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A Michael Crichton Timeline
Amazon.com reveals a few facts about the "father of the techno-thriller."

1942: John Michael Crichton is born in Chicago, Illinois on Oct. 23.

1960: Crichton graduates from Roslyn High School on Long Island, New York, with high marks and a reputation as a star basketball player. He decides to attend Harvard University to study English. During his studies, he rankles under his writing professors' criticism. As an act of rebellion, Crichton submits an essay by George Orwell as his own. The professor doesn’t catch the plagiarism and gives Orwell a B-. This experience convinces Crichton to change his field of study to anthropology.

1964: Crichton graduates summa cum laude from Harvard University in anthropology. After studying further as a visiting lecturer at Cambridge University and receiving the Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellowship, which allowed him to travel in Europe and North Africa, Crichton begins coursework at the Harvard School of Medicine. To help fund his medical endeavors, he writes spy thrillers under several pen names. One of these works, A Case of Need, wins the 1968 Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award.

1969: Crichton graduates from Harvard Medical school and is accepted as a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Science in La Jolla, Calif. However, his career in medicine is waylaid by the publication of the first novel under his own name, The Andromeda Strain. The novel, about an apocalyptic plague, climbs high on bestseller lists and is later made into a popular film. Crichton said of his decision to pursue writing full time: "To quit medicine to become a writer struck most people like quitting the Supreme Court to become a bail bondsman."

1972: Crichton's second novel under his own name The Terminal Man, is published. Also, two of Crichton's previous works under his pen names, Dealing and A Case of Need are made into movies. After watching the filming, Crichton decides to try his hand at directing. He will eventually direct seven films including the 1973 science-fiction hit Westworld, which was the first film ever to use computer-generated effects.

1980: Crichton draws on his anthropology background and fascination with new technology to create Congo, a best-selling novel about a search for industrial diamonds and a new race of gorillas. The novel, patterned after the adventure writings of H. Ryder Haggard, updates the genre with the inclusion of high-tech gadgets that, although may seem quaint 20 years later, serve to set Crichton's work apart and he begins to cement his reputation as "the father of the techno-thriller."

1990: After the 1980s, which saw the publication of the underwater adventure Sphere (1987) and an invitation to become a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1988), Crichton begins the new decade with a bang via the publication of his most popular novel, Jurassic Park. The book is a powerful example of Crichton's use of science and technology as the bedrock for his work. Heady discussion of genetic engineering, chaos theory, and paleontology run throughout the tightly-wound thriller that strands a crew of scientists on an island populated by cloned dinosaurs run amok. The novel inspires the 1993 Steven Spielberg film, and together book and film will re-ignite the world’s fascination with dinosaurs.

1995: Crichton resurrects an idea from his medical school days to create the Emmy-Award Winning television series ER. In this year, ER won eight Emmys and Crichton received an award from the Producers Guild of America in the category of outstanding multi-episodic series. Set in an insanely busy an often dangerous Chicago emergency room, the fast-paced drama is defined by Crichton's now trademark use of technical expertise and insider jargon. The year also saw the publication of The Lost World returning readers to the dinosaur-infested island.

2000: In recognition for Crichton's contribution in popularizing paleontology, a dinosaur discovered in southern China is named after him. "Crichton's ankylosaur" is a small, armored plant-eating dinosaur that dates to the early Jurassic Period, about 180 million years ago. "For a person like me, this is much better than an Academy Award," Crichton said of the honor.

2004: Crichton’s newest thriller State of Fear is published.


Amazon.com's Significant Seven
Michael Crichton kindly agreed to take the life quiz we like to give to all our authors: the Amazon.com Significant Seven.

pseudo-scientific thriller, useable as propaganda

I was a little upset by the underlying thesis of the book which paints environmentalists as the bad guys, but when I saw on the news how a conservative house-or senate member was waving this book in the air as a "proof" that global warming is a phantasy, I came to the conclusion that the author is,consciously or unconsciously, contributing to the anti-environmental campaign of the Bush administration. You can say as often as you like that his books are only science-FICTION, but somehow, to the wider public, anything that MC writes, has the ring of truth. This effect should serve as a warning to the writers of science fiction.

Good novel, but not prophetic nor heretical

Some reviewers claim that Michael Crichton "proves" that the environmental lobby is corrupt and that global warming isn't happening. Did he "prove" that there are dinosaurs in Jurassic Park?! Other reviewers claim that Crichton's science and adventure isn't realistic. IT IS A NOVEL PEOPLE. I don't read Michael Crichton to learn about scientific issues, just like I don't read Dan Brown expecting him to teach me a Sunday school lesson about the nature of God.

First off, yes there is a strong message to this novel, and yes, it will excite some and anger others. There are 2 appendices at the end that you should read if you want to see if you might be interested in the book, 1 outlining what Michael Crichton actually believes about the environment and science.

The main plot follows a well-funded, eco-terrorist plot to create "natural"disasters. The disasters are to coincide with a conference on climate change. Lawyers and governmental officials seek to thwart the threat.

Crichton is critical of how modern information is taught to lay audiences in a media-news like fashion. So if the media will report more earthquakes, people will believe that there are more earthquakes today than in the past. He is strongly urging a separation between the scientists and those that fund the research. He offers evidence that doesn't work into the Global warming model but more than anything, he says we just really don't know what is going to happen or what could be done to control climate. A decent storyline, but don't read it if you aren't willing to listen to a dissenting voice.

What is Pseudo Science

In "The Day After Tomorrow" Whitley Strieber turns things around and makes a new ice age out of global warming. Michael Crighton, in "State of Fear" tells us that global warming is nothing but BS and just an invention of pseudo scientists whose second agenda is to manipulate the society. That may leave the reader of both books in a state of confusion and maybe even cynicism...

Who knows the truth? How to find it out? When will we know for sure? - How long do we have to live to fing all that out? 100 years? 150, or maybe 750 years?... Mr. Tombak in "Can We Live 150 Years?" discusses human longevity and ways of improving it. Is that also a pseudo science? The book is absolutely non-commercial, and the author does not seem to have any second agenda here...