Crichton’s “crazy” concepts
A visionary but also controversial genius recently has left us. Michael Crichton, the famous writer, filmmaker and, less familiar to most people, skilled anthropologist and medical doctor, died of cancer at the age of 66.
Crichton by no means was a blatherer. Far from it! He was a Harvard graduate, a lecturer in anthropology at Cambridge University, UK, in the 1960s and afterwards became a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, La Jolla. Soon, however, Crichton backslided the natural sciences and became a science writer (although his first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published while he was still a medical student in 1969).
Why did he backslide at that time? Just ask him, on www.crichton-official.com, he answers as follows: “It’s what I always wanted to do.”
Even though natural scientists by the majority disliked him, Crichton has done a lot for us. His fast-paced technological thrillers, sold in the tens of millions, dealt with medical technology, computer science, chaos theory and genetic engineering. This “gee-whiz science” was an assist that was easily adapted by Hollywood. “Jurassic Park,” based on his book and on which he shared screenwriting credit, is the No. 10 top grossing film of all times (in 2002, a newly discovered ankylosaur was named after him: Crichtonsaurus bohlini – see photo above).
In other words: with his novels and films and his special kind of science propaganda, Crichton produced interest in science in many millions of people.
By the way, many of his visions in fact became true! In the Discovery magazine blog, you can find “The Top 5 “Crazy” Michael Crichton Ideas That Actually Came True”, such as …
- linguistic abilities of apes (as in “Congo”, 1980)
- self-replicating nanorobots (as is “Prey”, 2002)
- brain implants (as in “The Terminal Man”, 1972)
But I admire him most for Jurassic Park. Crichton made dinosaurs (and also palaeontologists!) socially fully acceptable.
Thank you, Michael!!
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