101 Facts About Michael Crichton

1.

John Michael Crichton was an American author and filmmaker.

2.

Michael Crichton's books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films.

3.

Michael Crichton directed: Coma, The First Great Train Robbery, Looker, and Runaway.

4.

Michael Crichton was the creator of the television series ER, and several of his novels were adapted into films, most notably the Jurassic Park franchise.

5.

John Michael Crichton was born on October 23,1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to John Henderson Crichton, a journalist, and Zula Miller Crichton, a homemaker.

6.

Michael Crichton was raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York, and he showed a keen interest in writing from a young age; at 14, he had an article about a trip he took to Sunset Crater published in The New York Times.

7.

Michael Crichton received a Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship from 1964 to 1965 and was a visiting lecturer in anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965.

8.

In 1965, while at Harvard Medical School, Michael Crichton wrote a novel, Odds On.

9.

Michael Crichton submitted it to Doubleday, where a reader liked it but felt it was not for the company.

10.

Michael Crichton used the pen name John Lange because he planned to become a doctor and did not want his patients to worry that he would use them for his plots.

11.

Michael Crichton added an "e" to the surname and substituted his own real first name, John, for Andrew.

12.

Michael Crichton wrote the book while traveling through Europe on a travel fellowship.

13.

Michael Crichton visited the Cannes Film Festival and Monaco Grand Prix, and then decided, "any idiot should be able to write a potboiler set in Cannes and Monaco", and wrote it in eleven days.

14.

Michael Crichton said the book earned him $1,500.

15.

Michael Crichton's fourth novel was A Case of Need, a medical thriller.

16.

The novel had a different tone from the Lange books; accordingly, Michael Crichton used the pen name "Jeffery Hudson", based on Sir Jeffrey Hudson, a 17th-century dwarf in the court of queen consort Henrietta Maria of England.

17.

Michael Crichton intended to use the "Jeffery Hudson" for other medical novels but ended up using it only once.

18.

In 1969, Crichton wrote a review for The New Republic, critiquing Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

19.

Michael Crichton continued to write Lange novels: Zero Cool, dealt with an American radiologist on vacation in Spain who is caught in a murderous crossfire between rival gangs seeking a precious artifact.

20.

The first novel that was published under Michael Crichton's name was The Andromeda Strain, which proved to be the most important novel of his career and established him as a bestselling author.

21.

Michael Crichton was inspired to write it after reading The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton while studying in England.

22.

Michael Crichton graduated from Harvard, obtaining an MD in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970.

23.

Michael Crichton never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his writing career instead.

24.

Michael Crichton experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, coming to believe that these included real phenomena that scientists had too eagerly dismissed as paranormal.

25.

Around this time Michael Crichton wrote and sold an original film script, Morton's Run.

26.

Michael Crichton was hired to adapt his novel The Terminal Man into a script by Warner Bros.

27.

ABC agreed provided someone other than Michael Crichton write the script.

28.

Michael Crichton then wrote and directed the 1973 low-budget science fiction western-thriller film Westworld about robots that run amok, which was his feature film directorial debut.

29.

The producer of Westworld hired Michael Crichton to write an original script, which became the erotic thriller Extreme Close-Up.

30.

In 1975, Michael Crichton wrote The Great Train Robbery, which would become a bestseller.

31.

Michael Crichton had become aware of the story when lecturing at the University of Cambridge.

32.

Michael Crichton later read the transcripts of the court trial and started researching the historical period.

33.

In 1976, Michael Crichton published Eaters of the Dead, a novel about a 10th-century Muslim who travels with a group of Vikings to their settlement.

34.

Michael Crichton wrote and directed the suspense film Coma, adapted from the 1977 novel of the same name by Robin Cook, a friend of his.

35.

Michael Crichton then wrote and directed an adaptation of his own book, The Great Train Robbery, starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.

36.

Michael Crichton had never worked that way before, usually writing the book then selling it.

37.

Michael Crichton eventually managed to finish the book, titled Congo, which became a best seller.

38.

Michael Crichton did the screenplay for Congo after he wrote and directed Looker.

39.

Michael Crichton came close to directing a film of Congo with Sean Connery, but the film did not happen.

40.

That year Michael Crichton wrote and directed Runaway, a police thriller set in the near future which was a box office disappointment.

41.

Michael Crichton had begun writing Sphere in 1967 as a companion piece to The Andromeda Strain.

42.

However, Michael Crichton later realized that he "didn't know where to go with it" and put off completing the book until a later date.

43.

Michael Crichton worked as a director only on Physical Evidence, a thriller originally conceived as a sequel to Jagged Edge.

44.

In 1988, Michael Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

45.

Michael Crichton utilized the presentation of "fiction as fact", used in his previous novels, Eaters of the Dead and The Andromeda Strain.

46.

The novel began as a screenplay Michael Crichton wrote in 1983, about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur.

47.

Originally, the story was told from the point of view of a child, but Michael Crichton changed it as everyone who read the draft felt it would be better if told by an adult.

48.

Michael Crichton originally had conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur, but decided to put off exploring his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel.

49.

Steven Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989 while he and Michael Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series ER.

50.

In 1992, Michael Crichton published the novel Rising Sun, an international bestselling crime thriller about a murder in the Los Angeles headquarters of Nakamoto, a fictional Japanese corporation.

51.

Michael Crichton, anticipating this response, offered a rebuttal at the close of the novel which states that a "role-reversal" story uncovers aspects of the subject that would not be seen as easily with a female protagonist.

52.

Michael Crichton was the creator and an executive producer of the television drama ER based on his 1974 pilot script 24 Hours.

53.

Michael Crichton then published The Lost World in 1995 as the sequel to Jurassic Park.

54.

In March 1994, Michael Crichton said there would probably be a sequel novel as well as a film adaptation, stating that he had an idea for the novel's story.

55.

Michael Crichton wrote Twister with Anne-Marie Martin, his wife at the time.

56.

In 1999, Michael Crichton published Timeline, a science fiction novel in which experts time travel back to the medieval period.

57.

In 1999, Michael Crichton founded Timeline Computer Entertainment with David Smith.

58.

Eaters of the Dead was adapted into the 1999 film The 13th Warrior directed by John McTiernan, who was later removed, with Michael Crichton himself taking over direction of reshoots.

59.

In 2002, Michael Crichton published Prey, about developments in science and technology, specifically nanotechnology.

60.

In 2004, Michael Crichton published State of Fear, a novel concerning eco-terrorists who attempt mass murder to support their views.

61.

The real Crowley, a Yale graduate, alleged that by including a similarly named character Michael Crichton had libeled him.

62.

Several novels that were in various states of completion upon Michael Crichton's death have since been published.

63.

Additionally, Michael Crichton had completed the outline for and was roughly a third of the way through a novel titled Micro, a novel which centers on technology that shrinks humans to microscopic sizes.

64.

In 1983, Michael Crichton wrote Electronic Life, a book that introduces BASIC programming to its readers.

65.

Amazon is a graphical adventure game created by Michael Crichton and produced by John Wells.

66.

Michael Crichton started a company selling a computer program he had originally written to help him create budgets for his movies.

67.

Michael Crichton often sought to utilize computing in films, such as Westworld, which was the first film to employ computer-generated special effects.

68.

Michael Crichton pushed Spielberg to include them in the Jurassic Park films.

69.

In November 2006, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Michael Crichton joked that he considered himself an expert in intellectual property law.

70.

Michael Crichton had been involved in several lawsuits with others claiming credit for his work.

71.

The court ruled in Michael Crichton's favor, stating the works were not substantially similar.

72.

Michael Crichton became well known for attacking the science behind global warming.

73.

Michael Crichton testified on the subject before Congress in 2005.

74.

Michael Crichton's novels, including Jurassic Park, have been described by The Guardian as "harking back to the fantasy adventure fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Edgar Wallace, but with a contemporary spin, assisted by cutting-edge technology references made accessible for the general reader".

75.

All the Michael Crichton books depend to a certain extent on a little frisson of fear and suspense: that's what kept you turning the pages.

76.

The best of the Michael Crichton novels have about them a boys' adventure quality.

77.

Michael Crichton's works were frequently cautionary; his plots often portrayed scientific advancements going awry, commonly resulting in worst-case scenarios.

78.

Michael Crichton believed that his view of technology had been misunderstood as.

79.

Michael Crichton has used the literary technique known as the false document.

80.

Michael Crichton often employs the premise of diverse experts or specialists assembled to tackle a unique problem requiring their individual talents and knowledge.

81.

Michael Crichton is often regarded as a deist; however, he never publicly confirmed this.

82.

When drafting a novel, which would typically take him six or seven weeks, Michael Crichton withdrew completely to follow what he called "a structured approach" of ritualistic self-denial.

83.

In 1992, Michael Crichton was ranked among People magazine's 50 most beautiful people.

84.

At the time of his death, Crichton was married to Sherri Alexander, who was six months pregnant with their son, John Michael Todd Crichton, born on February 12,2009.

85.

From 1990 to 1995, Michael Crichton donated $9,750 to Democratic candidates for office.

86.

In 2005, Crichton reportedly met with Republican President George W Bush to discuss Crichton's novel State of Fear, of which Bush was a fan.

87.

Michael Crichton was undergoing chemotherapy treatment at the time of his death, and Crichton's physicians and relatives had been expecting him to recover.

88.

Michael Crichton died at age 66 on November 4,2008.

89.

Michael Crichton's talent outscaled even his own dinosaurs of Jurassic Park.

90.

Michael Crichton was the greatest at blending science with big theatrical concepts, which is what gave credibility to dinosaurs walking the earth again.

91.

Michael Crichton was a gentle soul who reserved his flamboyant side for his novels.

92.

Michael Crichton had an extensive collection of 20th-century American art, which Christie's auctioned in May 2010.

93.

Michael Crichton delivered a number of notable speeches in his lifetime, particularly on the topic of Global Warming.

94.

Michael Crichton was on the for the motion side along with Richard Lindzen and Philip Stott vs Gavin Schmidt, Richard Somerville, and Brenda Ekwurze, 'against the motion'.

95.

Michael Crichton explains his view that religious approaches to the environment are inappropriate and cause damage to the natural world they intend to protect.

96.

Michael Crichton outlined several issues before a joint meeting of liberal and conservative think tanks.

97.

On January 25,2005, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Michael Crichton delivered a detailed explanation of why he criticized the consensus view on global warming.

98.

Michael Crichton was invited to testify before the Senate in September 2005, as an "expert witness on global warming".

99.

In previous speeches, Michael Crichton criticized environmental groups for failing to incorporate complexity theory.

100.

Michael Crichton used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, yet acknowledging that articles written in the same publication within their fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding:.

101.

Michael Crichton's properties continue to be adapted into films, making him the 20th highest grossing story creator of all time.