Vastly creative, immensely smart, and exceptionally clear-thinking, Crichton had a great gift for translating his thinking about the strange clashes of law, science, and policy into gripping fiction. He also wrote lucidly and well about the complex legal, economic, and ethical issues that arise with scientific progress. Here's a review I wrote about his biotech novel, Next--and here is one of the companion essays he wrote about gene patents. The novel puts the analysis to work as plot. Plot sticks with many people much better than argument, but argument has more depth than story. Crichton operated on both planes beautifully, and moved between them effortlessly.