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Books by
Michael Crichton
Prey
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Michael Crichton
Bio
Fast Facts
Trivia
Author Talk, November 2002
Website
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Author
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For over 30 years, Michael Crichton has written books that focus on a wide variety of subjects: science, murder, extra-terrestrial life forms and international politics, to name a few. As "the father of the techno-thriller," Crichton has brilliantly incorporated his extensive medical and scientific knowledge in such novels as The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Timeline and Jurassic Park. He has also challenged his audience to think about important issues that affect our everyday culture in The Rising Sun, Disclosure and Airframe.
Known for his exciting plots and memorable characters, Michael Crichton returned to bookstores this fall with Prey. Set in a Nevada, eight people are trapped inside a high-tech fabrication plant --- in danger from a swarm of mircroparticles created by the group.
To celebrate the release of Prey, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com has chosen Michael Crichton as our Author of the Month. Readers can learn more about Crichton's life and his works through trivia questions, "fast facts" and biographical information, as well as links to his website, an interview and book reviews.
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FAST FACTS:
- Michael was a star basketball player in high school --- he was 6'7" in the 10th grade.
- Most of Michael's earlier books are based on preexisting literary forms. The War of the Worlds influenced The Andromeda Strain, while Congo is reminiscent of Sir Henry Rider Haggard's adventure story King Solomon's Mines. The Terminal Man is a modern day Frankenstein and Eaters of the Dead is based on Beowulf.
- Michael's 1973 movie "Westworld" was the very first feature film to employ computer-generated graphics.
- Michael actually wrote his first script for ER as a feature film screenplay back in 1974. Amazingly, the script sat in his trunk until the late 1980s. Crichton described his emergency room concept to Steven Spielberg, who became interested in directing it as a movie. However, this plan was put on hold when Crichton also mentioned the new dinosaur script he was working on, which Spielberg was very interested in. It wasn't until the '90s arrived that executives at Spielberg's film and TV company dusted off the ER script and decided to use its stories as the basis for an hour-long television drama on NBC.
- Michael's books are so popular in China that when a new species of dinosaur was discovered in November 2000, it was given the name Bienosauraus crichtoni in his honor. He called it "a real thrill" to have a dinosaur bear his name. "Believe me, when I was a kid staring up at those huge skeletons in the museum, I never imagined one would be named for me."
- Michael is the only person to have had the number one book, number one movie and the number one television show in the U.S., all at the same time.
- Michael has had many psychic and spiritual experiences: he has seen auras, bent spoons and was exorcised in 1986.
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BIO:
Michael Crichton was born on October 23, 1942 in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard summa cum laude in 1965 and, at the age of 23, was a visiting lecturer in anthropology at Cambridge University in England. He traveled in Europe and Africa for one year after winning a Henry Russell Shaw Fellowship. Upon returning to the U.S., Crichton began his training as a doctor at Harvard Medical School and received his M.D. in 1969. He paid his way through medical school by writing thrillers under different pseudonyms. Under the name "John Lange" he wrote the following spy thrillers: Odds On, Scratch One, Easy Go, Zero Cool, Venom Business, Grave Descend and Drug of Choice. He also wrote a medical thriller titled A Case of Need, this time under the name "Jeffery Hudson"
During Crichton's final year at medical school, The Andromeda Strain was published under his own name. This medical thriller, which deals with a biological disaster, was a bestseller and he sold it to Hollywood. This success led Crichton to gain a celebrity status around the hospital, which allowed him to obtain the hospital director's cooperation in researching his first nonfiction publication, Five Patients: The Hospital Explained. After graduating, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Science in La Jolla, California and then decided to take up writing full time.
One only needs to look at the subjects of Crichton's novels to learn the extent to which his medical training, as well as his interest in science and technology, has influenced his writing over the years. In The Terminal Man, a man is "implanted" with electrodes that control his emotions, while animal behavior theories are a focus in Congo. Jurassic Park and The Lost World deal with genetic engineering and its potential deadly consequences. Timeline combines a science of the future with the complex realities of the medieval past. Crichton has also written books about important issues that impact people all over the world. They include The Rising Sun, which focuses on the Japanese and their influence on the U.S. economy and business; Disclosure, in which a man sues a woman for sexual harassment; and Airframe, which examines, among other things, air safety and airliner construction. In addition to Five Patients, Crichton has written three other books of nonfiction: Jasper Johns, a tribute to the American painter and sculptor; Electronic Life, a layman's guide to computers; and Travels, which details Crichton's many trips around the world. His newest novel, Prey, explores such topics as biogenetics and nanotechnology, the quest to build machinery of extremely small size.
Crichton has been recognized on a number of occasions for his writing. He was the recipient of the Edgar Allen Poe Award in 1968 for Best Mystery of the Year (A Case of Need). Crichton was then named the 1970 Medical Writer of the Year by the Association of American Medical Writers for Five Patients. He won the Edgar Award again in 1980 for The Great Train Robbery, a breathtaking thriller about an extraordinary robbery that targeted the pride of England's industrial era --- the mighty steam locomotive.
In 1972, two of Crichton's books were made into films: Dealing and A Case of Need (released as "The Carey Treatment"). After watching the filming of these two movies, Crichton decided to try his hand at directing and made his directorial debut with a TV-movie adaptation of his own novel, Binary. Crichton went on to direct six more films: "Westworld," "Coma," "The Great Train Robbery," "Looker," "Runaway" and "Physical Evidence." Most of his other books have appeared on the big screen, including The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Disclosure, Rising Sun and, of course, the blockbuster Jurassic Park and its sequel The Lost World.
Crichton has also proven to be a major success in the television world. He returned to television in 1994 as the creator and executive producer of the top-rated NBC drama ER. In 1995, ER won eight Emmys and Crichton himself received an award from the Producers Guild of America in the category of Outstanding Multi-Episodic Series. He was also honored later that year with the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and the Writer's Guild of America Award for his work on ER.
Computers have always been of great interest to Crichton. He ran a software company in the 1980's, FilmTrack, which developed computer programs for motion picture production. For this pioneering work, he won an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Technical Achievement Award in 1995. He has also created two computer games --- Amazon in 1982 and Timeline in 2000.
When he's not writing or doing research for his next book, Crichton spends his time hiking and scuba diving. He is also interested in modern art and collects old wristwatches. Crichton currently lives in Los Angeles. He is divorced from his wife, Anne-Marie Martin; they have a daughter named Taylor.
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