Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (Bantam Books, April 4, 1977)

Michael Crichton (1942 – 2008) apparently always wanted to be a writer but earned an MD from Harvard Medical school in the meantime. He wrote while in school, publishing several novels under the name John Lange (he borrowed the name from anthropologist Andrew Lang). I only have one of these books — Zero Cool — but haven’t read it. Crichton’s writing was going well enough by the time he got his MD that he never practiced medicine, choosing to write and direct movies instead. He directed Westworld and Coma.

The first book I read by Crichton was The Andromeda Strain, found in my high school library. It was a compelling read about an alien disease sweeping Earth, but the ending was disappointingly anti-climactic. Our library also had his The Terminal Man, and I read that, though I don’t remember much about it. Later, of course, I read many of his big thrillers, Congo, Sphere, and Jurassic Park, and I enjoyed them enough to buy everything he’d written under his own name.

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You may be wondering why Crichton is featured in a column dedicated to Sword & Planet and Sword & Sorcery.

Well, his appearance here is based on the strength of one book — Eaters of the Dead, which is probably one of his least recognized books but certainly my favorite and one of my favorite heroic fantasies of all time.

It was made into one of my favorite movies of all time — The Thirteenth Warrior.

How favorite? Well, I don’t collect movies. I’ve personally bought less than 10 to keep. The Thirteenth Warrior is one, along with The Thing, Excalibur, Once Upon a Time in the West, Trinity is Still My Name, Wrath of Khan, and Brotherhood of the Wolf.

Eaters of the Dead is largely a retelling of Beowulf, but it uses a surviving population of Neanderthals to replace the Grendel. It has lots of physical conflict as well as hints of sorcery.

Although fiction, it has the feel of real history and really captured my imagination.

Certainly, conflicts between Neanderthals and more modern humans occurred, and there was apparently plenty of mating between the two species/sub-species. It’s doubtful they were like this but it’s still fun to imagine.

I wish Crichton had written more S&S.

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Charles Gramlich administers The Swords & Planet League group on Facebook, where this post first appeared. See all of his recent posts for Black Gate here.