Michael Crichton: A Devout and Honest Skeptic
His powerful writing will live on after his death — and make us think about issues like global warming.
Imagine this situation: you’re a relatively new novelist who has just won an Edgar Award, the Emmy or Oscar of mystery writing. Should be pretty exciting, shouldn’t it?
But what if you wrote it under a carefully protected pen name? And the novel used real people, thinly disguised, but obvious to anyone who knew who the author really was? And you have to accept the award in person?
And then imagine the real people are faculty and staff at Harvard Medical School. Where you wrote your Edgar-Award-winning novel. In your spare time.
Of course, your suspension of disbelief has now utterly collapsed. Spare time? In medical school?
But it’s a true story; the medical student involved was writing thrillers under the pen names Jeffrey Hudson and John Lange, the latter a reference to his unusual six-foot-nine-inch height. The medical student’s name: (John) Michael Crichton. Crichton died on November 4 at the age of 66.
He hadn’t been a very successful medical student — he never overcame the problem that he grew faint at the sight of needles and when drawing blood. Not that this is necessarily a disqualifier in medicine — it’s an old medical school joke that a psychiatrist is just a surgeon who can’t stand the sight of blood.
Crichton, though, had started out to be a writer; he’d just transferred to anthropology when he grew dissatisfied with the English department at Harvard. (He’d submitted one of George Orwell’s essays as his own; not only had the professor not recognized it, but he’d only given the essay a B-.) From reading his autobiographical essays, you get the idea that he’d not felt he’d been all that successful as a Harvard undergraduate either, having only managed to eke out a degree in anthropology summa cum laude and a visiting lectureship at Oxford, before deciding on medical school.
By the time he’d completed his M.D. degree, he had six books published — three in 1969 alone — including The Andromeda Strain, which promptly became a New York Times bestseller. He’d also had an apparent demyelinization episode, a hint that he might well have multiple sclerosis.
He never practiced as a physician; his multiple sclerosis, if that’s what it was, never recurred. He became a full-time writer and after The Andromeda Strain became a successful movie, he set out to become a director. He started with Pursuit (a.k.a. Binary), a filmed version of one of his “John Lange” novels, and moved on to direct eight more movies, including Westworld, Coma, and The Great Train Robbery. He also created the hit TV series ER, still running after 15 seasons.
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Charlie Martin is a Colorado computer scientist and nearly-successful screenwriter who contributes to the Flares Into Darkness political blog as ‘Seneca the Younger,’ and blogs under his own name at the aggressively non-political Explorations blog.
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20 Comments
1. Cindy Sue Causey:All these years my absolute #1 favorite book has been “The Andromeda Strain”.. Read it over and over and OVER as a kid sitting under a pine tree by a quiet neighborhood canal.. Somehow managed to miss that I’ve recognized his name whenever I saw it on the tube because of that very book.. Discovered that “minor” detail while tracing his works backwards when I heard he passed away the other day..
Thank you for such a really nice tribute to him.. Enjoyed it very much..
Nov 9, 2008 - 4:02 am 2. Gary Ogletree:One of those few writers whose next book I looked forward to with great anticipation.
Nov 9, 2008 - 4:54 am 3. Michael Crichton, Honest Skeptic | Explorations:[...] new piece up at Pajamas Media. Posted by Charlie on Sunday, November 9, 2008, at 07:10 (@674). Filed under [...]
Nov 9, 2008 - 6:10 am 4. Bill Perron:A few years ago Crichton was a guest speaker for the Skeptics Society in Pasadena, he ridiculed them about their ridiculous closed mindedness about such things a psychics. After attending a meeting of that group I observed for myself how the founder Michael Shermer and other “professional” pseudo skeptics such as the failed magician who calls himself “Amazing Randi” all had an agenda that seemed more akin to the mentality of medievil monks rather than true open minded critical thinkers. Crichton in his book “Travels” in the last chapter writes that if he had a chance to address a group such as that at Cal-tech he would do and say exactly what he did. I am so glad he had the opportunity to fulfill one of his wishes.
Nov 9, 2008 - 9:32 am 5. Charlie (Colorado):Bill, that’s exactly what I thought. I have a number of devout atheists and devout skeptics as friends, and their religious fervor has always amazed (and rather amused) me.
Nov 9, 2008 - 10:03 am 6. tanstaafl:I liked reading Michael Crichton.
An excellent mind.
Watch out, if you don’t buy into fat “I personally waste more resources than the entire city of Memphis” Al Gore’s version of anthropogenic GW, you might find yourself in the politically correct cold.
BBC SHUNNED ME FOR DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE
Nov 9, 2008 - 2:23 pm 7. heather:He made a speech at some think tank (maybe Heritage?) and I watched it on CSpan. His book on global warming was being published at the time, and the speech was mainly about the lack of science regarding climate change.
The best thought, though, was when he noted that if one sells fake goods, one can be sued. And he believed that there would be a time when IDEAS (like global warming, etc) would be susceptible to the law: ie, if a company is forced to spend $$$ to comply with anti- CO2 regulations, and those regulations are based on fake/mistaken science, then the PEOPLE who promulgated that fake/mistaken science could be sued!!
And this makes great sense, as so many people are now employed in the so-called
knowledge” industries.
It is a great pity he has passed on.
Nov 9, 2008 - 8:42 pm 8. Amphipolis:I’ll just say that Red Sun Rising was not his best.
Nov 10, 2008 - 10:03 am 9. kim:Thanks, Charlie; Michael’s speech to the Commonwealth Club has been influential in my religious beliefs. One of those beliefs is that we are cooling; for how long even kim doesn’t know.
Nov 10, 2008 - 10:48 am 10. Paul From Hamburg:================================================
Unlike Al Gore and others, Crichton understood that using technology is not the same as doing science. The Wall Street Journal reprinted a piece by Crichton explaining that the SETI project was really a religious exercise. I heartily agree. I have never understood devout atheists who are completely sure that life must exist somewhere else in the universe. At some level, it seems like a reasonable assumption. In fact, it is no more or less reasonable than assuming the existence of a supreme being.
Nov 10, 2008 - 11:50 am 11. glasater:Charlie Rose has many interesting interviews with Michael Crichton and a nice tribute/retrospective.
Nov 10, 2008 - 1:37 pm 12. Al Fin:Crichton was intelligent and rational to a degree that most people are not capable of. Combine his intelligence and rationality with impressive creativity and a very strong work ethic and sense of integrity, and you get a person of improbable uniqueness–Michael Crichton. Being without fear, Crichton faced and overcame obstacles that would have turned away almost everyone else. Mortality finally overcame him, as it will us all.
The way he lived is his legacy, in addition to his many works of fiction, television, cinema, and prose. The dream is alive and will be reborn in the flesh again and again. Let’s make sure we provide a society of opportunity that let’s the future Crichtons thrive in their dreams.
Nov 10, 2008 - 1:42 pm 13. Charlie (Colorado):I’ll just say that Red Sun Rising was not his best.
Combined with the cognomen “Amphipolis” I can tell if that’s a mistake or a purposeful joke.
(I *think* you mean Red Sun, but you’re confusing it with Red Star Rising, which is Tom Clancy.)
Nov 10, 2008 - 4:54 pm 14. john parker:I’ll just say that Red Sun Rising was not his best.
Combined with the cognomen “Amphipolis” I can tell if that’s a mistake or a purposeful joke.
(I *think* you mean Red Sun, but you’re confusing it with Red Star Rising, which is Tom Clancy.)
Tom Clancy’s second novel: Red Storm Rising.
Michael Crichton’s 18th novel (including those written under pen names): Rising Sun.
C’mon people, is it that hard to get these details right? There is this thing called Wikipedia, you know.
Nov 12, 2008 - 6:28 am 15. CaptDMO:Um…how many charlatans, and snake oil salesmen, did “The Amazing Randi” expose as frauds by replicating their “astonishing” feats? What’s “paranormalist” Uri Geller up to these days?
Who’s claimed his million dollar bounty to
“prove” him wrong?
Open Minded “critical” thinkers indeed!
Furthermore,
I thought it was ” ..that can’t simply bury their incompitance…”
Nov 12, 2008 - 4:59 pm 16. CaptDMO:*shesh*
Nov 12, 2008 - 4:59 pm 17. Bill Perron:…incompetence…
CaptDMO ….Uri Geller has a T.V show in Europe, he also participated in a T.V. show here in the U. S. he is doing very well….. Ask Randi why he runs from the “Honesty Challenge. Randi and his million dollar offer has been proven to be nothing but a less than honest publicity stunt. He was offered ten thousand dollars by myself if I can not prove in less than one minute that his offer is just a false publicuty stunt. He runs from the offer, ask him why. Also ask any professional pseudo skeptic why they won’t take my ten grand, I have also made this offer publicly to all professional pseudo skeptics and yet not one will take the money. Why, because if they can’t then it casts all their movement into jepordy. I realize this is something some folks will have a problem dealing with, but that’s life.
Nov 13, 2008 - 9:48 am 18. occidental tourist:This is a late comment, but I just came across this thread while searching for someone else who spoke at that conference. I saw Crichton’s speech and he let ‘em have it right between the eyes. I can’t opine on Randi one way or another. I haven’t followed his work. But I got the distinct, and distinctly ironical, impression of skepticism as a religion and I am glad to see that I wasn’t the only one.
Apr 8, 2009 - 1:53 pm 19. Update - Finally We Hear From Industry On Healthcare - Framing the Dialogue:[...] [...]
Sep 10, 2009 - 4:29 pm 20. Finally We Hear From Industry On Healthcare - Framing the Dialogue:[...] [...]
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