Michael Crichton

CRICHTON, (John) Michael. American. Born in Chicago, Illinois, October 23, 1942. Died in Los Angeles, November 4, 2008.

Michael was educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa). Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65.

He was a visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. Graduated Harvard Medical School, M.D. 1969; post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla, California 1969-1970. Visiting Writer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.

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, he has sold over 200 million books. His books have been translated into thirty-eight 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, a Peabody, and a Writer’s Guild of America Award for ER. In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named for him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

He is survived by his wife Sherri, his daughter Taylor and his son, John.

Lived: 1942 - 2008

Author Of

A Case of Need

When a young woman dies mysteriously on an operating table and her physician is accused of murder, a colleague’s investigation takes him from a deadly sex and drug underworld to the heights of Boston society as he searches for the truth.

Airframe

This thriller with a scientific background comes from the author of “Jurassic Park” and “Disclosure”.

The Andromeda Strain

“This book recounts the five-day history of a major American scientific crisis. As in most crises, the events surrounding the Andromeda Strain were a compound of foresight and foolishness, innocence and ignorance. Nearly everyone involved had moments of great brilliance, and moments of unaccountable stupidity….” Thus begins this extraordinary novel of the world’s first space-age(…)

Congo

The legendary ruins of the Lost City of Zinj have seen an eight-person field exhibition die. After startling discoveries, a new expedition is sent back into the Congo–its mission, to descend into the secret world where the only way back out may be through the grisliest death….

Disclosure

A brutal struggle in the cutthroat computer industry…A shattering psychological game of cat and mouse…A shocking accusation that threatens to derail a brilliant career…The are the electrifying elements of the new novel by the author of Rising Sun and Jurassic Park. It is Michael Crichton at his galvanizing best…

Eaters of the Dead

Whilst on a mission up the Volga, a representative of the ruler of Baghdad meets a Viking chieftain who has been summoned back to Scandinavia by his besieged relatives. The two men journey together northwards to engage in mortal combat with the dark, hairy brutes who threaten to empty the land.

Jurassic Park

The novel which became a Spielberg film of the same name. An island off Costa Rica is to become the world’s most famous theme park – a dinosaur preserve, for a biotechnology company has succeeded in cloning 15 species of dinosaur. But the scientists’ dream turns into a nightmare.

Rising Sun

On the 45th floor of the Matsumoto Tower in LA, the headquarters of the Japanese Electronics Corporation, celebrities from the film and music world mix with the captains of industry and politics. On the 46th floor, the dead body of a young woman is discovered. By the author of “Jurassic Park”.

Sphere

This suspense thriller opens as a 300 year old spaceship is discovered on the South Pacific Ocean floor.

State of Fear

Once again Michael Crichton gives us his trademark combination of page-turning suspense, cutting-edge technology, and extraordinary research. State of Fear is a superb blend of edge-of-your-seat suspense and thought provoking commentary on how information is manipulated in the modern world. From the streets of Paris, to the glaciers of Antarctica to the exotic and dangerous(…)

The Great Train Robbery

In Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty exist side by side, one man navigates both worlds with ease, the rich, handsome and ingenious Edward Pierce. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the theft of the century?

Welcome to our genetic world. Fast, furious, and out of control. This is not the world of the future–it’s the world right now. Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that(…)

Pirate Latitudes

From one of the best-loved authors of all time comes an irresistible adventure of swashbuckling pirates in the New World, a classic story of treasure and betrayal. The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital,(…)

Prey

In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles — micro-robots — has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more(…)

The Terminal Man

A man suffering from violent seizures enters a Los Angeles hospital, where soothing pulses are sent into his brain. But then he discovers how to get the pulses with increasing frequency, escapes from the hospital, and lapses into murderous rampages. By the author of “Jurassic Park”.

Timeline

This story features historians in 1999 employed by a tech billionaire-genius. He plans a theme park featuring artifacts from a lost world revived via cutting-edge science. The project’s chief historian sends a distress call to 1999 from 1357, but the risks are huge.

The Lost World

The sequel to JURASSIC PARK. It is six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, and there are rumours that something has survived.

Binary

The theft of a half-ton of deadly poison gas out of a government train to the climax when, with seconds to go, the hero struggles to comprehend the ultimate workings of his adversary’s superb but deranged mind, BINARY is filled with action, tension, and excitement.

Micro

Three men are found dead in the locked second-floor office of a Honolulu building, with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye. In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in(…)

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