Crichton, Michael (1942—)

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Published in 1969, The Andromeda Strain established Michael Crichton as a major best-selling novelist whose popularity was due as much to the timing and significance of his subject matter as to the quality of his writing and the accuracy of his research. As Crichton had correctly judged, America was ready for a tale that treated both the rationalism and the paranoia of the Cold War scientists' response to a biological threat. From that first success onwards, Crichton continued to embrace disagreeable or disturbing topical trends as a basis for exciting, thriller-related fiction. That several have been made into highly commercial movies, and that he himself expanded his career into film and television, has made him a cultural fixture in late twentieth-century America. If this was in doubt, his position was cemented by ER, the monumentally successful television series, which he devised.

Born on October 23, 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, by the time The Andromeda Strain appeared, Crichton had received his A.B. degree summa cum laude from Harvard, completed his M.D. at Harvard Medical School, and begun working as a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Most impressively, he had already published six novels (under various pseudonyms), written largely during weekends and vacations, while still at medical school. As an undergraduate, he had intended to major in English, but poor grades convinced him that no amount of creative talent would deter Harvard's faculty from altering its absurdly high expectations. Incipient scientist that he was, Crichton tested this theory by submitting an essay by George Orwell under his own name, and received a B-minus.

This tale, recounted in Crichton's spiritual autobiography, Travels, perhaps explains his own lack of interest in producing anything other than commercial fiction. As a result, his journey through medical school seems, in retrospect, more of a detour than a career path, for, by the end of his schooling, he had decided once and for all to become a writer. During his final rotation Crichton concentratedmore on the emotional than the physical condition of his patients, research that formed the basis of his non-fiction work, Five Patients: A Hospital Explained.

But it was The Andromeda Strain that permanently changed the trajectory of his future. His previous novels have all fallen out of print, with the exception of A Case of Need, published under the pseudonym Jeffrey Hudson and winner of the 1968 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. While the success of The Andromeda Strain lifted Crichton's career to new heights, it did not prevent him from completing other less successful works already in progress. In 1970 and 1971, using the name John Lange, he finished three more novels (Drug of Choice, Grave Descend, and Binary), and with his brother Douglas, co-wrote Dealing, under the prescient name Michael Douglas. (The actor would star in the film versions of several of Crichton novels). With three of his novels already filmed—The Andromeda Strain (1970), Dealing (1972), and A Case of Need (retitled The Carey Treatment, 1972)—Crichton, who had directed the made-for-TV film Pursuit (1972) made his feature film directing debut in 1973 with Westworld. Starring Yul Brynner, the film was adapted from his futuristic thriller Binary (1971). Crichton now pursued a dual career as moviemaker and writer, having published the second novel to appear under his own name, The Terminal Man, in 1972. Dealing with a Frankenstein-type experiment gone haywire, it confirmed its author's storytelling powers, sold in the millions, and was filmed in 1974.

Through the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s Crichton the author continued to turn out such bestsellers as The Great Train Robbery (1975), Congo (1980), and Sphere (1987), but Crichton the director fared less well. His successes with Coma (1977), a terrific nailbiter based on Robin Cook's hospital novel and starring the real Michael Douglas, and The Great Train Robbery (1978), were offset by such mediocrities as Looker (1981), Runaway (1984), and Physical Evidence (1989). A major turnaround came when he stopped directing and concentrated on fiction once again. The fruits of his labors produced Jurassic Park (1990), Rising Sun (1992), Disclosure (1994), and Lost World (1995). All were bestsellers, with Rising Sun and Disclosure leaving a fair share of controversy in their wake—the last particularly so after the film, starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore, was released. In the meantime, Crichton shifted from director to producer, convincing NBC to launch ER, which he created and which had been his dream for 20 years. By the end of the 1990s, he was an established and important presence in Hollywood as well as in publishing, enjoying a professional longevity given only to a handful of popular novelists and screenwriters.

Not unlike Tom Clancy, whose success came in the 1980s, Crichton is a masterful storyteller who has been credited with the invention of the modern "techno-thriller." His prose is clear and concise; his plotting strong; his research accurate and, at times, eerily prescient. On the other hand, in common with many fiction writers who depend heavily on premises drawn largely from the science fiction genre, his character development is weak. Despite his protests to the contrary, his penchant for using speculative science as the basis for much of his fiction has landed him willy-nilly within the gothic and science fiction traditions. In Michael Crichton: A Critical Companion, Elizabeth Trembley details the extent to which Crichton's work revisits earlier gothic or science fiction classics, from H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, for example, to Jurassic Park, a modern retelling of H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Michael Crichton's popularity is perhaps best explained by his intuition for presenting through the medium of fiction our own anxieties in consumable form. Often fiction relieves anxieties by reconfiguring them as fantasy. Crichton senses that we worry about biological weapons (The Andromeda Strain), mind control technology (The Terminal Man), human aggression (Sphere), genetic engineering (Jurassic Park), and competitive corporate greed (Rising Sun and Disclosure). His gift is the ability to turn these fears into a form that lets us deal with them from the safety of the reading experience.

Crichton, Michael. Travels. New York, Ballantine Books, 1988.

Heller, Zoe. "The Admirable Crichton." Vanity Fair, January,1994, 32-49.

Trembley, Elizabeth. Michael Crichton: A Critical Companion. Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 1996.

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