Michael Crichton

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Michael Crichton

Pseudonym(s): John Lange, Jeffrey Hudson
Born: October 23, 1942
Occupation(s): novelist
Nationality: USA
Genre(s): Action
Website: www.michaelcrichton.com

John Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942, pronounced /ˈkɹaɪtən/ [1]) 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

[edit] 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, a co-author on the pseudonymously published "Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues."

He was educated at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, A.B. (summa cum laude) 1964 (Phi Beta Kappa). He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Travelling Fellow, 1964-65 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at Cambridge University, England, 1965. He graduated at 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 [2]. 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 once, during his undergraduate study, plagiarizing a work by George Orwell and submitting it as his own. The paper was received by his professor with a mark of "B−". Crichton has stated 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. Crichton admitted to plagiarizing when he was on the stand in the course of a lawsuit trying to defend the authenticity of Twister, a movie which one individual claimed was based on his story entitled "Catch the Wind".[citation needed]

He is married to Sherri Alexander and has a daughter, Taylor, with ex-wife, Anne-Marie Martin.


[edit] Scientific concepts

In several of his books, Crichton popularised scientific and technological concepts which had not previously received widespread attention by non-scientists. Many of the ideas he used were novel to the average person, despite previous attention to them being given by some in the scientific community.

For example, before Jurassic Park, Robert T. Bakker's theory of warm-blooded and fast-moving dinosaurs had not received a great deal of attention in the popular media. Laypeople were accustomed to seeing stop motion clay dinosaurs crawling sluggishly over the volcanic prehistorical terrains.

[edit] Literary techniques

This article or section does not cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since September 2006.

Crichton's works are consistently cautionary in that his plots invariably portray scientific advancements going awry, often with worst-case scenarios. Seldom if ever does Crichton portray scientific achievement as going according to plan.

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, long 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 scholastic 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.

[edit] 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 rereleased with Crichton's name on it
1969 The Andromeda Strain
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 written with his brother, Douglas Crichton and 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
1993 Disclosure
1995 The Lost World
1996 Airframe
1999 Timeline
2002 Prey
2004 State of Fear
2006 Next

[edit] 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.[3]

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

[edit] 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 Great Train Robbery
1981 Looker
1984 Runaway
1989 Physical Evidence
1994 ER Creator/Writer/Executive Producer
1996 Twister

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 Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues 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 The Lost World: Jurassic Park 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 (Disclosure), 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"

[edit] 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.

[edit] Awards

[edit] Speeches

[edit] "Aliens Cause Global Warming"

In 2003 he gave a controversial lecture at Caltech entitled "Aliens Cause Global Warming" [4] 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 of ETs and UFOs, citing the fact that there is no conclusive proof of their existence. Crichton has commented that belief in purported scientific theories without a factual basis is more akin to faith than science.

[edit] Environmentalism as a religion

In a related speech given to the Commonwealth Club of California, called "Environmentalism as a religion" [5] (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 scientific evidence to the contrary. Crichton cites what he contends are misconceptions about DDT, second-hand smoke, and global warming as examples.

[edit] Widespread speculation in the media

In a speech entitled "Why Speculate?", [6] 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 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 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.

[edit] Role of science in environmental policy-making

In September 2005 Crichton testified at a Congressional hearing on climate change[7], having been called by Senator James Inhofe.

[edit] 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. Additionally, Crichton points out that there has been no rise in hurricane activity in the Atlantic over the past few decades (a point unchanged by the record four hurricanes that struck Florida in 2004)." [8]

However, 28 hurricanes and tropical storms took place in the 2005 season, which was 7 more than the meteorologists had names for because historically, 21 names seemed far above what was needed for a season. In addition, 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 has also been criticized for having the protagonist of State of Fear assert,

"Since the ban [of DDT ], two million people a year have died unnecessarily from malaria, mostly children. The ban has caused more than fifty million needless deaths. Banning DDT killed more people than Hitler."

Even though the DDT ban specifically exempts any and all use for disease prevention from any regulation, and even though the total number of deaths from malaria worldwide in the period described is actually less than fifty million.[10] Although Crichton moderates his statement somewhat elsewhere in the book with:

"DDT was never banned."
"You're right. Countries were just told that if they used it, they wouldn't get foreign aid."

Even this version conflicts with statements by USAID, the World Bank, and WHO, all of which do fund DDT for malaria prevention.

[edit] Trivia

  • In the episode "Emily" (5x05) of The X-Files, a judge describes Fox Mulder's paranormal investigations by saying "...I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around this...Michael Crichton bit"
  • In nearly every one of Crichton's fiction works there is a character with the name Levine.

[edit] References

  • Trembley, Elizabeth A. Michael Crichton: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press, 1996, ISBN 031329414
  1. ^ a b - 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. ^ Crichton, Michael. Electronic Life, Knopf, 1983, p. 44. ISBN 0-394-53406-9

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Critical essays of Crichton's work and/or ideas:

Persondata
NAME Crichton, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crichton, John Michael
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist
DATE OF BIRTH October 23, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago, Illinois
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../m/i/c/Michael_Crichton_1cc6.html"