--Disclosure (explores sexual harassment where the woman is the aggressor), State of Fear (climate science vs. climate politics), Jurassic Park (bioengineering and chaos theory)—but it has so much of the author's instincts of how to get me to keep turning the page. [JG]
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Michael Crichton (1942-2008) remains the only writer to have a #1 book, movie, and TV show in the same year in the USA. His novels include Sphere, The Lost World, Eaters of the Dead, State of Fear, and Dragon Teeth among others. Collectively his works have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, translated into thirty-eight languages, and provided the basis for fifteen films. He was also the director of Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, and Looker. ​​Steven Spielberg, who adapted Crichton's Jurassic Park and The Lost World to the silver screen, called Crichton "The High King of High Concept" for his ability to create stories that grab an audience's imagination and keep them turning the page. Crichton appeared on The Charlie Rose Show several times in the '90s and early 2000s. I continue to enjoy those interviews as he discusses science, medicine, psychology, biology, and computers. Crichton strikes me as a deeply skeptical yet voraciously curious, private yet warm person.
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"There are millions of species of bacteria, and thousands of species of insects. There are only a few species of primates and only four of great apes. There is but one species of man."
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— Michael Crichton, on the odds of encountering complex extraterrestrial life 

"You don't conform to what she wants suddenly you're the enemy."
​— Luce Edgar
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The last movie I saw in theaters twice was The Dark Knight (2008). Luce broke the 11 year drought. This 2019 Sundance favorite features Octavia Spencer, Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, and the new and brilliant Kelvin Harrison Jr. In it, a black high school senior, Luce, unnerves his history teacher by writing a paper that calls for violence. It's complicated though. Luce is also valedictorian, track captain, and the teacher's favorite at his D.C. charter school, and the paper assignment was to assume the perspective of any political figure in history. And yet, Luce was adopted from a war torn country at the age of seven. He's seen violence. Maybe even participated in it. Then there's what the his history teacher found in his locker after searching it—a shared locker though. When I found out Luce was first a play, I picked it up for $14 from Samuel French and finished it in one sitting. 

The play's story is even more condensed and clear as to the motives of everyone involved—student, peers, teacher, parents—but I greatly appreciated the film's decision to add or expand characters, characterization, symbolism, and relevant cultural subtext. I would liken this play to sort of out-of-court-room drama, a modern-day, dark Doubt, or The Winslow Boy. Depending on your reasons or prejudices, perhaps even a retelling of Paradise Lost. One of the most gripping stories I've enjoyed in years. [JG]

"...Life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as much as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time. Coyote was right to want to wipe it out, to call the whole sad thing on account of darkness."

— Michael Chabon, Summerland
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Maybe today, maybe three decades gone, you've had the pleasure of experiencing a sunrise of sunrises or a sunset of sunsets. You know the ones. They mark the start or end of a decision or insight or journey. They paint themselves large and bright on your memory's wall. Maybe for years, maybe forever you return to the view and the feeling. Within or beside that memory shine a constellation of others too: how it feels to have the wind's invisible hands snapping at your clothes as you push 90 MPH; the sight of asphalt racing to endlessly unfurl before you; snacking on some hard-chosen spoils of a dusty town's gas station; laughing out loud to a podcast which hits the funny bone between the ears, drawing the curious eyes of fellow travelers; inhaling that familiar, salty cologne of an ocean breeze and hastily rolling up windows to buffer yourself from that green, freshly-fertilized farmland; relishing the exotic tang of a morning coffee that pries back open your sleepy eyelids; the warm, sunken embrace of a strange hotel bed. All these feelings and others are usually bottled best by a summer road trip. Except, sometimes at least, the term road trip seems wrong. Quake trip makes more sense.

Tyler Cowen writes about "quake books," which I've certainly had my fair share of (from gentle tremors to Magnitude 8+), and traveling often has the same effect—it shakes me to my core. It reshapes my world, slightly or greatly, and compels me to rethink time spent, priorities, and progress. Earlier this summer, I took a 20-hour, 1000-mile drive up the Pacific Coast Highway from my home in Orange County to Bodega Bay, north of San Francisco, and back again. The destination was a wedding at The Secret Gardens, a redwood grove that made a perfect rendezvous point for old friends. We ate, laughed, danced; caught up on the past two years and reminisced about our times at Huckberry. I made new friends too. I called the lady goodnight who was unable to be there, herself settling into a Master's program across the world in the Netherlands. I returned the next morning solo to McWay Falls in Big Sur and the art colony, Carmel-by-the-Sea, two places she and I still love and spent our first weekend exploring together four years ago. I stopped into a favorite book store, River House, and picked up two books per usual. This time it was a fat, unabridged translation of Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov (The cashier looked at me in awe—or maybe fear—when I plopped the 1200+ page tome on the checkout counter) and Michael Chabon's Summerland. I'm hoping Dostoyevsky is one of those high-magnitude quakers. Chabon's was a gentler, welcoming nudge, and not at all less enjoyable or meaningful to me. 

Set on the fictional Clam Island in the Pac Northwest, worst-baseball-player-ever and twelve-year-old Ethan Feld, is thrust into an ancient and magical war—one decided by America's favorite past-time. In order to restore sunshine to Summerland, the western section of Clam Island beloved for it's always-sunny weather, Ethan must recruit a mythic team of werefoxes, giants, and humans to defeat Coyote in the World Series. His swing has got to improve though. The perennial easy-out, he'll have to consult the legendary baseball manual "How to Catch Smoke and Lightning" as well as dig deep in himself to save the world. This epic coming-of-age journey isn't just about the destination though. Chabon's style, which I also love in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, has a gentle, whimsical energy to it. His subtle observations of kids and adults (and kids connecting with adults), clever world-building elements that enhance rather than distract, and simply-stated themes made Summerland a large, bright, memorable quake book. Basking in the nostalgic escapism of Chabon up and down the Pacific, was much like experiencing a sunrise of sunrises. 

Love you, Trini. [JG]

 

"Some 12,800 years ago the balance between the Earth and the Stars was lost and a key chapter of the human story was lost with it."
​— Graham Hancock, America Before
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Where do we come from? Are we alone in the universe? What happens when we die? Answering these three big questions comprise the lifework of author, journalist, and world-explorer Graham Hancock. He began in 1983. While war-zone-reporting for The Economist in East Africa, Hancock met a monk who claimed to be a guardian of the Ark of the Covenant, which had been hidden and subsequently lost in Axum, Ethiopia. Initially dismissing the tip, Hancock soon found a growing body of neglected evidence for a twelfth-century pilgrimage undertaken by the Knights Templar to Ethiopia. His expanded dossier of circumstantial evidence culminated into The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant in 1992.

Since then, Hancock's itinerary includes dozens of other mystical and historical mysteries, both well-known and obscure. From the surprisingly "technological" aspects of the Great Pyramid of Giza, to other earthworks across the globe that are precisely aligned with constellations and celestial events in every corner of the globe. Hancock spent five years scuba diving to map underwater ruins that are perhaps older than the last great Ice Age (and were flooded by rising sea levels). In his newest book, Hancock has set his unconventional sights on the Americas. The man's theories of mankind's geographic origins, timeline of technological development, and subsequent migrations and populating of the world have made him something of a pariah (read: pseudo-scientist) in certain academic communities, as has his advocacy for using psychedelics as a tool for creativity and self-exploration. 

America Before aims to continue challenging conventional anthropological narratives, this time, by a degree of 10x. Rather than the North and South Americas being populated by Asian immigrants circa 13,000 years ago through a land bridge in Alaska, research shows definitively that that timeline of peoples in America goes back to at least 130,000 B.C. Archeological sites in southern California are 10x older than the Clovis sites found previously in New Mexico, 8x older than Meadowcroft in western Pennsylvania, and 5x older than bone fragments found in the Bluefish Caves in northern Canada. There's DNA evidence too. 0.17% of both North and South American natives have Denisovan blood, traced to both 130,00+ year-old-bones in Siberian caves and to modern populations in New Guinea and Australian Aborigines.

Hancock also makes a strong case for the domestication of the Amazon rainforests by early man, who planted and refined certain trees and vegetation for food, as well as for an ancient civilization that was wiped out not by the germs of Columbus-era explorers (that was their surviving offspring), but a meteor strike 12,800 years ago which defrosted the Ice Age and caused massive floods and fires. There are 1,500+ Clovis sites found to-date in various states of destruction by time and floods—sites that suggest a wealth of mapmaking, astronomical, agricultural, and medicinal knowledge. Hancock's argument is that there was a sophisticated civilization before Clovis, which taught them these skills.

​"I make mistakes like everyone else," Hancock writes, "but ever since my time with The Economist I've felt it is important to strive for rigour and accuracy, to check facts, to set out my sources clearly and openly for all to see and to admit my mistakes when I make them." Agree of disagree, Hancock's curiosity rivals that of Indiana Jones. America Before enthralled me and introduced me to so many new ideas, events, and things to consider. I'm grateful to have taken Joe Rogan's advice and follow Hancock back in time to what might just be a much more true account of our collective past. [JG]

Graham Hancock is the author of the international bestsellers Magicians of the Gods, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, The Message of the Sphinx, Heaven's Mirror, Underworld, and Supernatural. You can follow Graham Hancock on Facebook, Twitter, and his website.  
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