Itzkoff Goes Next

It's not an "Across the Universe" column, but I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't point out that Our Man Itzkoff has a review in tomorrow's New York Times Book Review.

It's for Michael Crichton's current skiffy thriller, Next, and, no, sir, Itzkoff didn't like it.

The over-reaching quote to pull apart this time:

All science fiction has some element of titillation -- a strategy of taking known facts and stretching them to the limits of credulity, for the purposes of both entertaining and enlightening.

I have to run Thing 2 to his gymnastics class now, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to provide counter-examples.