Everything about Michael Crichton totally explained
John Michael Crichton, , (born
October 23,
1942) is an
American author,
film producer,
film director,
medical doctor and
television producer best known for his
techno-thriller novels,
films and
television programs. His books have sold over 150 million copies worldwide. His works are usually based on the
action genre and heavily feature
technology. Many of his
future history novels have
medical or
scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background.
Biography
Crichton was born in
Chicago,
Illinois, to John Henderson Crichton and Zula Miller Crichton, and raised in
Roslyn,
Long Island,
New York. Crichton was also initiated into the
Phi Beta Kappa Society. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in
Anthropology at the
University of Cambridge in the
United Kingdom in 1965. He graduated from
Harvard Medical School, obtaining an
M.D. in 1969, and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the
Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in
La Jolla,
California, from 1969 to 1970. In 1988, he was Visiting Writer at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
While in medical school, he wrote novels under the
pen names John Lange and Jeffery Hudson.
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.
His two pen names were both created to reflect his above-average height. According to his own words, he was about 2.06
meters (6
feet 9
inches) tall in 1997.
Lange is a familyname in
Germany, meaning "tall one" and Sir
Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th century
dwarf in the court of
Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of
England.
Crichton has admitted to having once, during his undergraduate study,
plagiarized a work by
George Orwell and submitted it as his own. According to Crichton the paper was received by his professor with a mark of "B−". Crichton has claimed that the plagiarism wasn't intended to defraud the school, but rather as an experiment. Crichton believed that the professor in question had been intentionally giving him abnormally low marks, and so as an experiment Crichton informed another professor of his idea and submitted Orwell's paper as his own work.
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 Anne. Crichton is currently married to Sherri Alexander.
Literary techniques
Crichton's works are frequently
cautionary in that his
plots often portray scientific advancements going awry, commonly resulting in
worst-case scenarios. A notable recurring
theme in Crichton's plots is the
pathological failure of
complex systems and their safeguards, whether
biological ("
Jurassic Park"),
military/
organizational ("
The Andromeda Strain") or
cybernetic ("
Westworld"). This theme of the inevitable breakdown of "perfect" systems and the failure of "
fail-safe measures" can be seen strongly in the poster for
Westworld (slogan: "
Where nothing can possibly go worng .." (sic) ) and in the discussion of
chaos theory in
Jurassic Park.
Contrary to certain perceptions, Crichton isn't anti-technology. Although his works often portray
scientists and
engineers as
arrogant and
closed-minded to the potential threat a technology represents, there's always a well-educated
author surrogate who states that failures are simply part of the scientific process and one should simply maintain a state of awareness and preparation for their inevitable occurrence.
The use of author surrogate has been a feature of Crichton's writings since the beginning of his career. In
A Case of Need, one of his pseudonymous
whodunit stories, Crichton used first-person narrative to portray the hero, a
Bostonian pathologist, who is running against the clock to clear a friend's name from
medical malpractice in a girl's death from a hack-job
abortion.
That book was written in 1968, nearly five years before the
Supreme Court's
landmark decision that
legalized abortion nationwide in the
United States,
Roe v. Wade (1973). It took the hero about 160 pages to find the chief
suspect, an underground abortionist, who was created to be the author surrogate. Then, Crichton gave that character three pages to justify his illegal practice.
Some of Crichton's fiction uses a
literary technique called
false document. For example,
Eaters of the Dead is a fabricated recreation of the
Old English epic
Beowulf in the form of a scholarly translation of
Ahmad ibn Fadlan's 10th century
manuscript. Other novels, such as
The Andromeda Strain and
Jurassic Park, incorporate fictionalized scientific documents in the form of
diagrams,
computer output,
DNA sequences,
footnotes and
bibliography. However, some of his novels actually include authentic published scientific works to illustrate his point, as can be seen in
The Terminal Man and the more recent
State of Fear.
Fiction
Non-fiction
Apart from fiction, Crichton has written several other books based on
scientific themes, amongst which is
Travels, which also contains
autobiographical episodes.
As a personal friend to the artist
Jasper Johns, Crichton compiled many of his works in a
coffee table book also named
Jasper Johns. That book has been updated once.
Crichton is also the author of
Electronic Life, a book that introduces
BASIC programming to its readers. In his words, being able to program a computer is liberation:
» In my experience, you assert control over a computer—show it who's the boss—by making it do something unique. That means programming it....[I]f you devote a couple of hours to programming a new machine, you'll feel better about it ever afterward.
To prove his point, Crichton included many self-written demonstrative
Applesoft (for
Apple II) and
BASICA (for
IBM PC compatibles) programs in that book. Crichton once considered updating it, but the project seems to be canceled.
His non-fiction works are:
Movies and television
Crichton has written and directed several motion pictures:
Pursuit is a TV movie written and directed by Crichton that's based on his novel
Binary.
Westworld was the first feature film that used 2D
computer-generated imagery (CGI) and the first use of 3D CGI was in its sequel,
Futureworld (1976), which featured a computer-generated hand and face created by then
University of Utah graduate students
Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke.
Crichton directed the film
Coma, adapted from a
Robin Cook novel. There are other similarities in terms of
genre and the fact that both Cook and Crichton are
physicians, are of similar age, and write about similar subjects.
Many of his novels have been filmed by others:
He has written the screenplay for the movies
Extreme Close Up (1973) and
Twister (1996) (the latter co-written with Anne-Marie Martin, his wife at the time).
Crichton is also the creator and executive producer of the television drama
ER. In December 1994, he achieved the unique distinction of having the #1 movie (
Jurassic Park), the #1 TV show (
ER), and the #1 book (
Disclosure, atop the paperback list). Crichton has written only three episodes of
ER:
- Episode 1-1: "24 Hours"
- Episode 1-2: "Day One"
- Episode 1-3: "Going Home"
Computer games
Amazon is a graphical text adventure game created by Michael Crichton and produced by
John Wells under Trillium Corp.
Amazon was released in the United States in 1984 and it runs on Apple II, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and the DOS systems.
Amazon was considered by some to be a breakthrough in the way it updated
text adventure games by adding color graphics and music. It sold more than 100,000 copies, making it a significant commercial success at the time.
In 1999, Crichton founded Timeline Computer Entertainment with
David Smith. Despite signing a multi-title publishing deal with
Eidos Interactive, only one game was ever published,
Timeline. Released on
8 December 2000 for the PC, the game received poor reviews and sold poorly.
Awards
Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, 1969 (A Case of Need; written as Jeffery Hudson)
Association of American Medical Writers Award, 1970 (Five Patients)
Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay, 1980 (The Great Train Robbery)
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Journalism Award, 2006 (State of Fear)
An Emmy
A Peabody
A Writers Guild of America
A dinosaur, Crichtonsaurus bohlini, was named after him in honor of Jurassic Park.
Crichton was named to the list of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People" by People magazine, 1992
Speeches
"Aliens Cause Global Warming"
In 2003 he gave a controversial lecture at Caltech entitled "Aliens Cause Global Warming" in which he expressed his views of the danger of "consensus science" — especially with regard to what he regards as popular but disputed theories such as nuclear winter, the dangers of second-hand smoke, and the global warming controversy. Crichton has been critical of widespread belief in ETs and UFOs, citing the fact that there's no conclusive proof of their existence. Crichton stated that "The Drake equation can't be tested and therefore SETI isn't science. SETI is unquestionably a religion." Crichton has commented that belief in purported scientific theories without a factual basis is more akin to faith than science.
Environmentalism as a religion
In a related speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California, called "Environmentalism as a religion" (see Radical environmentalism), Crichton described what he sees as similarities between the structure of various religious views (particularly Judeo-Christian beliefs) 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 "judgment day". He also articulates his belief that it's the tendency of modern environmentalists to cling stubbornly to elements of their faith in spite of evidence to the contrary. Crichton cites misconceptions about DDT, passive smoking, and global warming as examples.
Widespread speculation in the media
In a speech entitled "Why Speculate?", delivered in 2002 to the International Leadership Forum, Crichton criticized the media 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 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're 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 should be a more appropriate reaction. The speech also made several references to Crichton's skepticism of environmentalists' assertions about the possible future ramifications of human activity on the Earth's environment.
Role of science in environmental policy-making
In September 2005 Crichton testified at a Congressional hearing on climate change, having been called by global warming skeptic Senator James Inhofe to advise the Environment and Public Works Committee. Crichton spoke on issues such as the role of science in policy making, criticisms of climate-change researcher Michael Mann and what Crichton claimed was the deliberate obstruction of research into the subject by some in the scientific community.
Criticism
Many of Crichton's publicly expressed views, particularly on subjects like the global warming controversy, have caused heated debate. An example is meteorologist Jeffrey Masters' review of State of Fear: » "[F]lawed or misleading presentations of Global Warming science exist in the book, including those on Arctic sea ice thinning, correction of land-based temperature measurements for the urban heat island effect, and satellite vs. ground-based measurements of Earth's warming. I'll spare the reader additional details. On the positive side, Crichton does emphasize the little-appreciated fact that while most of the world has been warming the past few decades, most of Antarctica has seen a cooling trend. The Antarctic ice sheet is actually expected to increase in mass over the next 100 years due to increased precipitation, according to the IPCC."
Peter Doran, author of the paper in the January 2002 issue of Nature which reported the finding referred to above, that some areas of Antarctica had cooled between 1986 and 2000, wrote an opinion piece in the July 27 2006 New York Times in which he stated "Our results have been misused as 'evidence' against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear". Crichton himself states in the book that though he uses a number of studies to support his stance, the authors of these studies don't necessarily agree with his interpretations. Additionally, some of the characters in the novel caution that they don't necessarily claim that global warming isn't an issue, but only that more research is necessary before we make any definitive conclusions.
Al Gore is reported as having said on March 21 2007 before a US House committee: "The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor [...] if your doctor tells you you need to intervene here, you don't say 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.'" This, in Dave Langford's opinion, is a reference to State of Fear.
Next controversy
In his 2006 novel Next (released November 28 of that year), Crichton introduces a character named "Mick Crowley" who is a Yale graduate and a Washington D.C.-based political columnist. "Crowley" is portrayed by Crichton as a child molester with a small penis. The character is a minor one who doesn't appear elsewhere in the book.
A real person named Michael Crowley is also a Yale graduate, and a senior editor of The New Republic, a Washington D.C.-based political magazine. In March 2006, the real Crowley wrote an article strongly critical of Crichton for his stance on global warming in State of Fear.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Michael Crichton'.
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