Michael Crichton

Crichton in April 2002

Crichton's signature

Michael Crichton (October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author of many books. His books were usually in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. He was also a producer, director, and doctor.

Crichton is well known for writing novels that later became well-known Hollywood movies. His most famous work was Jurassic Park. Other examples of Crichton's novels that later went on to become big-budget films include Congo, The Lost World, Rising Sun, and Sphere.^[1]

Crichton has also created the ER television show.

Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was 69" tall. He was married five times. He had a daughter from his fourth marriage.

On November 4, 2008, he died of throat cancer and lymphoma in Los Angeles, California, aged 66. He was looked down on by some as a climate change denier^[2] In February 2009, his widow gave birth to his only, posthumous son, John Michael Todd Crichton.

Michael Crichton Media

Crichton used the pen-name "Jeffrey Hudson", a reference to a 17th-century court dwarf and his own “abnormal” height.
Crichton critiqued Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) in The New Republic.
Crichton's first published book of non-fiction, Five Patients, recounts his experiences of practices in the late 1960s at Massachusetts General Hospital and the issues of costs and politics within American health care.
Crichton's 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead featured relict Neanderthals as antagonists.
Crichton's novel Jurassic Park, and its sequels, were made into films that became a major part of popular culture, with related parks established in places as far afield as Kletno, Poland.
A mosquito preserved in amber. A specimen of this sort was the source of dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park.
Crichton speaking at Harvard University in 2002
Crichton was an early proponent of programming and computers, predicting their ubiquity.
A Crichtonsaurus skeleton in China