Michael Crichton on Goals and Intentions

At the Academy of Achievement’s 1992 Summit in Las Vegas, Michael Crichton gave a brief talk on goals and intentions. The talk, length [11:10], is available as a free download through iTunes.

Crichton illustrated the roles of the conscious and unconscious minds by comparing them to a small mouse on top of an enormous elephant. The mouse represents the conscious mind; the elephant – the unconscious mind. He said, “And if you want to knock down walls, the notion of which animal, which mind you want to enlist, is I think, very clear.”

NEXT E-book - Enhanced Edition

On July 26, 2011, HarperCollins released a new digital edition of Michael Crichton’s novel Next. The Enhanced Edition, which is available through Barnes & Noble and iTunes, contains six videos, along with an interactive map of the human body with gene patent information. It also contains an audio interview with Michael Crichton, along with the transcript. This interview has appeared on the audio edition of Next, and the transcript was included in the previous ebook edition released on October 13, 2009.

I have not gotten the Enhanced Edition of Next yet, as it can only be viewed on NookColor, iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad (with either the NookColor or iBooks applications). Sadly I don’t have any of those devices at the present time, so I am currently determining the appropriate bribe for one of my more fortunate friends. If anyone has the Enhanced Edition, I would love to hear your review.

The Crichton website page contains a screenshot from iPad of the table of contents of the extra features.

Featured Enhancements

• Video: Michael Crichton’s Conclusions

• Video: Stop Patenting Genes—Lori Andrews

• Video: Clear Guidelines—Kathy Giusti

• Video: Ensure Data is Made Public—Harry Ostrer, MD 4

• Video: The Bayh-Dole Act—Stuart Neuman, MD 5

• Video: Michael Crichton’s Legacy

• Who Owns Your Body


Two of these names were mentioned in Crichton’s introduction to his bibliography of Next:

“I relied particularly on the work of law professor Lori Andrews, authors Matt Ridley and Ronald Bailey, and scientists John Avise, Stuart Newman, and Louis-Marie Houdebine.”

“Who Owns Your Body” is most likely the interactive map of the human body with gene patent information. But “Who Owns Your Body?” is also the title of a conference held May 21, 2007 in Chicago.

Who Owns Your Body?
Legal and Social Issues in Michael Crichton's NEXT
Chicago-Kent College of Law

Lori Andrews, who convened the conference, presented some of the highlights on her website. There is also a short video featuring her introduction of Michael Crichton, and some of his remarks.

Crichton also gave the speech What I Have Learned From Reactions to My Books.

More information about the conference is available from the Chicago-Kent Law Review, and a blog post by Hunter Hogan.

Michael Crichton News - 8/9/11

Spielberg Confirms Jurassic Park IV Film

It’s been reported that on July 22 at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, Steven Spielberg confirmed that a fourth Jurassic Park film will be made. Spielberg said, "We have a story, we have a writer who is writing the treatment and hopefully we are going to make 'Jurassic Park 4' in all of our foreseeable futures.”

Spielberg was responding to a question during a panel discussion. His remarks can be seen on this video – the question and Spielberg’s answer begin at [5:45].


New Book - Conversations with Michael Crichton



Conversations with Michael Crichton, a collection of 19 interviews with the author, was published in June by the University Press of Mississippi as part of their Literary Conversations Series. The interviews, which are from various sources, range in date from 1969 to 2005. An in-depth review of the book will be posted soon.

Science Channel Project - The World of Michael Crichton

The Science Channel is planning a special— “The World of Michael Crichton"—that will air in 2012.

From the article in Variety:

"Before he was an entertainment icon, Michael Crichton was a man of science," said Science Channel g.m.-exec VP Debbie Adler Myers. "This will be an illuminating look at the remarkable life of a man who is synonymous with enthralling scientific drama but who also managed to maintain a very private personal life."

Micro Cover Revealed!

The cover of Michael Crichton’s upcoming novel Micro has been revealed:



Crichton’s name is at the top as usual, with the name of Richard Preston (who completed the unfinished novel) at the bottom.

The cover’s colors are red, black, and white—the colors that have been used for the covers of several Michael Crichton novels.

Now you know what inspired the colors on my blog.

Next (2006)



State of Fear (2004)



Prey (2002)



Timeline (1999)



Airframe (1996)



The Lost World (1995)



Disclosure (1994)

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.

John Lange Short Story?

In my July 1 post I listed the short stories Michael Crichton had written. One of the stories was published under the name “Jeffery Hudson”, the pseudonym Crichton used when he published A Case of Need.

Crichton also published eight novels under the name “John Lange”, but I had never heard of him publishing a short story under that name. Last year, someone contacted me to let me know of a story “Villa of Assassins” that was published by John Lange in the 1968 Stag Annual magazine.

The FictionMags Index, which catalogs short stories, lists “Villa of Assassins” as a short story by John Lange. But when I finally saw the story, I recognized at once. It was the novel Scratch One (1967), Crichton’s second published novel. (Odds On, published in 1966, was his first.)

While it was disappointing to discover that it wasn’t an original John Lange short story, it was exciting to see it in this format, with many illustrations. The 1970 John Lange novel Grave Descend was also published in a magazine, though with only one illustration at the beginning of the story.

“Villa of Assassins” (1968)
Disguised as a place of healing, it was a torture citadel ruled by a maniacal surgeon bent on turning the entire Mid-East into a nuclear inferno
by John Lange, Stag Annual, 1968, pp. 12-15, 99-129

A magazine adaptation of the novel Scratch One, billed as a book bonus.

“The Death Divers” (1970)
A sunken yacht sends diver James McGregor on a plunge that leads him to a mysterious millionaire and a sex-hungry starlet—one interested in having him die, the other interested in something else
By John Lange, Man’s World, December 1970, pp. 18-19, 89-101

A magazine adaptation of the novel Grave Descend, billed as a book bonus. Unlike “Villa of the Assassins”, the copyright notice on the first page of the story indicates that it is a reprinting of Grave Descend.