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Picture of Michael Crichton
Dr. John Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942) is an author and producer. His best-known works are science fiction: novels, films and television programs. His genre can be best described as techno-thriller which is usually the marriage of action and technical details. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background.
Crichton was raised in Roslyn, Long Island, USA, and attended Harvard University, where he graduated summa cum laude in anthropology. He went on to teach anthropology at Cambridge in England, later returning to Massachusetts to gain an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School. While in medical school, he wrote novels under the pen names John Lange, Jeffrey Hudson (under which pseudonym A Case of Need won the 1969 Edgar Award) and Michael Douglas.
His best known novels include The Andromeda Strain (1969), which deals with a mysterious extra-terrestrial virus, and Jurassic Park (1990), which postulates a world in which cloning can bring the dinosaurs back to life. One prominent theme of his work is that of irresponsible or misguided scientific achievement. Other notable novels include Prey (2002), in which a swarm of nano-robots run out of control; Congo, about the search for industrial diamonds and a new race of gorillas; Timeline, which deals with space-time travel and the 14th century; and State of Fear, which deals with eco-terrorism.
Apart from fiction, Crichton has written several other books based on scientific themes, amongst which is Travels, which also contains autobiographical episodes.
Crichton is also the creator and executive producer of the television drama ER, and has directed several motion pictures, including Westworld and Coma. Many of his novels have in turn been filmed by others, including Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Sphere, Congo, Eaters of the Dead (as The 13th Warrior) and Rising Sun.
Family
- Father: John Henderson Crichton
- Mother: Zula Miller Crichton
- Brother: Douglas Crichton
- Daughter: Taylor Crichton
- Ex-wives:
- Joan Radam (1965-1970)
- Kathy St. Johns (1978-1980)
- Suzanne Childs
- Anne-Marie Martin (1987-2002)
Fiction
Non-fiction
Directed movies
Screenplay
- 1973 Extreme Close Up
- 1996 Twister – co-written with Anne-Marie Martin, his wife at the time.
Films based on the works of Michael Crichton
TV Series
Awards
Speeches
Aliens Cause Global Warming
In 2003 he gave a controversial lecture at Caltech entitled "Aliens Cause Global Warming" [2] (http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/GW-Aliens-Crichton.html) in which he expressed his views of the dangers of consensus science and junk science—especially with regard to popular but disputed theories such as nuclear winter, the dangers of second-hand smoke and the global warming controversy.
Environmentalism as a religion
In a related and equally controversial speech given to the Commonwealth Club, called "Environmentalism as a religion" [3] (http://cdfe.org/religion.htm), Crichton describes what he sees as similarities between the structure of various religious views (particularly Judeo-Christian dogma) and the beliefs of many modern urban atheists who he asserts have romantic ideas about Nature and our past, who he thinks believe in the initial "paradise", the human "sins", and the "judgement day". He also articulates his belief that it is the tendency of modern Environmentalists to cling stubbornly to elements of their faith in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary. Crichton cites what he contends are misconceptions about DDT, second-hand smoke and global warming as examples.
Widespread speculation in the media
In a speech entitled "Why Speculate?" [4] (http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote03.html), delivered in 2002 to the International Leadership Forum, Crichton took the media to task for engaging in what he saw as pointless speculation rather than the delivery of facts. As an example, he pointed to a front-page article of the March 6 New York Times that speculated about the possible effects of U.S. President George W. Bush's decision to impose tariffs on imported steel. Crichton also singled out Susan Faludi's book Backlash for criticism, saying that it "presented hundreds of pages of quasi-statistical assertions based on a premise that was never demonstrated and that was almost certainly false". He referred to what he calls the "Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" to describe the public's tendency to discount one story in a newspaper they may know to be false because of their knowledge of the subject, but believe the same paper on subjects with which they are unfamiliar. Crichton used the Latin expression "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus", which he translated as "untruthful in one part, untruthful in all", to describe what he thought a more appropriate reaction should be. The speech also made several references to Crichton's by-now-familiar skepticism of environmentalists' assertions about the possible future ramifications of human activity on Earth's environment.
Criticism
In the Media
Many of Crichton's publically-expressed views, particularly on subjects like the global warming controversy, have caused heated debate.
See also
Reference book
Elizabeth A. Trembley, 1996, Michael Crichton: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press, ISBN 0313294143
External links
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Michael Crichton
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