John Michael Crichton was an American author, screenwriter and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature technology and are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres. Crichton’s novels often explore human technological advancement and attempted dominance over nature, both with frequently catastrophic results; many of his works are cautionary tales, especially regarding themes of biotechnology. Several of his stories center specifically around themes of genetic modification, hybridization, paleontology and/or zoology. Many feature medical or scientific underpinnings, reflective of his own medical training and scientific background.
Crichton at Harvard University in 2002
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.
The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 novel by Michael Crichton, his first novel under his own name and his sixth novel overall. It documents the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona and the team of scientists investigating it. The book is framed as a report from a secret government project, which the scientists are part of, and contains primarily text-based computer imagery illustrating the results of various tests on the organism.
First edition cover
