Michael Crichton

Dr. John Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942, pronounced {{IPA|}})) is an author, film producer and television producer. His best-known works are science fiction novels, films and television programs. His genre can be best described as techno-thriller which is usually the marriage of action and technical details. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background.

Literary techniques

From time to time, Crichton has recycled a well-known story's structure for his own story. For example: The Andromeda Strain was influenced by H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. However, rather than reusing the early twentieth century plot devices, Crichton introduced the idea of an imaginary microscopic pathogen's evolution of virulence with his own story.

Related Topics:
H. G. Wells - The War of the Worlds - Twentieth century - Pathogen - Evolution - Virulence

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Most of his stories tend to be somewhat open-ended, including Jurassic Park, Sphere and Prey.

Related Topics:
Jurassic Park - Sphere - Prey

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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 pseudonym whodunit stories, Crichton used first-person narrative to portray the hero, a Bostonian pathologist, who is running against the clock to clear a good friend's name from medical malpractice in a girl's death from a hack job abortion. That book was written in 1968, long before Roe v. Wade of 1973, the landmark case that partially legalized abortion in the U.S. 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.

Related Topics:
Author surrogate - Whodunit - Bostonian - Pathologist - Medical malpractice - Abortion - Roe v. Wade - Landmark case - Legalized - Suspect

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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.

Related Topics:
Literary technique - False document - Old English - Beowulf - Ahmad ibn Fadlan - Tenth century - DNA

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In The Terminal Man, Crichton created a dialog between two computer programs, good-natured Saint George and evil-minded Martha, variations on ELIZA. In the end, the Charlie Brown-like Saint George shouts "GO TO HELL I WILL KILL YOU:::::::::::::: ..." at the provocative Martha, foreshadowing a killing spree conducted by the ill-fated hero, a nice person implanted with an experimental computerized device to control his epilepsy.

Related Topics:
The Terminal Man - ELIZA - Charlie Brown - Epilepsy

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Sphere contains a similar dialog, in which a panicked scientist in an underwater lab tries to talk the omnipotent but innocent "extraterrestrial life" out of manifesting beautiful aquatic creatures that are harmful to human beings.

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A common criticism of Crichton's novels is that they are generally based on the conceit of a "false revolution" -- while the novels describe potentially world-changing concepts such as alien plagues, cloned dinosaurs, and time travel, the books always end with the threat destroyed or the scientific breakthrough lost. In other words, the events described in the novels might as well never have happened in the context of their fictional universes. This allows Crichton to avoid having to describe how, for example, time travel or cloning of extinct animals would change society.

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