Michael Crichton

John Michael Crichton, the oldest of 4 children, was born in Chicago the 23 October 1942 of John Henderson Crichton and Zula (Miller) Crichton. At the age of six, he moved with his family to Roselyn, NY.

He 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 has taught courses in anthropology at Cambridge University and writing at MIT.

Crichton's interest in computer modeling goes 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 include a study of host factors in pituitary chromophobe adenoma, in Metabolism, and an essay on medical obfuscation in the New England Journal of Medicine.

While in medical school, he wrote novels under the pen names John Lange and Jeffery Hudson. As John Lange he wrote: Odds On, Scrath One, Easy Go, Zero Cool, Venom Business, Grave Descend, and Drug of Choice. These books were all spy thrillers. A Case of Need, written under the latter pseudonym, won the 1969 Edgar Award for Best Novel. He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name Michael Douglas. The back cover of that book contains a picture of Michael and Douglas at a very young age taken by their mother.

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. Now one of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been translated into thirty-six languages, and thirteen have been made into films.

He's 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 has 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.

Crichton has been married five times and divorced four times. He has been married to Suzanna Childs, Joan Radam (1965-1970), Kathy St. Johns (1978-1980) and Anne-Marie Martin, the mother of his only child, daughter Taylor. Crichton married Sherri Alexander in 2005.

Crichton has directed and/or produced a number of movies and TV-shows: Pursuit (1972 - A TV movie) Westworld (1973), Coma (1978), The First Great Train Robbery (1979), Looker (1981), Runaway (1984), Physical Evidence (1989), ER (1994, Creator/Writer/Executive Producer), and Twister (1996).

Michael Crichton Bibliography.

Most of Crichton's books are techno-thrillers, often about technology gone awry.

The Andromeda Strain (1969).

(In Norwegian: Døden fra rommet, Aschehoug, 1971.) Filmed in 1971: The Andromeda Strain.

A Nobel-Prize-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility to sterilize returning astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft that might carry an "unknown biologic agent." The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top-secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada.

Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the U.S. Army initiates the "Scoop" satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, the Army ends up getting more than it asked for. The top secret project "Wildfire" is launched.

The Terminal Man (1972).

Filmed in 1974 (seems to only be available as VHS.)

The Terminal Man is a medical psycho-drama where the main themes are mind control and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It raises a lot of interesting questions in a highly dramatic form.


In 1972 Los Angeles, a computer programmer suffering from brain seizures, Harold Benson, undergoes an experimental treatment of having nuclear-powered electrodes inserted into his brain. At first the experiment seems to be a success, but then the scientists come to realize that, to their horror, the electrodes have enhanced Benson's latent psychosis. It is up to Dr. Janet Ross (the original dissenting medical doctor) to track him down and cure him--if she can.

The Terminal Man is an excellent book, one of Crichton's best!

The Great Train Robbery (1975).

(Norwegian title: Det Store Togrøveriet (Aschehoug, 1976).) Filmed in 1979 with Sean Connery: The Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery takes you to the underground world of betrayal in Victorian England. You witness, first-hand, the most intriguing money hoist in history. You will travel with Edward Pierce, the mastermind, and discover how he puts together specialists to complete the hoist.

In the shaggy town of London, a train always leaves at the same time carrying two safes loaded with about two million dollars worth of gold. Legend has it that these safes are impenetrable, but of course, it never ends to compel criminals all over the city. One of those criminals is Edward Pierce. A criminal legend, he comes out of jail and plans this crime from the ground up. He goes around the city, offering his old partners in crime a portion of the money if they accept. The crew he chooses includes Robert Agar, the locksmith; Clean Willy Williams, the snakesman (a little kid who can squeeze into really tight spaces); Barlow, a big man who can carry a lot of weight; and Miss Miriam, who helps in setting up distractions. It takes him six years to plan the whole crime, from the train schedules to the drop-off points to the breaking of the safes.

The Great Train Robbery is Crichton at his very best. Not a book to put away easily, a real page turner, full of excitement and surprise.

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Eaters of the Dead (1976).

Filmed in 1999 with Antonino Banderas: The 13th Warrior

Eaters of the Dead is set in the 10th century. The Caliph of Baghdad sends his ambassador, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, to the king of the Volga Bulgars. He never arrives but is instead captured by a group of Vikings. This group is sent on a hero's quest to the north. Ahmad ibn Fadlan is taken along, as the thirteenth member of their group, to bring good luck. There he battles with the 'mist-monsters', or 'Neanderthals'.

Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript. A sense of authenticity is supported by occasional explanatory footnotes with references to a mixture of factual and fictitious sources.

A good read, but not among Crichton's best.

Congo (1980).

(Norwegian title: Kongo, Aschehoug, 1982). Filmed in 1995: Congo

In the heart of the darkest region of the Congo, near the legendary ruins of the lost city of Zinj, an eight-person field expedition dies mysteriously and brutally in a matter of minutes.

In Houston, Karen Ross watches the team's last video transmission in horror: the camp destroyed, the bodies mutilated, and moving in the background a dark, blurred shape. What is happening?

In San Francisco, Peter Elliot is teaching sign language to Amy, a gifted gorilla with a fondness for painting. Her most recent drawing perfectly matches the tattered pages of a Portuguese print from 1642 - a drawing of the ancient lost city.

A rescue mission is organized, and the action starts. Congo is another very good Crichton, with plenty of twists and turns!

Sphere (1987).

(Norwegian title: Dypkontakt, Cappelen, 1988). Filmed in 1998: Sphere

Crichton has rolled the present, past, and future into a highly technical and confusing science fiction adventure. The present features, among others, a pompous astrophysicist, a female zoologist, a black mathematician, and a 53-year-old psychologist, who are summoned by the Navy to examine a plane crash in the South Pacific. The past is manifested in the stranded object resting on the sea bottom where it has been for some 300 years. When the four scientists, who carry their emotional minority baggage of sex, color, and age along with them, descend to the deep in their submersible, they discover the wreck to be no less than a spaceship from the future that fell through a black hole, defying time and space. Strange things begin to happen as one by one the cast of characters diminishes.

Sphere is very fast paced and very exciting. You never know what is going to happen next and you can't stop until you do. Crichton develops his characters better in this novel than in any of his other books. One of Crichton's best!

Jurassic Park (1990).

(Norwegian title: Jura-Parken, Gyldendal, 1993.) Filmed 1993, with two follow-ups: Jurassic Park Adventure Pack (Jurassic Park / The Lost World: Jurassic Park/ Jurassic Park III)

Jurassic Park is amazing. Massive sums spent on biotechnology, 24 Cray supercomputers sent to a fog-shrouded island off Costa Rica, and expert advice bought from paleontologists have combined to produce the most incredible amusement park of all time. Jurassic Park is inhabited by real dinosaurs, over 200 of them, all cloned from snippets of ancient DNA.

Michael Crichton is a master at blending technology with fiction, creating a tale all the more terrifying because it could happen. And the terror is heightened when dinosaurs escape from their barricaded area on the island, an event occasioned by the foolhardiness of relying on technology to control their range.

Suspense, excitement, and good adventure pervade Jurassic Park. The movie about Jurassic Park was, as many people well know, great. The book, however, is even better!

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Rising Sun (1992).

(Norwegian title: Blodrød Sol, Gyldendal, 1993.) Filmed in 1993 (starring Sean Connery): Rising Sun.

Rising Sun is the chronicle of three days of investigation into the murder of a young woman during a business party. Detective Peter Smith finds himself investigating a foreign culture as well as a crime.

He soon finds that there is much of Japanese culture that he doesn’t understand. Smith is guided through the intricacies of Japanese behavior by John Connor, a detective on leave who used to hold Smith’s job.

The murder of Cheryl Austin should be easy to solve, as it was videotaped by security cameras at the Nakamoto building. Nakamoto officials, however, obstruct the investigation from the beginning. The tapes of the murder and what they actually show prove to be a separate mystery. It is not only the tapes that lie: Most of the people questioned by the detectives have their own motives for concealing the truth. Very little is what it seems at first glance.

Rising Sun is a very fascinating detective novel, full of surprises and fast-paced action. A superb read!

Disclosure (1994).

(Norwegian title: Avsløringen, Gyldendal, 1994.) Filmed in 1994: Disclosure.

Tom Sanders is an up-and-coming executive at the computer firm DigiCom. When his new boss turns out to be a woman who is both his former lover and a business rival, Sanders decides to be professional about it.

However, after a closed-door meeting, the woman accuses him of sexual harassment. It's her word against his, and suddenly Sanders finds himself caught in a nightmarish web of deceit in which he is branded as the villain. As he scrambles to try to save his career and his reputation, Sanders uncovers an electronic trail into DigiCom's secrets and the cynical scheme devised to bring him down. Disclosure is a great thriller, addressing a difficult topic with a challenging angle.

"Expertly crafted, ingenious and absorbing." The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Lost World (1995).

The Lost World is the sequel to Jurassic Park. It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end–the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public. However,
carcasses of unidentified animals are washing up along the coast of Costa Rica.

Led by paleontologist Dr. Richard Levine and mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, a team of scientists heads to Costa Rica and discover a second research site - the place where the dinosaurs were originally manufactured and studied before being transferred to Jurassic Park. The researchers find that the island is inhabited by dinosaurs, providing the perfect lost world to study evolution and extinction. Enter Lewis Dodgson, of the Biosyn Corporation, who feels that it's better to borrow the research of others rather than performing it himself. Of course, all hell breaks loose, and the humans must attempt to avoid becoming "dinosaur food."

This is an ok read. However, it is not nearly as good as Jurassic Park.

Airframe (1996).

Terror fills the skies in Michael Crichton’s Airframe, when TransPacific Flight 525 suddenly “porpoises” while in flight from China to the US.  Without warning, the Norton Aircraft N-22 brutally pitches and yaws through thousands of feet, killing several passengers and perhaps the future of Norton Aircraft. 

But what caused the deadly mishap?  Was it counterfeit parts, as claimed by Norton’s finger-pointing president?  Did the bizarre accident betray a concealed design flaw?  In the ensuing days of chaos, Norton Quality Control VP Casey Singleton struggles to find the answer before an international conspiracy discredits the N-22 and unscrupulous news anchors air a lie that will bury the company.  And she must do so while being set-up on the inside to take a fall by the very corporation she so desperately wants to save.

Airframe is an exceptionally well researched book. Michael Crichton excels in he technical details. Through every page Crichton’s attention to science and technology is impeccable.  He weaves complex discussions of aircraft design, manufacture, and maintenance over a dramatic panorama of bloated egos, gross ineptitude, and unexpected magnanimity. Buckle up - this is a great ride!

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Timeline (1999).

(Norwegian title: Transitt, Gyldendal, 2000). Filmed in 2003: Timeline (Widescreen Edition)

An old man wearing a brown robe is found wandering disoriented in the Arizona desert. He is miles from any human habitation and has no memory of how he got to be there, or who he is. The only clue to his identity is the plan of a medieval monastery in his pocket. So begins the mystery of Timeline, a mystery that will catapult a group of young scientists -- medievalist André Marek, and archeology graduate students Katherine Erickson and Christopher Stewart Hughes -- back to the Middle Ages and into the heart of the Hundred Years War. They travel back to 14th century southern France with on a mission to rescue their leader, professor Edward Johnston. The date -- April 7, 1357. The place -- the towns of Castelgard and La Roque, under the rule of Englishman Sir Oliver de Vannes. The circumstances -- the attack of Frenchman Arnaut de Cervole and troops.

Timeline is extraordinary and compelling. The way Michael Crichton incorporates historical authenticity into the book is great. His portrayal of medieval times is interesting and stimulating. Timeline rocks!

Prey (2002).

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 deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And anything alive is its prey.

The novel tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence—in a story of breathtaking suspense. Prey is a novel you can't put down.

See the review of Prey in New York Review of Books. Our review in Norwegian is here.

State of Fear (2004).

State of Fear tells of a frantic chase to prevent environmental terrorists from wreaking widespread destruction aimed at galvanizing the world against global warming. A team lead by MIT scientist/federal agent John Kenner crosses the globe to prevent the terrorists from calving a giant Antarctic iceberg; inducing terrible storms and flash floods in the US; and, using giant cavitators, causing a Pacific tidal wave.

Behind the terrorists lurks the fanatical, fund-seeking chief of a mainstream environmental group; on Kenner's team, most notably, is young attorney Peter Evans, whose typically liberal views on global warming chill as Kenner instructs him in the truth about the so-called crisis.

There's a lot of messages in State of Fear, but fortunately Crichton knows how to write a thriller of cyclonic speed and intensity.

Next (2006).

Next focuses on genetic engineering. Thus the science involved is a lot less far-fetched than creating dinosaurs from DNA. In an ambitious effort to show what's wrong with the U.S.'s current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues, the author interweaves many plot strands, one involving a California researcher, Henry Kendall, who has mixed human and chimp DNA while working at NIH. Kendall produces an intelligent hybrid whom he rescues from the government and tries to pass off as a fully human child.

Some readers have been disappointed by the relative lack of action in this book. Crichton attempts to lighten the mood with humor and the disparity of the story lines. Next is a good book, of course, but not up there with the best of Crichton's books.

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