CRICHTON'S LEGACY LIVES ON WITH TWISTERS, A SEQUEL TO TWISTER, IN THEATRES IN JULY 2024

 

Twisters is a sequel to Twister (1996), with new characters and a new story. There is no posthumous involvement of Crichton in the film, although he is credited as writer of the original screenplay in IMDb. We will, however, see "Dorothy" again...

Read more about the development of this project: https://collider.com/twisters-plot-details/ 

ERUPTION

     

THE ANDROMEDA EVOLUTION - Revisiting The Andromeda Strain 50 years later

With the occasion of the 50th anniversary of "The Andromeda Strain", a sequel has been written by Daniel H Wilson. The novel was written in its entirety by Wilson, but Michael Crichton's name is featured prominently in the same style as in his own books. A good idea?

 

DRAGON TEETH, a posthumous Michael Crichton novel.

The story is based on real events that took place during the "Fossil Wars" between paleontologists Cope and Marsh in the 1800s.

   

Right: an exhibit in the Dinopolis Centre "Mar Nummus" in Albarracín, Spain, that mentions these events, too.

MICHAEL CRICHTON ON SCREEN (1971-2008 ... and beyond)

1971 - 2022 Movie adaptations of novels

From The Andromeda Strain (1971) all the way to the last installment of Jurassic World (Jurassic World: Dominion, 2022)  Michael Crichton's characters and stories have accompanied generations of movie-goers and tv-viewers.

1973 - 1996 Movie Screenplays

Once in the filmmaking mindset, and having written teleplays before, Michael Crichton also went for writing screenplays, beginning with Extreme Close-up (1973), also known as Sex Through a Window, and two of his most famous screenplays, Westworld (1973), which he directed himself and beacame a classic, currently rebooted into a TV series; and the script for a medical drama in 1974, which would be filmed, 20 years later, as the pilot episode of the long running TV series ER (1994-2008).
In 1978 two further screenplays were made into films by himself, with Coma, based on Robin Cook's novel, and The First Great Train Robbery, which is the only one which he wrote, directed and was based on one of his own novels. Later he again directed his own screenplays for Looker (1981) and Runaway (1984). 
In 1996 he co-wrote the screenplay for Twister.

Trivia: Exteme Close-up (1973) and Twister (1996), the first and last screenplays he wrote, are also the only ones he did not direct himself.

1972 - 1989 Directing Movies

Probably encouraged by the interest im the film rights of some of his novels (The Adromeda Strain (1971), The Carey Treatment (1972) and Dealing... (1972)), Michael Crichton had a go at directing in the 70s and 80s, beginning with Pursuit (1972), adaptation of his own novel Binary (written as John Lange, and credited as such). 
Then he directed his own screenplays for Westworld (1973), the adaptation of Robin Cook's novel Coma (1978), The First Great Train Robbery (1978), Looker (1981) and Runaway (1984). 
He stopped directing after Physical Evidence (1989) did not harness much success, and concentrated in his successful fiction writing career.

Trivia: Pursuit (1972) and Physical Evidence (1989), the first and last movies he directed, were also the only ones not based on his own screenplays.

1971,1972 & 1974: Screenplays for three chapters for the Insight series

The series Insight ran from 1960 to 1984, produced by Paulist Productions and led by a Roman Catholic priest of the order of the Paulist Fathers. 

It would feature topics related to the search of meaning and Christian values. Michael Crichton directed  three chapters.
This was a period in Michael Crichton's life when he tried different genres, like historical novels or these rather atypical productions, before returning to science-themed works.



COLLABORATIONS WITH NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES

Articles in Various Magazines

In his non-fiction writing Michael Crichton continued on the topic of relationships but gradually shifted back to science related topics, for which he became better known, with pieces in various scientific journals and popular science magazines.

http://mcrichtonfirst.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/michael-crichton-continuedwriting-about.html

1983 - 1985 Computing and Programming

In the early 1980s Micheal Crichton expressed his views and concerns about computing and programming in contributions and interviews to magazines like Creative Computing and Compute!. At this time he was creating a computer game and writing extensively about this both fiction and non-fiction (see below).

1968-1971 & 1988-1991 Playboy Collaborations

Michael Crichton also caught the eye of the mens' Playboy Magazine. They published a novel of his in installments, short stories, articles and an interview.

1959 - 2007 Articles and Book Reviews in The New York Times

Michael Crichton remained in contact with the publication that gave him a decisive push towards writing by publishing his teenage article Climbing Up A Cinder Cone back in 1959, and occasionally wrote articles for The New York times over a period of 20 years.

NOVELS 

 

1969 - ? Novels written as Michael Crichton

These novels are the core of Michael Crichton´s collected works. He is mostly known for these novels and the movie adaptations of some of them. In his lifetime, 15 novels were published under his own name. After his death, his wife Sherri is managing his legacy, including unpublished and unfinished manuscripts. 

1966-1972 Novels written as John Lange, Jeffery Hudson and Michael Douglas

Between 1966 and 1972 Michael Crichton wrote ten novels under various pseudonyms. Three of them would be made into movies by1972, after he had hit success in the film industry with the adaptation of The Andromeda Strain, which he had written in 1969 under his own name.

COMPUTING & PROGRAMMING

Computer Games (1984 & 1999)

In 1984 Michael Crichton looked into new ways to tell stories. Computer games were en emerging medium, and he ventured into this with an adaptation of his novel Congo into a computer game which he had to rename and relocate to the Amazon, due to copyright issues. See the full story in http://mentalfloss.com/uk/games/when-michael-crichton-co-wrote-his-own-videogame .

As is also mentioned in the article above, he had another go in 1999 with his game adaptation of his novel Timeline.

Fiction and non-fiction writing on computing

In the early 1980s Micheal Crichton developed and followed a strong interest in the emerging field of computing and programming. During his time he explored it as a new way to tell stories through computer games, and also reflected on it in a deeper sense, expressing his views and concerns about it in articles and interviews as well as through his storytelling, as in the short story Mousetrap, published in TIME. He even published the programming code from the story in the magazine Compute!, thus reinforcing that his fiction writing is deeply rooted in real science and technology.

He also published a non-fiction book called Electronic Life.

It is interesting that his views included considering the programming of computers and artificial intelligence as part and parcel of human evolution, and idea fully developed later by many authors like the Wachowski Brothers in The Matrix (1999) and its sequels. Movies like Ridleys Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Michael Crichton's own "Runaway" (1984) could be considered the first steps in this direction. 

Trivia: the technology described in Mousetrap is currently being used by sites like Coursera to identify users. It is called keystroke biometrics.

THE EARLY YEARS

1961-1964 - Articles in The Harvard Crimson

At medical school in Harvard, Michael Crichton regularly contributed to the student newspaper The Harvard Crimson, which is still being published today.

1959 - Climbing Up A Cinder Cone

The first written work Michael Cricthon got paid for is an article in the New York Times under the title Climbing Up a Cinder Cone, (New York Times, May 17, 1959).

1957 - First Steps: Johnny at 8:30

The earliest written work by Michael Crichton I am aware of is Johnny at 8:30, reprinted in First Words by Paul Mendelbaum (New York: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2000).

LET'S BEGIN WITH A CRICHTON CHRISTMAS

This video was made as a Christmas gift to Marla Warren, the greatest fan of Michael Crichton I know and a fellow collector of his works. She runs the fantastic blog Musings on Michael Crichton.