Michael Crichton was an American author, film-maker and physician, born in 1942, the writer who did more than anyone to invent the modern 'techno-thriller' - fiction that turns real, cutting-edge science into pulse-racing catastrophe.
He trained as a doctor, earning his medical degree at Harvard, but never practised, publishing bestsellers even as a student. Across a remarkable career he wrote more than two dozen novels, directed films, and created the long-running hospital drama ER, winning a Peabody Award and an Emmy along the way.
His breakthrough was The Andromeda Strain, a taut thriller about scientists racing to contain a lethal microorganism from space, and he returned again and again to the theme of human ingenuity outrunning human wisdom: the malfunctioning android theme park of Westworld, which he wrote and directed; the deep-sea alien craft of Sphere; the nanotechnology run amok of Prey. Towering above them all is Jurassic Park, his story of resurrected dinosaurs in a doomed theme park, which Steven Spielberg turned into one of the most successful films ever made.
Endlessly curious and famously tall - he stood six feet nine - he died in 2008. His novels remain the gold standard for smart, propulsive, science-driven suspense.
