Michael Crichton
October 23, 1942 - November 4, 2008

“Books aren't written, they're rewritten. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.”

~ He grew up in Long Island, New York, with two sisters and a younger brother.

~ Michael began writing early. At the age of 14, he submitted a travel column to the New York Times, and it was published.

~ Michael was unusually tall and highly intelligent, which left him feeling alienated from people around him.

~ At Harvard, during his undergraduate study in literature, he became convinced a particular professor was giving him abnormally low marks. To test his theory, he plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. Not recognizing the work, the professor gave him a B.

~ Fed up with the English Department, Michael switched to biological anthropology.

~ During the 1970s and 1980s he consulted psychics and gurus to improve his self-confidence. These experiences began a lifelong devotion to meditation.

~ While in medical school, he began writing novels under the pen names John Lange and Jeffery Hudson.

~ A Case of Need, written under the Hudson pseudonym, won him his first Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1969.

~ He also co-authored Dealing with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name Michael Douglas.

~ He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

~ Odds On was his first published novel. It was released in 1966 under the pseudonym of John Lange.

~ In 1969 Michael had three novels published. One of them, The Andromeda Strain—a story about a team of scientists investigating an extraterrestrial microorganism that fatally clots human blood—established him as a best selling author.

~ Two years later, the novel was adapted to film.

~ Aside from fiction, Michael wrote several books on medical or scientific themes, often based upon his own observations in his field of expertise.

~ He also wrote screenplays and created and produced the television series, "ER."

~ Originally written for the big screen, "ER" was to be directed by Steven Spielberg. But during the early stages of pre-production, Spielberg one day asked Crichton about his current project. Michael explained he was working on a novel about dinosaurs and DNA.

~ Michael was a workaholic. When drafting a novel, which typically took six or seven weeks, he withdrew completely to follow what he called "a structured approach."

~ As he grew closer to the end of a book, he would sleep fewer hours, going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 2am.

~ Michael married five times, divorced four.

~ He won an Emmy, a Peabody and a Writer's Guild of America Award for "ER."

~ In 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named after him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

~ A smoker, he died unexpectedly of throat cancer at the age of 68.

~ According to technologist Jason Perlow, "If you could sum up Crichton in a nutshell, he was America’s moral compass that kept our scientific and technological desires to play God in check."

~ HarperCollins recently announced they will publish two posthumous novels, Pirate Latitudes in November 2009 and an untitled techno-thriller in Fall 2010. More details at Michael's website.