“A Portrait of Michael Crichton” video

This video, made in 2001, contains an extensive interview with Michael Crichton. It’s included in The Andromeda Strain (1971) DVD. Crichton talks about his writing during the Med School Years, and explains how he chose the pseudonyms “John Lange” and “Jeffery Hudson”.

Michael Crichton “The Med School Years” video

To promote and celebrate the release of Michael Crichton’s pseudonym novels, the Crichton website now features a short video giving some background on these books. Interviews with Michael Crichton are included, as well as some comments by Crichton’s longtime agent Lynn Nesbit. (I believe I read that she became his agent on the second John Lange novel, Easy Go. Will have to find the reference.)



The main page of “The Med School Years” contains links to order the books from Amazon or Apple. I get my books from Barnes & Noble, so I’ll post the links for any who want to go there.

Easy Go

Odds On

The Venom Business

Drug of Choice

Binary

Scratch One

Grave Descend

Zero Cool

A Case of Need

Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

Michael Crichton – Harvard Crimson Articles

From Michael Crichton’s autobiography Travels:

“…in college I wrote for the Harvard Crimson, where I was a book-review editor (free books) and sometimes movie reviewer (free theater passes).” (p. 72)

Here, in chronological order, are links to 31 articles that Crichton wrote for the Harvard Crimson:

May 15, 1961
54% of 1964 Receive First House Choice

October 14, 1961
Movie Review
The Guns of Navarone

October 16, 1961
Purcell Says Science Laws Are Misused

November 10, 1961
Book Review
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
Book of Essays Describes State Of Negro Race

November 14, 1961
Movie Review
The Devil's Eye

November 18, 1961
Strong Ivy Opposition Challenges 'Balanced' Crimson Swim Team

February 24, 1962
Book Review
African Genesis by Robert Ardrey
Ardrey Would Give Social Darwinism A Basis In Fact

March 23, 1962
Book Review
Science in the Cause of Man by Gerard Piel
Science Can't Accommodate Cold War Demands

March 29, 1962
Vellucci Scores Harvard's MTA Bid; Suggests 'Million Dollar Gift' to City

April 16, 1962
City Planners Stress Change at Conference

April 27, 1962
Book Review
Pigeon Feathers by John Updike
Updike Writes About Unhappy People

May 9, 1962
Chemistry Department Will Enlarge Tutorial

May 10, 1962
Doubts of Chem Department Delay New Science Center

May 25, 1962 Purcell Raps Promotion Of Leet's Testing Theory

October 13, 1962
New Accelerator Probes Structure of Proton

October 22, 1962
Movie Review
Lady Chatterly's Lover

December 5, 1962
Clive T. Miller
Silhouette

February 14, 1963
Book Review
Origin of Races by Carleton S. Coon
Controversial Scientist Claims Racial Differences Arose Early

March 4, 1963
Yale Swim Squad Sinks Varsity; Elis' Set Six IAB Pool Records

March 14, 1963
Book Review
The People Look at Television: A Study of Audience Attitudes by Gary A. Steiner
Views on the Idiot Box

March 26, 1963
Smith College: The Middle Way

March 28, 1963
Book Review
Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons in the Stone Age by Peter Matthiessen
Life in the Stone Age

April 11, 1963
Book Review
Profiles of the Future: An inquiry into the Limits of the Possible by Arthur C. Clarke
The Shape of the Future

May 8, 1963
Varsity Dumps Judges 25-3; 14 Scored in Seventh

May 14, 1963
Nine Trounces BC 5-0 Take GBL Title

October 10, 1963 Book Review
Science and Literature by Aldous Huxley
Further Views On The 'Two Cultures'

November 21, 1963
Book Review
The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford
The American Way of Life and Death

January 8, 1964
Movie Review
Tom Jones

February 20, 1964
Analysis of Meyer Levin's 'Fanatic': A 'Basic Problem' Badly Presented

February 26, 1964
Dr. Spock
Silhouette

May 6, 1964
Book Review
God and Golem, Inc. by Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener On Man and His Machine

Hello Again!

Hello Again!

I’m so sorry I was away for so long. But I have a little treat that you may enjoy.

The latest edition to my Michael Crichton archives is an April 1972 issue of Harper’s Bazaar. On p. 138 is an article by Betsy L. Freund titled “Is Michael Crichton Superman?” Freund interviewed Crichton for the article. A couple of highlights:

“Crichton says The Terminal Man was written as a direct result of the reviews and letters he received after the publication of The Andromeda Strain.”

“His next book, Leading Women, is a series of interviews with 13 Hollywood actresses, none of whom he identifies. ‘It will probably be very weird.’”

I’ve been researching Michael Crichton for decades and this is the first I’ve heard of this nonfiction former work-in-progress. Crichton has mentioned other unrealized projects in his writings and interviews. I’ll work on compiling a list.

First Names, Last Names

(This is something I wrote for the Barnes & Noble online discussion of State of Fear in November 2005.)

Something I find curious about State of Fear is that some characters are referred to by their last names and some by their first names.

Characters referred to by their last names:

George Morton - Morton
Peter Evans - Evans
Richard John Kenner - Kenner
Nicholas Drake - Drake
Herb Lowenstein - Lowenstein
Ted Bradley - Bradley
Norman Hoffman - Hoffman
John Balder - Balder
John Henley - Henley

Characters referred to by their first names:

Sanjong Thepa - Sanjong
Sarah Jones - Sarah
Jennifer Haynes - Jennifer
Ann Gardner - Ann
Margo Lane - Margo

I didn’t notice the difference until I was going through the novel and making notes. I wonder if there is any particular reason for this.

Comments from others in the discussion:

One obvious difference is that all females are referred to by their first names. The only male that is referred to by first name is Sanjong, which is sounds cooler than Thapa I think.

Crichton seems to do the same thing in Airframe, and Casey Singleton is the main character. She is referred to as Casey and the men in the story are referred to by their last names--at least as far as I can tell from looking it over. I’ll have to examine Crichton’s other books to see if this is a pattern.

It seems a male thing for men to refer to each other by last names and women by first while women seem to the opposite.

Just another one of the male/female differences!

I am almost finished reading 'Disclosure'. In this book Michael seems to bounce between first and surnames for both males and females.

I disagree. I think we see this pattern frequently in society -- it seems to me that in junior high school, high school, college and in the working world, males are often referred to by their last names, whereas females rarely are.

My husband went to an English state grammar school (he is in his late 40's) and they were expected to call each other by their surnames. He says he had to consciously learn to call his school mates by their Christian names when they were in public. I believe in those times females were either called by Christian names or Miss/Mrs.

My understanding is also that in Australia the same thing was standard practice in our private schools and some state schools. So maybe it is just the tradition - albeit sexist.

I agree. I think it's a man thing. Women don't go around calling each other by their last names.

Good observation about the names--I never noticed. Aside from Sanjong, all the "first namers" are women. That's a common habit of students and instructors when discussing well-known authors. Emily Dickinson becomes Emily, while Hemingway is...well, Hemingway. Maybe it's a subconscious habit, left over from MC's school days.

Hmm, wonder if MC will read this and consider Jones and Haynes for the sequel.

And finally, from Michael Crichton himself:

I noticed it, too. The usual presumption is that reference by first name is demeaning. Or that reference by last name is cold and distancing. But, the presumption is that it means *something.* Once this became an issue several years ago, in other books I have carefully addressed everyone by either first or last name, or at least, primarily in one form or another. But I found that people who see demeaning or cold treatment in the use of names still see demeaning or cold treatment, but transferred their feeling to some other way that the stories treat characters. So it seemed like a lot of trouble for little useful result.

And there is the additional issue of how people are referred to "in dialog." Are they spoken to by first or last names...

Anyway, I argue there is no special meaning here. I could have referred to everyone by first or last name, but didn't.

This is a topic I think I’ll research further. It’s a little on the nitpicky side, but I would still like to find out what Crichton did in his other works.

What Michael Crichton Said About Micro

Michael Crichton was reticent about whatever project he was currently writing. In a 1997 online discussion he said, “I never discuss what I am working on until it is done. It's a superstition of mine. Many writers share it.”

Prior to a Crichton book release, the only information readers usually had was the description provided by the publisher. (Speculation abounded, but that was part of the fun.)

After a book’s release, Crichton would give many interviews, and that is something I missed very much when Pirate Latitudes was published.

Now we’re awaiting the November 22 release of Micro, the technothriller Crichton was working on when he died, completed by science writer Richard Preston. Publisher HarperCollins has described the novel as "a high concept thriller in the vein of Jurassic Park."

HarperCollins isn’t just trying to market Micro by associating it with Crichton’s most popular work. Crichton himself made the connection in two interviews.

From a December 2006 interview with the Sunday Times:

As far as his next books are concerned, it's time to lighten up. "I've decided to do something that's just fun to do. I think I'm always concerned about becoming a scold. I'll just do something closer to Jurassic Park."

And in the March 2007 interview “Seven Answers From Michael Crichton” when asked what he was working on now, Crichton replied:

“An adventure story like Jurassic Park. I'm enjoying myself.”

In addition, we have valuable information from a Harper Collins press release:

In an unfinished introduction to MICRO, [Crichton] wrote, "Perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned by direct experience is that the natural world, with all its elements and interconnections, represents a complex system and therefore we cannot understand it and we cannot predict its behavior...Interacting with the natural world, we are denied certainty. And always will be."

To better understand the meaning of Crichton’s words, it is useful to examine what he said in his June 2008 radio interview with Dennis Miller. (This was the last interview Michael Crichton gave, so far as I have been able to discover.)

Miller asked about the topic of his forthcoming book, and Crichton said:

“The last few books have shown me how many people really don’t have good information about the environment. So I thought I’d try and write a book that wouldn’t rile everybody up but would be informative in a way that would be fun, and would give them some information about how our environment really is structured.” (Part 1 at 9:07)

Now let’s take a closer look at what Crichton wrote in his unfinished intro to Micro.

“…the single most important lesson to be learned by direct experience…”

Crichton’s autobiography Travels contains a chapter titled “Direct Experience” where he writes:

“One of the most difficult features of direct experience is that it is unfiltered by any theories and expectations. It’s hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we’re seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed, but what can be observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories. And often those expectations get in the way.” (p. 351)

“…the natural world, with all its elements and interconnections, represents a complex system, therefore we cannot understand it and we cannot predict its behavior.”

Crichton addressed this topic in a November 2005 speech:

We live in a world of complex systems. The environment is a complex system. The government is a complex system. Financial markets are complex systems. The human mind is a complex system. Most minds anyway.

By a complex system, I mean one in which the elements of the system interact among themselves such that any modification we make to the system will produce results that we can’t predict in advance.

In addition, a complex system is sensitive to initial conditions. You can get one result from it on one day, but the identical interaction the next day will yield a different result. We cannot know with certainty how the system will respond.

Third, when we do something to a complex system, we may get downstream consequences that emerge weeks or even years later. We have to be watchful for delayed and untoward consequences.

“Interacting with the natural world, we are denied certainty. And always will be."

Crichton wrote of this issue in his Author's Message from State of Fear:

“We know astonishingly little about every aspect of the environment, from its past history, to its present state, to how to conserve and protect it. In every debate, all sides overstate the extent of existing knowledge and its degree of certainty….I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.”

So will Micro create the controversy that State of Fear did? Will Crichton’s views on the environment come through clearly in the novel? With great anticipation, we wait and watch.

Michael Crichton’s First Article

What was Michael Crichton’s first published article?

Some sources claim it was a travel article, “Climbing Up a Cinder Cone”, about Sunset Crater National Monument, which was published in the New York Times on May 17, 1959.

Crichton tells the story in his autobiography Travels. His exact words are “…I sold a travel article to The New York Times when I was fourteen.” (p. 71)

The operative word here is “sold”. While Crichton may have sold the article when he was fourteen, it wasn’t published until May 17, 1959. As Crichton was born on October 23, 1942, that would have made him sixteen when the story was published.

This would not have been unusual. Newspapers often purchase stories that are not timely, especially travel and other feature articles, and hold them until a story is needed to fill a space. Sunset Crater is centuries old and had been a national monument since 1930, so it was safe to assume it wasn’t going anywhere.

In interviews and in Travels, Crichton is careful to say only that the article was sold when he was fourteen. He does say that the New York Times ran it but he doesn’t say when. Crichton was not being misleading; people who are unfamiliar with how newspapers operate would be confused by the delay.

Crichton wrote:

“Years later I discovered that the travel editor, Paul Friedlander, lived near us and his daughter Becky was in my class at school, so he probably knew a kid had written an article, and he was probably amused to publish it. But at the time I thought I had sneaked past the system, and had done a grown-up thing, and it gave me tremendous encouragement to continue writing. After all, I had been paid sixty dollars, which in those days was a lot of money for a kid.” (Travels p.72)

Crichton goes on to say that he started working for the local newspaper, so it’s possible that another of his articles was published before the New York Times piece.

“Climbing Up a Cinder Cone”, which can be purchased for $3.95, is an impressive article for a 14-year-old. Even though I’m certain it would have been edited before publication (every writer gets edited), it remains an amazing achievement.

Michael Crichton on Yahoo Answers

There is a wonderful website, Yahoo Answers, where people can ask questions on a variety of topics and other people try to answer them. It’s an excellent reference source for all kinds of information.

A few months ago I was surprised to discover that Michael Crichton had once participated on this website. Under his name is a green label reading “official” which means that Yahoo verified that he is the famous person of that name. He is listed as being a member since December 4, 2006, which was soon after the publication of Next.

Usually when you click on someone’s profile, you can see what questions they have asked and answered. But if you click on Michael Crichton’s profile currently, you get this message:

Oops
The user you've specified does not exist on Yahoo! Answers. You may have clicked on an invalid link, please try again later.

Fortunately when I discovered Crichton’s profile, it was still active. He did not spend much time on Yahoo Answers but he did ask one question and answered three.

Michael Crichton asked:
What will be the biggest benefit for human beings from mapping the human genome?

There were 2,154 responses and Crichton wrote this after selecting one as best answer:

Most of the best answers talked about medical benefits from decoding the genome though even the most knowledgeable of you were rather vague about the benefits to come. That's understandable; at this point nobody knows where our research efforts will lead. Genetics has diagnostic potential but many scientists believe that in a few years proteins will prove to be more useful. The whole field is in flux.
A number of you mentioned immortality. There has certainly been a lot of speculation about that, but many lines of research lead me to feel quite certain that immortality is not in our future. It's fun to think about, but don't hold your breath.
I choose the answer from ZERO COOL because it focused on realistic outcomes, including rational drug design, early detection of genetic predisposition to disease, and custom drugs. And the author seems to have a firm grasp of exactly how we move from symptomatic treatment to addressing disorders at a fundamental level.

Here are the three questions Crichton answered:

How would one go about starting to write a novel?

Crichton’s response:

There is a famous answer to this. Put seat in chair. Keep it there eight hours a day. Face the paper or computer screen. Continue to work until something useful happens.

There is another famous answer, to paraphrase John Cage: "Have something you want to say, and then say it."

There is a third answer: there are no tricks. You just have to do it. It's rather like a construction project.

Product placement in books. How can this work to enhance a story?

Crichton’s response:

I oppose this practice. I think when people are being exposed to adverts, they should know it.

What talents do you need to be a best-selling author (apart from being able to write!)?

Crichton’s response:

Judging from the best seller lists, I am not sure writing ability is so important, frankly.

As for necessary talents, remember what E.M. Forster said: "The story, oh my God the story." Storytelling is the most important skill.

As for myself, I like to answer questions on Yahoo Answers, and I look for questions on Michael Crichton. Unfortunately many of them are from students who don’t want to actually read his books and are looking for someone to do their homework for them. I remember back in 2005 someone posted a message on the board of Crichton’s official website asking for a list of all the differences between the Jurassic Park book and the film version.

The Administrator responded:

This sounds suspiciously like you want help doing a school project or homework, which we don't do here. Michael is a big believer in doing your own work. If you didn't plan enough time to do the proper research, then talk to your teacher and have him help you learn better time/management skills…There is a BIG difference between asking for clarification on a point or two (which is fine) -- after you've done the leg work -- and asking for a full term paper (which is not fine).

As a former teacher, I am also a big believer in students doing their own work. For example:

Bad question:
“One event from each chapter in Michael Crichton "the Andromeda strain"?
just one small event PLEASE even if its only a few chapters”

My response:
“Have you tried reading the book? I'm sure you can find the information there.”

Good question:
I have a question about The Great Train Robbery, by Michael Crichton?
I read the book at the beginning of summer, but I left it at home, and now I have to write a report on it. Could someone please tell me the name of the young lady Edward Pierce was courting in order to get the key from her father? If you could, it would be a great help! Thank you!!!!

Now this is a question from someone who has clearly read the book, and I was happy to answer it.

78 days until the release of Pirate Latitudes!

Links and more info on Michael Crichton at:
http://kahlessa.proboards80.com/index.cgi