Crichton, Michael

Crichton, Michael (1942- ), American novelist, film director, and screenwriter, best known for thrillers that range in subject from medical murders to explorations of current social and political issues. Born John Michael Crichton in Chicago, he grew up in Roslyn, New York. After graduating from Harvard University in 1964, he taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge in Britain. From 1965 to 1969 he attended Harvard Medical School, writing novels under the pseudonym John Lange to supplement his income. These include Odds On (1966), Scratch One (1967), Easy Go (1968), Zero Cool (1969), The Venom Business (1969), Drug of Choice (1970), and Grave Descend (1970). After receiving his M.D. degree in 1969, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, in 1970.

Crichton’s novel A Case of Need (1968), published under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. The Andromeda Strain (1969), a novel about scientists racing to contain deadly bacteria, became a bestseller and was made into a film in 1971. Similar biotechnological scenarios appear in his later works The Terminal Man (1977) and Jurassic Park (1990). Crichton also wrote historical thrillers, including The Great Train Robbery (1975) and Eaters of the Dead (1976), and adventure novels, including Congo (1980) and Sphere (1987). More recently, he has turned his attention to human relationships on the interpersonal and global level in Rising Sun (1992), Disclosure (1993), and other suspense novels. In 1996 he published The Lost World, a highly publicized sequel to Jurassic Park.

Many of Crichton’s novels have been made into films. Crichton himself adapted screenplays from his novels for the films Jurassic Park (1993), Rising Sun (1993), and Disclosure (1994). He also adapted and directed film versions of his novels Westworld (1973) and The Great Train Robbery (1979), directed Coma (1978), and wrote and produced Twister (1996). In 1994 Crichton created and became executive producer of ER, a television drama set in a hospital emergency department.

Crichton’s non-fiction writing includes Jasper Johns (1977), a biography of the American artist, and Travels (1988). His Five Patients: The Hospital Explained (1970), case studies of hospital patients in Massachusetts, won an award from the Association of American Medical Writers.