基本信息出版社：Avon Books
页码：304 页
出版日期：2006年08月
ISBN：0060891564
条形码：9780060891565
装帧：简装
正文语种：英语
外文书名：食尸者
内容简介
The year is A.D. 922. A refined Arab courtier, representative of the powerful Caliph of Bagdad, encounters a party of Viking warriors who are journeying to the barbaric North. He is appalled by their Viking customs -- the wanton sexuality of their pale, angular women, their disregard for cleanliness . . .
their cold-blooded human sacrifices. But it is not until they reach the depths of the Northland that the courtier learns the horrifying and inescapable truth: He has been enlisted by these savage, inscrutable warriors to help combat a terror that plagues them -- a monstrosity that emerges under cover of night to slaughter the Vikings and devour their flesh . . .
作者简介
Michael Crichton, who died in Los Angeles on November 4, 2008, was a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER. His most recent novel, Next, about genetics and law, was published in December 2006.
Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy with Jacob Bronowski. He taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT. Crichton's 2004 bestseller, State of Fear, acknowledged the world was growing warmer, but challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios. He predicted future warming at 0.8 degrees C. (His conclusions have been widely misstated.)
Crichton's interest in computer modeling went back forty years. His multiple-discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania, carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard, was published in the Papers of the Peabody Museum in 1966. His technical publications included a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Crichton's first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student. He later worked full time on film and writing. One of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.
He had a lifelong interest in computers. His feature film Westworld was the first to employ computer-generated special effects back in 1973. Crichton's pioneering use of computer programs for film production earned him a Technical Achievement Academy Award in 1995.
Crichton won an Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, and a Writers Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini. He had a daughter, Taylor, and lived in Los Angeles. Crichton remarried in 2005.
编辑推荐 Amazon.com Review
Michael Crichton takes the listener on a one-thousand-year-old journey in his adventure novel Eaters Of The Dead. This remarkable true story originated from actual journal entries of an Arab man who traveled with a group of Vikings throughout northern Europe. In 922 A.D, Ibn Fadlan, a devout Muslim, left his home in Baghdad on a mission to the King of Saqaliba. During his journey, he meets various groups of "barbarians" who have poor hygiene and gorge themselves on food, alcohol and sex. For Fadlan, his new traveling companions are a far stretch from society in the sophisticated "City of Peace." The conservative and slightly critical man describes the Vikings as "tall as palm trees with florid and ruddy complexions." Fadlan is astonished by their lustful aggression and their apathy towards death. He witnesses everything from group orgies to violent funeral ceremonies. Despite the language and cultural barriers, Ibn Fadlan is welcomed into the clan. The leader of the group, Buliwyf (who can communicate in Latin) takes Fadlan under his wing.
Without warning, the chieftain is ordered to haul his warriors back to Scandinavia to save his people from the "monsters of the mist." Ibn Fadlan follows the clan and must rise to the occasion in the battle of his life.--Gina Kaysen --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Almost "verily," the amazing Michael Crichton has presented the manuscript (922 A.D.) of an Arab, Ibn Fadlan, emissary of a Caliph who recorded his three-years among the Northmen with the "tone of a tax auditor, not a bard, an anthropologist, not a dramatist." It is of course much livelier than that and accompanied with assorted annotations and scholarly paraphernalia (mostly for real) which thin the lines between truth and fabrication to mere wisps of conjecture rising from those dread black mists filled with the eaters of the dead. Now it would appear that Ibn Fadlan, having met some Northmen near the Volga, was chosen to make up the company of thirteen - one to be an outlander - which was to return home with its leader Buliwyf to defeat the hairy fiends who fed off humans. Ibn Fadlan's account, which ends in the cave where the legendary Buliwyf will meet his death while meting out the same to the mother of the creatures, is full of inventive incidentals - be it only the stomach-boggling description of their ablutions or their spectacular funerary practices. Minor Crichton but verily, verily a diverting send-up which you'll read faster than you can say qurtaq. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.