Michael Crichton - 1942
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Belleville Township High School East in Belleville, Illinois
I. Education and Professional Life
Michael J. Crichton was born in Chicago, Illinois on Oct 23, 1942.
When Crichton was fourteen, he sold his first report of a meteor. Later on, he planned to attend Harvard to become an English major; but changed his mind and decided to go into
anthropology. He graduated in 1965 at the age of twenty-three. To earn money for school, he wrote thrillers under different names. He wrote Odds On, Scratch One, Zero Cool, Easy Go, Drug of Choice,
Venom Business, and Grave Descend all under the pseudonym John Lange. A Case of Need was another book written during his medical days under the name of Jeffery Hudson.
Crichton was a visiting lecturer at Cambridge University in anthropology; when he returned back to the states, he began training as a doctor. He graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1969. A Case of Need won an Edgar Award. Crichton had already written a best seller by the time of graduation (The Andromeda Strain, 1969). This book was sold to Hollywood. He then went to the Salk Institute in California to pursue postgraduate studies in medicine before he took up writing full time.
In 1970, the Association of American Medical Writers named Crichton Medical Writer of the year for the novel Five Patients . In 1983, Crichton was a computer expert. He wrote one of the first books about information technology called Electronic Life.
II. List of Publications
Novels:
The Andromeda Strain-1969
The Terminal Man-1972
The Great Train Robbery-1975
Eaters of the Dead-1976
Congo-1980
Sphere-1987
Jurassic Park-1990
Rising Sun-1992
Disclosure-1993
The Lost World- 1995
Airframe-1996
Five Patients-1970
Jasper Johns-1977
Electronic Life-1983
Travels-1988
Movies:
The Andromeda Strain-1971
The Carey Treatment-1972
Pursuit-1972
Westworld-1974
Coma-1977
The Great Train Robbery-1978
Looker-1981
Runaway-1984
Rising Sun-1993
Jurassic Park-1993
Disclosure-1995
Congo-1995Twister-1996
The Lost World-1997
Sphere-1997
Thirteenth Warrior-1999
III. ER (1990's)
The show ER was based from Crichton's experiences in the emergency room. Since 1974, the script for this popular TV show had been sitting in his trunk. He originally he wrote it as a movie screenplay. Before Steven Spielberg read it and got interested, it sat there until the late 1980's. Today, the show is very popular. In 1995, it won eight Emmys, and Crichton was also honored with the George Peabody Award later that year. ER is a good show that focuses more on the doctors personally and not just the patients they treat.
Interview with Crichton
Brian Robinette: Mr. Crichton, you've obviously been very busy in other areas, in print and in movies. What led you to TV? Did NBC approach you, or did you talk to Amblin, or how did this come about?
Michael Crichton: This project has a long history, and it was something that interested me ever since my medical training. And what actually happened was in—I think in '89, Steven Spielberg called me up and said he wanted to do a project about an emergency room, and I said I did too. And we began to work on this thing, and shortly after that, he got interested in the dinosaurs, and I did too. (Laughter) So we've deferred, and finally it seemed as though it was not going to have a life in the way that we had originally imagined. And we thought of doing it as a television show, which we're glad we did.
IV. Links
This is the official website written by Michael Crichton himself. This tells just about everything needed to know about him:
V. How to Contact Crighton Michael Crichton c/o VI. Sources The Official Website of Michael Crichton. 27 Oct. 1999
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