page_title: Michael Crichton
section_title: Early novels and screenplays (1969–1974)
hierarchical_section_title: Michael Crichton / Life / Early novels and screenplays (1969–1974)
caption_attribution_description: Cover of Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by the American author Kurt Vonnegut. First edition, Delacorte Press
context_page_description: John Michael Crichton was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. His novels often explore that technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background.
  Crichton received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1969 but did not practice medicine, choosing to focus on his writing instead. Initially writing under a pseudonym, he eventually wrote 26 novels, including The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, and Next. Several novels, in various states of completion, were published after his death in 2008.
  Crichton was also involved in the film and television industry.
context_section_description: Crichton says after he finished his third year of medical school "I stopped believing that one day I'd love it and realised that what I loved was writing." He began publishing book reviews under his name. In 1969, Crichton wrote a review for The New Republic (as J. Michael Crichton), critiquing Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. He also continued to write Lange novels: Zero Cool (1969), dealt with an American radiologist on vacation in Spain who is caught in a murderous crossfire between rival gangs seeking a precious artifact. The Venom Business (1969) relates the story of a smuggler who uses his exceptional skill as a snake handler to his advantage by importing snakes to be used by drug companies and universities for medical research.
  The first novel that was published under Crichton's name was The Andromeda Strain (1969), which would prove to be the most important novel of his career and establish him as a bestselling author. The novel documented the efforts of a team of scientists investigating a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that fatally clots human blood, causing death within two minutes. Crichton was inspired to write it after reading The IPCRESS File by Len Deighton while studying in England. Crichton says he was "terrifically impressed" by the book – "a lot of Andromeda is traceable to Ipcress in terms of trying to create an imaginary world using recognizable techniques and real people." He wrote the novel over three years. The novel became an instant hit, and film rights were sold for $250,000. It was adapted into a 1971 film by director Robert Wise.
  During his clinical rotations at the Boston City Hospital, Crichton grew disenchanted with the culture there, which appeared to emphasize the interests and reputations of doctors over the interests of patients. He graduated from Harvard, obtaining an MD in 1969, and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970. He never obtained a license to practice medicine, devoting himself to his writing career instead. Reflecting on his career in medicine years later, Crichton concluded that patients too often shunned responsibility for their own health, relying on doctors as miracle workers rather than advisors. He experimented with astral projection, aura viewing, and clairvoyance, coming to believe that these included real phenomena that scientists had too eagerly dismissed as paranormal.
  1970 saw the publication of three more Crichton books under pseudonyms. Two were Lange novels, Drug of Choice and Grave Descend. Grave Descend earned him an Edgar Award nomination the following year. There was also Dealing: or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues written with his younger brother Douglas Crichton. Dealing was written under the pen name "Michael Douglas", using their first names. Crichton wrote it "completely from beginning to end". Then his brother rewrote it from beginning to end, and then Crichton rewrote it again. This novel was made into a movie in 1972. Around this time Crichton also wrote and sold an original film script, Morton's Run. He also wrote the screenplay Lucifer Harkness in Darkness. 
  Aside from fiction, Crichton wrote several other books based on medical or scientific themes, often based upon his own observations in his field of expertise. In 1970, he published Five Patients, which recounts his experiences of hospital practices in the late 1960s at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The book follows each of five patients through their hospital experience and the context of their treatment, revealing inadequacies in the hospital institution at the time. The book relates the experiences of Ralph Orlando, a construction worker seriously injured in a scaffold collapse; John O'Connor, a middle-aged dispatcher suffering from fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; Peter Luchesi, a young man who severs his hand in an accident; Sylvia Thompson, an airline passenger who suffers chest pains; and Edith Murphy, a mother of three who is diagnosed
caption: Crichton critiqued Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) in The New Republic.
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