Writer

Fueled by a powerful curiosity—and by a need to see, feel, and hear, firsthand and close-up—Michael Crichton’s journeys have carried him into worlds diverse and compelling: swimming with mud sharks in Tahiti, tracking wild animals through the jungle of Rwanda. This is a record of those travels—an exhilarating quest across the familiar and exotic frontiers of the outer world and a determined odyssey into the unfathomable, spiritual depths of the inner world. It is an adventure of risk and rejuvenation, terror and wonder, as exciting as Michael Crichton’s many masterful and widely heralded works of fiction.

Fifty years after The Andromeda Strain made Michael Crichton a household name – and spawned a new genre, the technothriller – the threat returns. Deep inside Fairchild Air Force Base, Project Eternal Vigilance has continued to watch and wait for the Andromeda Strain to reappear. On the verge of being shut down, the project has registered no activity—until now. A Brazilian terrain-mapping drone has detected a bizarre anomaly of otherworldly matter in the middle of the jungle, and, worse yet, the tell-tale chemical signature of the deadly microparticle. A diverse team of experts is dispatched to investigate the potentially apocalyptic threat…and figure out how to stop it before this new Andromeda Evolution annihilates all life as we know it.

Originally Published in a Re-Issue of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World

Originally published in Playboy Magazine in January 1988. This essay aroused intense controversy for hinting that AIDS was not a disease to which everyone was equally susceptible. That was forbidden to say in the eighties, and has remained so until very recently. (A Los Angeles ad campaign in 2007 suggesting gays “own” the disease brought renewed criticism.)

Originally published in Redbook Magazine in February 1988. This Valentine’s Day essay brought more reader mail than anything the magazine printed in a year.

Originally published in Popular Mechanics Magazine in 1988. The future of man in space, as anticipated by NASA on the eve of the resumption of space shuttle flights. Full discussion of the difficulties that might prevent us from going to Mars was deleted by the editors.

Originally published in Playboy Magazine in February 1989. The 1980s were tough times for men. This essay examined men’s feelings in a new era of sexual relations.

Originally published in Playboy Magazine in December 1991. Playboy asked for an essay on how to argue in a relationship, how to fight fair.

Originally published in Redbook Magazine in May 1991. A brief essay.

Originally published in The New York Times in March 2006. The absurdity of some current patents, especially gene patents.

Originally published in The Wall Street Journal in December 2006. Do patients retain any rights over their own tissues donated for research? At the moment, the answer is no.

Originally Published in New York Times in February 2007.

For $1,000 a day, vacationers can indulge whims at the theme park called Westworld. They can bust up a bar or bust out of jail, drop in on a brothel or get the drop on a gunslinger. It’s all safe: the park’s lifelike androids are programmed never to harm the customers. But not all droids are getting with the program.

In an age of political unrest, one man aims to bring the government to its knees—and there’s only one agent who can stop him. Wealthy political radical John Wright has taken aim at the US government, believing that only he can make things right. State Department Agent John Graves has been watching Wright for months, studying him, gathering intel, trying to determine his next move before he makes it. Now after hacking a government computer for secret files and stealing a shipment of VZ nerve gas, a binary agent, Wright has gathered everything he needs to unleash mass destruction on a million people – including the US president. As the clock winds down Wright and Agent Graves play a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with the fate of the government and a million innocent people hanging in the balance.

A diver must discover the ugly truth behind a mysterious shipwreck—and keep his own head above water. Leagues below the sparkling blue water of the Caribbean Sea lies the mysterious wreckage of the Grave Descend. Protected by a wall of coral reef and blood-thirsty sharks, the corpse of the sunken yacht has been deemed unrecoverable by every diver in the world. Until James McGregor is offered a shot at it. For McGregor, a 39-year-old diver with a long history of unsavory salvage jobs, it’s his last chance at a big payday. But the more he learns about the wreck the more questions he uncovers – because none of the survivors are telling the same story. How did the ship really sink? What was its cargo? And why is this whole project starting to feel like a suicide mission?

Not everything on Eden is as it seems. Or maybe nothing is. Two patients in comas not expected to live: when they both recover sharing the same bizarre symptom of blue urine it’s a medical miracle that Dr. Roger Clark cannot explain. One of the patients happens to be Sharon Wilder, a beautiful Hollywood starlet. When she offers Dr. Clark the chance to accompany her to the private Caribbean island called Eden, he has to accept – if only to learn more about the bioengineering company Advance Inc. and their promise to make your wildest dreams come true. What he discovers there will be the most shocking discovery of his life on an island paradise where nothing is as it seems.

The suitcase looks like a standard weekend bag. But like the man who carries it, it isn’t what it seems. Lined with tinfoil to mask the smell, it is a smuggler’s bag and will soon be filled to the brim with marijuana bricks. The smuggler is a Harvard student who has come to California to make his fortune. He hopes to score not just with his connection but with his new girlfriend, a Golden State beauty with an appetite for fine weed. When the deal goes south, she takes the fall, and a crooked FBI agent swipes half the stash. To free his girl, this pothead will have to make the deal of a lifetime.

Ancient secrets, dangerous dames, ruthless gangs—just another dream vacation. For American radiologist Peter Ross, it sounded like the perfect vacation: deliver one study in Spain and then spend the rest of his time on a Mediterranean beach. But he wasn’t planning on meeting Angela Locke, a dark-haired beauty with a big problem – she’s on the run from two warring gangs, each dead set on finding a mysterious artifact, and they’ll kill anyone who stands in their way. It’s a desperate fight for survival across the European continent as Peter and Angela race to uncover a centuries-old secret before they become its next victim.

Crisp dialogue and sultry prose combine to weave an intricate web of intrigue greed and murder. Charles Raynaud has found the perfect cover for his smuggling operation running out of Mexico, because how many custom agents are going to want to inspect a carton of venomous snakes? When Raynaud runs into his old Yale buddy Richard Pierce, a chance to play bodyguard feels like even easier money. Pierce has a large inheritance coming, but a series of thwarted attempts on his buddy’s life makes Charles begin to smell a rat. Who’s really trying to kill whom? And why is Charles starting to believe that he’s the real target?

In the tightly knit world of Boston medicine, the Randall family reigns supreme. When heart surgeon J. D. Randall’s teenage daughter dies during a botched abortion, the medical community threatens to explode. Was it malpractice? A violation of the Hippocratic Oath? Or was Karen Randall murdered in cold blood?The natural suspect is Arthur Lee, a brilliant surgeon and known abortionist, who has been carrying out the illegal procedure with the help of pathologist John Berry. After Karen dies, Lee is thrown in jail on a murder charge, and only Berry can prove his friend wasn’t the one who wielded the scalpel. Behind this gruesome death, Berry will uncover a secret that would shock even the most hardened pathologist.

A fun heist caper and a wild romp through the Great Pyramids and beyond. Egyptologist Harold Barnaby has just made the discovery of the century. While retranslating some old hieroglyphs he has found clues to the location of a pharaoh’s lost tomb. But this discovery leads him to make the ultimate choice: Rather than share his find with the rest of the world, Professor Barnaby is determined to locate the tomb and keep whatever treasure he finds inside for himself. But to pull off the greatest heist in archaeological history, Barnaby will need help. Enter Robert Pierce, a transient freelance writer looking for excitement. They put together a five-man team including a smuggler, an international thief, and the fifth Earl of Wheatston to bankroll the project and set out to plunder the pharaoh’s lost tomb. But can this ragtag team survive the perils of the Egyptian desert and uncover what the centuries have kept hidden? And even if they find the treasure, can they escape with it alive?

A pulp-fiction thrill ride through a deadly case of mistaken identity. Playboy Roger Carr is handsome, wealthy, and connected. As an occasional lawyer, he’s the right man to send to the French Riviera to secure a villa for an important client. It’s the perfect assignment, complete with fast cars and fast women, until strange things begin to happen and Roger realizes that someone is trying to kill him. A ruthless terrorist organization called the Associates is carrying out assassinations from Egypt to Denmark. To stop them the CIA orders their own super assassin – a man who bears a striking resemblance to Roger Carr – to intercept the Associates in France. The CIA assassin never shows up but the clueless counselor does and now he finds himself on the run from some of the world’s deadliest terrorists.

Will a perfectly planned heist be foiled by three perfectly beautiful women? Steven Jencks has planned the perfect crime. Working with two skilled associates he will hit the Reina, a super-luxury hotel off the coast of Spain, and then walk away with the haul of a lifetime. As the ultimate pro, Jencks has even run his plan through a complex computer simulation to account for every possible variable… Except three. Their names are Annette, Cynthia, and Jenny. And no computer could ever simulate what these three femmes fatales have up their sleeves.

Fueled by a powerful curiosity—and by a need to see, feel, and hear, firsthand and close-up—Michael Crichton’s journeys have carried him into worlds diverse and compelling: swimming with mud sharks in Tahiti, tracking wild animals through the jungle of Rwanda. This is a record of those travels—an exhilarating quest across the familiar and exotic frontiers of the outer world and a determined odyssey into the unfathomable, spiritual depths of the inner world. It is an adventure of risk and rejuvenation, terror and wonder, as exciting as Michael Crichton’s many masterful and widely heralded works of fiction.

Electronic Life was created as a layman’s guide to computers. It explains simply, concisely and without jargon what computers really are. How to choose them, how to use them, how to think about them, how to live with them, how to get them to help you, how to keep them in their place and how to enjoy them. It gives step-by-step instructions on what to do when you first approach a new computer and sound advice on how to stop your computer from causing trouble in the family. Michael Crichton’s message: Don’t be afraid of them they’re only machines, they’re here to make your life easier and what’s more they can be a lot of fun.

This extraordinary book pairs two major talents of our time, the painter/sculptor/printmaker Jasper Johns and the physician/novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton. Since it first appeared in 1977, Michael Crichton’s Jasper Johns has been considered the preeminent study of one of America’s foremost living artists.

In this incisive, detailed survey of five patients, famous thriller author and doctor Michael Crichton explores the dramatic workings of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston’s oldest and most prestigious.This readable account covers not only the history of the hospital’s place in society, but also the actual minute-to-minute functions of Mass General, where health professionals wage their daily battle against disease and death. Crichton’s insightful look at the changes in medicine and surgery caused by technological strides makes for amazing reading.

The year is 1876, and two monomaniacal paleontologists are pillaging the Wild West, hunting for dinosaur fossils, while surveilling, deceiving and sabotaging each other in a rivalry that will come to be known as the Bone Wars. Into this treacherous territory plunges the arrogant and entitled William Johnson, a Yale student with more privilege than sense. Forced to join forces with one of the scientists, Johnson soon stumbles upon a discovery of historic proportions. With this extraordinary treasure, however, comes exceptional danger as he struggles to protect his cache, pitting him against some of the West’s most notorious characters. A page-turner that draws on both meticulously researched history and an exuberant imagination, Dragon Teeth is based on the rivalry between real-life paleontologists Cope and Marsh. Perfectly paced and brilliantly plotted, this enormously winning adventure is another Crichton classic.

In the vein of Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller follows a group of graduate students lured to Hawaii to work for a mysterious biotech company—only to find themselves cast out into the rain forest, with nothing but their scientific expertise and wits to protect them. An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Michael Crichton fashion. Completed by visionary science writer Richard Preston, this boundary-pushing thriller melds scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction to create yet another masterpiece of sophisticated, cutting-edge entertainment.

The Caribbean, 1665. A remote colony of the English Crown, the island of Jamaica holds out against the vast supremacy of the Spanish empire. Port Royal, its capital, is a cutthroat town of taverns, grog shops, and bawdy houses. In this steamy climate there’s a living to be made, a living that can end swiftly by disease—or by dagger. For Captain Charles Hunter, gold in Spanish hands is gold for the taking, and the law of the land rests with those ruthless enough to make it. Pirate Latitudes is Michael Crichton at his best: a rollicking adventure tale pulsing with relentless action, crackling atmosphere, and heart-pounding suspense.

An astounding, eye-opening look at the world of genetics. Next. Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There’s a new genetic cure for drug addiction—is it worse than the disease? Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems, and genetic ownership shatters our assumptions.

When a group of eco-terrorists engage in a global conspiracy to generate weather-related natural disasters, it’s up to environmental lawyer Peter Evans and his team to uncover the subterfuge. From Tokyo to Los Angeles, from Antarctica to the Solomon Islands, cutting edge science and action-packed adventure lead readers on an edge-of-your-seat ride. A deftly-crafted novel, State of Fear is an exciting, stunning tale that not only entertains and educates, but will make you think.

Deep in the Nevada desert, the Xymos Corporation has built a state-of-the-art fabrication plant, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but cactus and coyotes. Eight people are trapped. A self-replicating swarm of predatory molecules is rapidly evolving outside the plant. Massed together, the molecules form an intelligent organism that is anything but benign. More powerful by the hour, it has targeted the eight scientists as prey. They must stop the swarm before it is too late.

In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival—six hundred years ago.

“Three passengers are dead. Fifty-six are injured. The interior cabin is virtually destroyed. But the pilot manages to land the plane. The lethal midair disaster aboard a commercial twin-jet airliner flying from Hong Kong to Denver triggers a pressured and frantic investigation in which the greatest casualty may be the truth.

It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since the extraordinary dream of science and imagination came to a crashing end—the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, and the island indefinitely closed to the public. But there are rumors that something has survived. . . .

An up-and-coming executive at the computer firm DigiCom, Tom Sanders is a man whose corporate future is certain. But after a closed-door meeting with his new boss—a woman who is his former lover and has been promoted to the position he expected to have—Sanders finds himself caught in a nightmarish web of deceit in which he is branded the villain. As Sanders scrambles to defend himself, he uncovers an electronic trail into the company’s secrets—and begins to grasp that a cynical and manipulative scheme has been devised to bring him down.

On the forty-fifth floor of the Nakamoto tower in downtown Los Angeles—the new American headquarters of the immense Japanese conglomerate—a grand opening celebration is in full swing. On the forty-sixth floor, in an empty conference room, the corpse of a beautiful young woman is discovered. The investigation immediately becomes a headlong chase through a twisting maze of industrial intrigue, a no-holds-barred conflict in which control of a vital American technology is the fiercely coveted prize—and in which the Japanese saying “Business is war” takes on a terrifying reality.

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong…

In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface, a huge vessel is unearthed. Rushed to the scene is a team of American scientists who descend together into the depths to investigate the astonishing discovery. What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship, but apparently it is undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old, containing a terrifying and destructive force that must be controlled at all costs.

Deep in the African rain forest, near the ruins of the Lost City of Zinj, all the members of a field expedition are brutally killed. At the Houston-based Earth Resources Technology Services, Inc., a horrified supervisor watches a gruesome video transmission of that ill-fated group and sees a haunting, grainy, man-like blur moving amongst the bodies. In San Francisco, an extraordinary gorilla named Amy, who has a 620-sign vocabulary, may hold the secret to that fierce carnage. Immediately, a new expedition is sent to the Congo with Amy in tow, descending into a secret, forbidden world where the only escape may be through the grisliest death.

It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

In teeming Victorian London, where lavish wealth and appalling poverty live side by side, Edward Pierce charms the most prominent of the well-to-do as he cunningly orchestrates the crime of the century. Who would suspect that a gentleman of breeding could mastermind the daring theft of a fortune in gold? Who could predict the consequences of making the extraordinary robbery aboard the pride of England’s industrial era, the mighty steam locomotive? Based on fact, as lively as legend, and studded with all the suspense and style of a modern fiction master, here is a classic caper novel set a decade before the age of dynamite–yet nonetheless explosive….

Harry Benson suffers from violent seizures. So violent that he often blackouts when they take hold. Shortly after severely beating two men during an episode, the police escort Benson to a Los Angeles hospital for treatment. There, Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, is convinced he can cure Benson with an experimental procedure that would place electrodes deep in his brain’s pleasure centers, effectively short-circuiting Harry's seizures with pulses of bliss. The surgery is successful, but while Benson is in recovery, he discovers how to trigger the pulses himself. To make matters worse his violent impulses have only grown, and he soon escapes the hospital with a deadly agenda...

The United States government is given a warning by the pre-eminent biophysicists in the country: current sterilization procedures applied to returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, seventeen satellites are sent into the outer fringes of space to “collect organisms and dust for study.” One of them falls to earth, landing in a desolate area of Arizona. Twelve miles from the landing site, in the town of Piedmont, a shocking discovery is made: the streets are littered with the dead bodies of the town’s inhabitants, as if they dropped dead in their tracks. The terror has begun …