Rating: 
Summary: Haunting!
Review: Michael Crichton had such incredible foresight. This book was written in 1972 and is just as contemporary and modern in 2002. It is a quick read and very fast-paced. Not his best, but pretty close and worthy of 4*'s.
Rating:
Summary: good early work
Review: I read this book as a teenager when it came out in the 70's and really, really loved it. I have not re-read it so I won't give a detailed review. But I've read hundreds of books and the fact that I even remember it at all says something!! As I remember, it was very entertaining and compelling - a real page-turner.
Rating:
Summary: A review of Terminal Man by Michael Crichton
Review: This was a great book despite the ending. At the end, it seemed as if Michael Crichton couldn't think of what to write, so he just ended there. Terminal Man is about a man named Harry Benson that has violent brain seizures in which he loses control of himself and does horrible acts of violence. He participates in an experimental surgery to implant electrodes into his brain to send pleasurable shocks to stop the seizures before they start. At first, the surgery was a success. But, Benson soon discovered a way to increase the frequency of his seizures, causing more impulses of pleasure. He escaped form the hospital and went insane from the constant shocks. He became murderous and bent on stopping his delusion of computers taking over the world from happening. A very good, suspensful thriller.
Rating: 
Summary: Far from Crichton's best
Review: Don't get me wrong, I love Michael Crichton and even his worst writing is a lot more readable than the works of other mainstream authors. And Terminal Man just so happens to fit in that category. The characters aren't terribly interesting and even poorly written at points (particularly one of the main characters, Dr. Janet Ross, behaves totally and inexplicably out of character near the end). And not much is to be found in character development (well, maybe except for the title character). But the story is usually the main focus of Crichton's books. And although its well researched and sort of interesting, it's also horribly dated, and that bothered me a lot. Crichton's ideas about mind control and articial intelligence must have seemed like tangible goals (or threats) at that time, but nothing ever materialized out of it. In fact, the human mind is just as mysterious as ever and the quest for artificial intelligence has been much more frustrating and difficult than anyone could have imagined. And the little informational factoids about computers would make a modern reader laugh. Of course, I don't blame this on Crichton; he did the best he could do during that time period. Like Crichton's other three 'early' books (The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, and Eaters of the Dead), The Terminal Man is written in a terse, impersonal manner; almost like a scholarly or scientic account of events that lacks in high emotion or drama. This technique fits fairly well with Andromeda Strain and Eaters of the Dead, since they were supposed to sound like scholarly accounts, and Train Robbery, because it was based on real events, but it doesn't work with Terminal Man. What could have been an amazing thriller turns out rather boring compared to his later, greater stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Wierd and twisted
Review: Terminal Man gets 5 stars just for the imagination to create it. Benson is a very sick psyciatric patient. He is terrified of modern technologies, in particular computers. He is under the belief that the human race is bound for extinction and that the new superior being will be computers. In an attempt to control that fear, doctors have decided to plant eletric rods into his brain, and everytime he is about to have a psyciatric breakdown, it will provide a pleasurable stimuli to his brain. What they don't know is that Benson soon learns how to control when that stimuli is given, because of the nature of the stimuli it begins to overload his brain. He then falls into a trance similar to epileptic seizures. These seizures wouldn't be so bad, except when they happen he becomes a killing machine. As the body count rises, the police and the doctors that created him, scramble to get him under control.
Rating:
Summary: Ages well, after two decades
Review: The Terminal Man was one of Crichton's early novels from the 70s, and this fact is in evidence. There's the cut-and-paste suspense-thriller dialogue, the inevitable downward spiral of the title character, the plot twists and turns that don't quite jell in too many cases. But Crichton's early attempt at the novel business is still extrordinarily entertaining reading, not the least of which because the book's premise-- Harry's slip into murderous madness after the electrode treatments on the brain, and the whole issue of what constitutes self-control-- is not only continually fascinating, but treated in both a plausible and meticulous fashion by the author. I tend to think of the tale of Harry Benson's scary odyssey as one of the hidden gems in the Crichton oeuvre. When a disinterested 3rd party is asked to name Crichton novels of the top of his/her head, this is rarely one to come to mind. But it's a rare treat, and it's a chance to see the young master at work while he was still honing his craft.
Rating: 
Summary: Readable, but not movie worthy.
Review: A man goes into surgery to correct his psychotic rage, but the surgery takes a turn for the worse. He escapes and terrorizes everyone. In this small book, Crichton spends entirely too much time describing the medical procedures, the hospital politics, and the doctors themselves, while little time on the action or suspense. Usually, Crichton incorporates background and scientific information to further the plot and intrigue and suspense. Unfortunately, this book is more about the hospital than about the plot. The plot itself doesn't even contain an engrossing manhunt or chase that one would expect with an escaped maniac. It's not all bad. It is very much readable, and like most Crichton books, it's fluid and enjoyable. I'd suggest other Crichton books first, but overall, I would half heatedly recommend this.
Rating:
Summary: It ended way too quickly.
Review: I read The Terminal Man immediatly after The Andromeda Strain. I think that I liked the books equally. Crichton did not use near as much scientific stuff as in his first book. The story was great and kept me reading until the very last page where it fell apart. It ended way too quickly. I think he should have written about 5 or 10 more pages after that, but I guess he was wanting to start his next novel. This book was great, but had one of the worst endings I have ever read. It has plenty of action to keep you turning the pages until the end. I would recommend this book to any Crichton fan, but if you are new to Crichton, start with his first book, The Andromeda Strain.
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Summary: The work of a fledgling novelist
Review: The best I can say about this book is that it showcases how Crichton's ability to write thrillers has improved with age. Some aspects of the novel are noticeably clunky due to the passage of time since it was written, but I don't hold this against Crichton. Works in his chosen genre are expected to make goofy extrapolations from present-day events; the bemusement with which we can view them in later decades is just another (albeit belated) part of the fun. "The Terminal Man" is most seriously marred by its conventional and abrupt ending, with nary a sentence of denouement. There is also a brief subplot about two misbehaving AI programs that appears only long enough to turn on the allegorical neon sign before vanishing. However, despite these flaws, it is a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: and a half stars. Great book.
Review: A fast pacedc book by the author of Jurassic Park. Grab this and read it!
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