MICHAEL CRICHTON

'Michael Crichton', pronounced ^[1], (born October 23, 1942) is an American author, film producer, film director, and television producer. His best-known works are techno-thriller novels, films and television programs. 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.

Contents

Biography

Literary techniques

Fiction

Non-fiction

Movies and television

Computer games

Awards

Speeches

"Aliens Cause Global Warming"

Environmentalism as a religion

Widespread speculation in the media

Role of science in environmental policy-making

Criticism

''Next'' controversy

References

External links

Biography

Crichton was born in Chicago,^[2] Illinois to John Henderson Crichton and Zula Miller Crichton, and raised in Roslyn, Long Island, New York.¹ Crichton has two sisters, Kimberly and Catherine, and a younger brother, Douglas.
He attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an undergraduate, graduating summa cum laude in 1964.^[3] Crichton was also initiated into the honors organization Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow, 1964-65 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, gaining an M.D. in 1969 and did post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California, in 1969–1970. 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 m (6 ft 9 in) tall in 1997.^[4] ''Lange'' means "tall one" in German, Danish and Dutch, and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous seventeenth century dwarf in the court of Queen 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 was not 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.^[5]
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 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/organisational ("''The Andromeda Strain''") or cybernetic ("''Westworld''"). This theme of the inevitable breakdown of "perfect" systems and the failure of "failsafe 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".
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 landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide in the US, ''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 tenth 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'' as well as the more recent ''State of Fear''.

Fiction

Year	Cover	Title	Notes
1966		''Odds On''	as John Lange
1967		''Scratch One''	as John Lange
1968		''Easy Go''	as John Lange
		''A Case of Need''	as Jeffrey Hudson though later re-released in Crichton's name
1969		''The Andromeda Strain''
		''The Venom Business''	as John Lange
		''Zero Cool''	as John Lange
1970		''Grave Descend''	as John Lange
		''Drug of Choice''	as John Lange
		''Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues''	co-written with brother Douglas Crichton; published as Michael Douglas
1972		''The Terminal Man''
		''Binary''	as John Lange
1975		''The Great Train Robbery''
1976		''Eaters of the Dead''
1980		''Congo''
1987		''Sphere''
1990		''Jurassic Park''
1992		''Rising Sun''
1994		''Disclosure''
1995		''The Lost World''
1996		''Airframe''
1999		''Timeline''
2002		''Prey''
2004		''State of Fear''
2006		''Next''

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 Neo-Dadaist 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.^[6]
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 seemed to be canceled.
His non-fiction works are:

Year	Title
1970	''Five Patients''
1977	''Jasper Johns''
1983	''Electronic Life''
1988	''Travels''

Movies and television

Crichton has written and directed several motion pictures:

Year	Title	Notes
1972	''Pursuit''	A TV movie
1973	''Westworld''
1978	''Coma''
1979	''The First Great Train Robbery''
1981	''Looker''
1984	''Runaway''
1989	''Physical Evidence''
1994	''ER''	Creator/Writer/Executive Producer
1996	''Twister''

''Pursuit'' is a TV movie written and directed by Crichton that is 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:

Year	Title	Filmmaker/Director
1971	''The Andromeda Strain''	Robert Wise
1972	''	Paul Williams
1972	''The Carey Treatment (A Case of Need)''	Blake Edwards
1974	''The Terminal Man''	Mike Hodges
1993	''Rising Sun''	Philip Kaufman
1993	''Jurassic Park''	Steven Spielberg
1994	''Disclosure''	Barry Levinson
1995	''Congo''	Frank Marshall
1997	''	Steven Spielberg
1998	''Sphere''	Barry Levinson
1999	''The 13th Warrior (Eaters of the Dead)''	John McTiernan
2003	''Timeline''	Richard Donner

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 Jeffrey 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'')

★ A dinosaur, ''Crichtonsaurus bohlini'', was named after him in honor of ''Jurassic Park''[2].

★ 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" [3] 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 is no conclusive proof of their existence. Crichton stated that "The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not 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" [4] (see Radical environmentalism), Crichton described 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 "judgment 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 what he would contend is 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?", [5] 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 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 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 [6]) to advise the Environment and Public Works Committee. In introducing himself to the committee, Crichton gave his credentials:

I am Michael Crichton, known to most people as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of the television series ER. My academic background includes degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School; I was a visiting lecturer in Physical Anthropology at Cambridge University; and a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute, where I worked on media and science policy with Jacob Bronowski.

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. [7]

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 will 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." [8]
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''".[9] Crichton himself states in the book that though he uses a number of studies to support his stance, the authors of these studies do not necessarily agree with his interpretations. Additionally, some of the characters in the novel caution that they do not necessarily claim that global warming is not an issue, but only that more research is necessary before we make any definition 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''. [10]

''Next'' controversy

In his 2006 novel ''Next'' (released November 28th), 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. The character is a minor one who does not appear elsewhere in the book.[11]
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''. [12]

References

1. - Crichton, Michael. "For Younger Readers", michaelcrichton.com, 2005. Retrieved Dec. 11, 2005.
2. "Michael Crichton’s Mark on the Science Fiction World"; "Michael Crichton"; [1]; Profile by IGN; see the IMDB entry here
3. http://www.michaelcrichton.com/aboutmc/biography.html
4. http://www.adara-interactive.com/crichton/ow_transcripts2.htm
5. King of the techno-thriller, The Observer, December 3, 2006
6. Crichton, Michael. ''Electronic Life'', Knopf, 1983, p. 44. ISBN 0-394-53406-9


★ Trembley, Elizabeth A. ''Michael Crichton: A Critical Companion'', Greenwood Press, 1996, ISBN 0313294143

★ International Leadership Forum

External links

★ michaelcrichton.com - Official website

★ Recorded BBC ''Five Live'' interview with Michael Crichton

★ Michael Crichton: From Scientist to Novelist, by Tal Cohen

★ Earth Institute News, Columbia.edu Criticism of the science of ''State of Fear''

★

★ Audio interviews with Michael Crichton by Don Swaim of CBS Radio - RealAudio format

★ Michael Crichton's International Leadership Forum blog page

★ Official publisher web page for NEXT
Critical essays of Crichton's work and/or ideas:

★ Review of Michael Crichton's State of Fear – Dr. Jeffrey M. Masters, Chief Meteorologist at The Weather Underground

★ Michael Crichton and Global Warming – David B. Sandalow, Environment Scholar for the Brookings Institute

★ Science Fiction: Michael Crichton takes a novel approach to global-warming alarmism. – Iain Murray, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

★ Rebuttal on Crichton's Speech