HarperCollins is one of the world's largest publishing companies. Headquartered in New York City, the company is a subsidiary of News Corporation. The company name is a combination of Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers (founded 1817) and Row, Peterson & Company; and UK publishing company William Collins, Sons (founded 1819), acquired in 1990. The worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray.^[1] HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints.

History[link]

HarperCollins UK headquarters in Hammersmith, London

Collins[link]

Harper[link]

Mergers and acquisitions[link]

In 1989, Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, and the publisher was combined with Harper & Row, which NewsCorp had acquired two years earlier. In addition to the simplified and merged name, the logo for HarperCollins was derived from the torch logo for Harper and Row, and the fountain logo for Collins, which where combined into a stylized set of flames atop waves.

In 1999, News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group, consisting of William Morrow & Company and Avon Books. These imprints are now published under the rubric of HarperCollins.^[2]

In 2011, HarperCollins acquired the publisher Thomas Nelson (pending).^[3]

Management history[link]

Jane Friedman was CEO for HarperCollins from 1997 to 2008. Notable management figures include Lisa Sharkey, current senior vice president and director of creative development and Barry Winkleman from 1989 to 1994.

Notable books[link]

HarperCollins maintains the backlist of many of the books originally published by their many merged imprints, in addition to having picked up new authors since the merger. Authors published originally by Harper include Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters and William Makepeace Thackeray. Authors published originally by Collins include H. G. Wells, Agatha Christie and J. R. R. Tolkien. This is a list of some of the more noted books, and series, published by HarperColllins and their various imprints and merged publishing houses.

• The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm (1956)
• Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian (1970) (adapted into the 2003 film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World)
• the Leaphorn and Chee books, Tony Hillerman (1970-2006)
• Collins English Dictionary (1979), a major dictionary^[4]
• Sharpe series, Bernard Cornwell (1981-2006)
• Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo, Hayden Herrera (1983), adapted into the 2002 film Frida
• Weaveworld, Clive Barker (1987)
• the Paladin Poetry Series (1987-1993)
• Of Gravity & Angels Jane Hirshfield (1988)
• The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, (1988) (first published in Portuguese as O Alquimista, 1988)
• Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland (1990)
• The Language of the Genes, Steve Jones (1993)
• The Gifts of the Body, Rebecca Brown (1994)
• Microserfs, Douglas Coupland (1995)
• One of the Guys, by Robert Clark Young (1999)
• Shuka Saptati: Seventy tales of the Parrot a new translation from the Sanskrit by A. N. D. Haksar (2000)
• First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, Loung Ung (2000)
• Bel Canto, Ann Patchett (2001)
• A Theory of Relativity, Jacquelyn Mitchard (2001)
• recent volumes in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (books from 2001 to present)
• American Gods Neil Gaiman (2001)
• Boonville, Robert Mailer Anderson (2003 reprint)
• Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson (2003)
• Don Quixote, a new translation by Edith Grossman (2003, Ecco)
• Acquainted with the Night, Christopher Dewdney (2004)
• Darkhouse, Alex Barclay (2005)
• Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman (2005)
• The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard (2005)
• Freaky Green Eyes, by Joyce Carol Oates (2006)
• Next, Michael Crichton (2006)
• Mister B. Gone, Clive Barker (Harper) (2007)
• The Children of Húrin, J.R.R. Tolkien (posthumous, compiled by Christopher Tolkien) (2007)
• Loving Natalee: A Mother's Testament of Hope and Faith, Beth Holloway (2007) (about Natalee Holloway)
• The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall (2007)
• The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, Jeff Sharlet (2008)
• Going Rogue: An American Life, Sarah Palin (2009)
• Solo, Rana Dasgupta (2009)
• The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, J.R.R. Tolkien (2009) (copublished by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
• Pirate Latitudes, Michael Crichton (2009) (posthumous publication)
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel (2009)
• Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder, Kathryn Casey (2010)
• Micro, Michael Crichton (2011) (posthumous publication)
• The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (2011)

Harper Children's Books[link]

Children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom was the director of Harper's Department of Books for Boys and Girls from 1940 to 1973, overseeing the publication of classics such as Goodnight Moon, Where the Wild Things Are, The Giving Tree, Charlotte's Web, Beverly Cleary's series starring Ramona Quimby, and Harold and the Purple Crayon. They were the publishing home of Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, and Margaret Wise Brown.^[5] In 1998, Nordstrom's personal correspondence was published as Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom (illustrated by Maurice Sendak), edited by Charlotte Zolotow. Zolotow began her career as a stenographer to Nordstrom, became her protege, and went on to write more than 80 books and edit hundreds of others, including Nordstrom's The Secret Language and the works of Paul Fleischman. Zolotow later became head of the Children's Books Department, and went on to become the company's first female Vice-President.

The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, while not originally published by a merged imprint of HarperCollins, were acquired by the publisher.

HarperCollins has published the following notable children's books:

• the I Can Read! series for beginning readers, including the Amelia Bedelia (Peggy Parish), Frog and Toad (Arnold Lobel) and Little Bear (Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak) books
• the Warriors series
• A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket
• A Taste of Blackberries, Doris Buchanan Smith (1973)
• Skulduggery Pleasant series, Derek Landy
• Bart Simpson's Guide to Life (1993)
• Love That Dog, Sharon Creech (2001)
• The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein (1964)
• Where the Sidewalk Ends (book), Shel Silverstein (1974)
• The Saga of Darren Shan, Darren Shan (2000-2004)
  • Cirque du Freak manga series, Darren Shan and Takahiro Arai (2006-2009)
• The Dangerous Book for Boys, Conn and Hal Iggulden (2006)
• Sabriel, Garth Nix (1995)
• I Am Number Four, Pittacus Lore (pseudonym of James Frey and Jobie Hughes) (2010)
• The Power of Six (sequel to I Am Number Four), Pittacus Lore (pseudonym of James Frey and Jobie Hughes) (2011)
• A Barrel of Laughs, a Vale of Tears, Jules Feiffer (1995)
• Mister God, This Is Anna, Fynn (pseudonym of Sydney Hopkins) (1974)
• the Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932-2006)
• The Wolves in the Walls, Neal Gaiman and Dave McKean (2003)
• Monster, Walter Dean Myers (1999)
• Coraline, Neal Gaiman and Dave McKean (2002)
• the Pretty Little Liars series, by Sara Shepard (2007-present)
• Surviving the Applewhites, Stephanie S. Tolan (2002)
• Ruby Redfort (series), Lauren Child (2011)
• Divergent, Veronica Roth (2011)

Imprints[link]

HarperCollins has over 30 book imprints, most of which are based in the United States.^[6] Collins still exists as an imprint, chiefly for wildlife and natural history books, field guides, as well as English and bilingual dictionaries based on the Bank of English, a large corpus of contemporary English texts.

HarperCollins imprints (current and defunct, including imprints that existed prior to various mergers), include:

Business strategy[link]

Web approach[link]

In order to both boost book sales and reach the online market, HarperCollins has created a browsing feature on its website, whereby customers can read selected extracts from books before purchasing.^[9][10] There are some concerns among publishers with this approach because they feel that the online books could be exploited by file-sharing.^[11] In addition, excerpts of books are also available to mobile phone users.^[12] HarperCollins were first to market with an innovative approach to slushpile management with the introduction of the authonomy website. From 2009 to 2010, they operated Bookarmy, a social networking site.

Speakers Bureau[link]

The HarperCollins Speakers Bureau (also known as HCSB) is the first lecture agency to be created by a major publishing house.^[13] It was launched in May 2005^[13] as a division of HarperCollins to book paid speaking engagements for the authors HarperCollins, and its sister companies, publish. Jamie Brickhouse is the director.^[14]

Some of the notable authors the HCSB represents include Carol Alt, Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire,^[15] Danny Meyer, Mehmet Oz, Sidney Poitier, Ted Sorensen, and Kate White.

HarperStudio[link]

HarperCollins announced HarperStudio in 2008 as a "new, experimental unit... that will eliminate the traditional profit distributions to authors. The long-established author advances and bookseller returns has not proved to be very profitable to either the author or the publisher. The approach HarperStudio is now taking is to offer little or no advance, but instead to split the profit 50% (rather than the industry standard 15%), with the author." The division was headed by Bob Miller, previously the founding publisher of Hyperion, the adult books division of the Walt Disney Company.^[16][17] HarperStudio folded in March 2010 after Miller left for Workman Publishing.^[18]

Controversies[link]

If I Did It[link]

If I Did It was a book written by O.J. Simpson about his alleged murder of Nicole Simpson, which was planned as a HarperCollins title, and which attracted considerable controversy and a legal battle over publication.

Ben Collins[link]

In August 2010, the company became embroiled in a legal battle with the BBC after a book it was due to publish, later identified as the forthcoming autobiography of racing driver Ben Collins, revealed the identity of The Stig from Top Gear.^[19] In his blog, Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman accused HarperCollins of "hoping to cash in" on the BBC's intellectual property, describing the publishers as "a bunch of chancers."^[20] On September 1 the BBC's request for an injunction preventing the book from being published was turned down, effectively confirming the book's revelation that "The Stig" was indeed Collins.^[21]

East and West[link]

The company became embroiled in controversy in 1998 after it was revealed it blocked Chris Patten's (the last British governor of Hong Kong) book East and West after a direct intervention by the then-CEO of News International, Rupert Murdoch^[22]. It was later revealed by Stuart Proffitt, the editor who had worked on the book for HarperCollins, that this intervention was designed to appease the Chinese authorities- of whom the book was critical- as Murdoch intended to extend his business empire into China and did not wish to cause problems there by allowing the book to be published.^[23]. Murdoch's intervention caused both Proffitt's resignation from the company and outrage from international media outside of News International. Chris Patten later published with Macmillan Publishing, initially in America, where it carried the logo "The book that Rupert Murdoch refused to publish" ^[24]. After a successful legal campaign against HarperCollins, Patten went on to publish the book in the UK in September 1998 after accepting a sum of £500,000 and receiving an apology from Rupert Murdoch. ^[25]

eBooks[link]

In March 2011, HarperCollins announced it would distribute eBooks to libraries with DRM enabled to delete the item after being lent 26 times.^[26][27] HarperCollins has drawn criticism of this plan, in particular its likening eBooks, which are purely digital, to traditional paperback trade books, which wear over time.^[28][29]

See also[link]

Children's literature portal

• COBUILD – a research facility set up by Collins in conjunction with the University of Birmingham.
• Harper's Magazine – a separately owned magazine, although begun by the original Harper & Brothers.
• The Big Six publishing companies:
  • HarperCollins, Hachette, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Penguin Putnam, Random House and Simon & Schuster^[30]
• List of largest UK book publishers

References[link]

External links[link]

• HarperCollins Publishers India
• HarperCollins Publishers US
• HarperCollins Speakers Bureau
• HarperCollins Publishers UK
• Collins UK
• HarperCollinsChildrens US
• HarperCollins Publishers AUS
• HarperCollins Publishers CAN
• Zondervan
• Collins English Dictionary online Collins English dictionary and thesaurus (free online lookup)
• Times World Atlases official website published by Collins Geo
• Fontana Modern Masters a groundbreaking series of pocket guides on eminent writers, philosophers and other thinkers, published by Collins under its paperback imprint, Fontana Books, in the 1970s

Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton at Harvard University (April 18, 2002)
Born	John Michael Crichton (1942-10-23)October 23, 1942 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	November 4, 2008(2008-11-04) (aged 66) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Pen name	John Lange Jeffery Hudson Michael Douglas
Occupation	Author, film producer, film director, screenwriter, television producer
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	Harvard College Harvard Medical School
Period	1966–2008
Genres	Action, adventure, science fiction, techno-thriller
Notable award(s)	1969 Edgar Award
Influences Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, George Orwell, Jules Verne[1]
Signature
www.crichton-official.com

John Michael Crichton ( /ˈkraɪtən/; rhymes with frighten;^[2] October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008), best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted into films. In 1994, Crichton became the only creative artist ever to have works simultaneously charting at #1 in television, film, and book sales (with ER, Jurassic Park, and Disclosure, respectively).^[3]

His literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his future history novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and science background. He was the author of, among others, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Travels, Sphere, Rising Sun, Disclosure, The Lost World, Airframe, Timeline, Prey, State of Fear, Next (the final book published before his death), Pirate Latitudes (published November 24, 2009), and a final unfinished techno-thriller, Micro, which was published in November 2011.^[4]

Early life and education[link]

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John Michael Crichton was born in Chicago Illinois,^[5][6][7][8] to John Henderson Crichton, a journalist, and Zula Miller Crichton, on October 23, 1942. He was raised on Long Island, in Roslyn, New York,^[2] and had three siblings: two sisters, Kimberly and Catherine, and a younger brother, Douglas.^{[citation needed]} Crichton showed a keen interest in writing from a young age and at the age of 14 had a column related to travel published in The New York Times.^[3] Crichton had always planned on becoming a writer and began his studies at Harvard College in 1960.^[3] During his undergraduate study in literature, he conducted an experiment to catch out a professor whom he believed to be giving him abnormally low marks and criticizing his literary style.^[9] Informing another professor of his suspicions,^[10] Crichton plagiarized a work by George Orwell and submitted it as his own. The paper was returned by his unwitting professor with a mark of "B−".^[11] His issues with the English department led Crichton to switch his course to biological anthropology as an undergraduate, obtaining his A.B. summa cum laude in 1964.^[12] He was also initiated into the Phi Beta Kappa Society.^{[citation needed]} He went on to become the Henry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellow^{[citation needed]} from 1964 to 1965 and Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom in 1965.^{[citation needed]}

Crichton later enrolled at Harvard Medical School when he began publishing work.^[13] By this time he had become unusually tall. By his own account, he was approximately 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m) tall in 1997.^[14][15] In reference to his height, while in medical school, he began writing novels under the pen names "John Lange"^{[citation needed]} and "Jeffrey Hudson"^{[citation needed]} ("Lange" is a surname in Germany, meaning "long", and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th-century dwarf in the court of Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of England). In "Travels", he recalls overhearing doctors discussing the flaws in his book "The Andromeda Strain", unaware that he was its author. "A Case of Need", written under the Hudson pseudonym, won him his first Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1969.^{[citation needed]} He also co-authored "Dealing" with his younger brother Douglas under the shared pen name "Michael Douglas".^{[citation needed]} The back cover of that book carried a picture, taken by their mother, of Michael and Douglas when very young.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[13] Crichton graduated from Harvard, obtaining an M.D. in 1969,^[16] and undertook a post-doctoral fellowship study at the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, from 1969 to 1970.^{[citation needed]} 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.^[13]

In 1988, Crichton was a visiting writer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.^[17]

Writing career[link]

Fiction[link]

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Odds On was Michael Crichton's first published novel. It was published in 1966, under the pseudonym of John Lange. It is a 215-page paperback novel which describes an attempted robbery in an isolated hotel on Costa Brava. The robbery is planned scientifically with the help of a Critical Path Analysis computer program, but unforeseen events get in the way. The following year he published Scratch One. The novel relates the story of Roger Carr, a handsome, charming and privileged man who practices law, more as a means to support his playboy lifestyle than a career. Carr is sent to Nice, France where he has notable political connections, but is mistaken for an assassin and finds his life in jeopardy, implicated in the world of terrorism. In 1968, he published two novels, Easy Go and A Case of Need, the second of which was re-published in 1993, under his real name. Easy Go relates the story of Harold Barnaby, a brilliant Egyptologist who discovers a concealed message while translating hieroglyphics, informing him of an unnamed Pharaoh whose tomb is yet to be discovered. A Case of Need, on the other hand was a medical thriller in which a Boston pathologist, Dr. John Berry, investigates an apparent illegal abortion conducted by an obstetrician friend which caused the early demise of a young woman. The novel would prove a turning point in Crichton's future novels, in which technology is important in the subject matter, although this novel was as much about medical practice. The novel earned him an Edgar Award in 1969.

In 1969, Crichton published three novels. The first, Zero Cool, dealt with an American radiologist on vacation in Spain who is caught in a murderous crossfire between rival gangs seeking a precious artifact. The second, The Andromeda Strain, would prove to be the most important novel of his career and establish him as a best-selling author. The novel documented the efforts of a team of scientists investigating a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism that fatally clots human blood, infecting the sufferer and causing death within two minutes. The microbe, code named "Andromeda", mutates with each growth cycle, changing its biological properties. The novel became an instant success, and it was only two years before the novel was sought after by film producers and turned into the 1971 film under the direction of Robert Wise and featuring Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid as Leavitt, and David Wayne. In September 2004, the Sci Fi Channel would announce a production of a miniseries, executive-produced by Ridley Scott, Tony Scott and Frank Darabont, premiering on May 26, 2008. Crichton's third novel of 1969, The Venom Business 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 snakes are simply a ruse to hide the presence of rare Mexican artifacts. In 1969, Crichton also wrote a review for The New Republic (as J. Michael Crichton), critiquing Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.^{[citation needed]}

In 1970, Crichton again published three novels: Drug of Choice, Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues and Grave Descend. Grave Descend earned him an Edgar Award nomination the following year.^[18]

In 1972, Crichton published two novels. The first, Binary, relates the story of a villainous middle-class businessman who attempts to assassinate the President of the United States by stealing an army shipment of the two precursor chemicals that form a deadly nerve agent. The second, The Terminal Man is about a psychomotor epileptic sufferer, Harry Benson, who in regularly suffering seizures followed by blackouts, conducts himself inappropriately during seizures, waking up hours later with no knowledge of what he has done. Believed to be psychotic, he is investigated, electrodes are implanted in his brain, continuing the preoccupation in Crichton's novels with machine-human interaction and technology. The novel was adapted into a film directed by Mike Hodges and starring George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard A. Dysart and Donald Moffat, released in June 1974. However neither the novel nor the film was well received by critics.^{[citation needed]}

In 1975, Crichton ventured into the nineteenth century with his historical novel The Great Train Robbery, which would become a bestseller. The novel is a recreation of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855, a massive gold heist, which takes place on a train traveling through Victorian era England. A considerable proportion of the book was set in London. The novel was later made into a 1979 film directed by Crichton himself, starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland. The film would go on to be nominated for Best Cinematography Award by the British Society of Cinematographers, also garnering an Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture by the Mystery Writers Association of America.

In 1976, Crichton published Eaters of the Dead, a novel about a tenth-century Muslim who travels with a group of Vikings to their settlement. Eaters of the Dead is narrated as a scientific commentary on an old manuscript and was inspired by two sources. The first three chapters retelling Ahmad ibn Fadlan's personal account of his journey north and his experiences in encountering the Rus', the early Russian peoples, whilst the remainder is based upon the story of Beowulf, culminating in battles with the 'mist-monsters', or 'wendol', a relict group of Neanderthals. The novel was adapted into film as The 13th Warrior, initially directed by John McTiernan, who was later fired with Crichton himself taking over direction.

In 1980, Crichton published the novel Congo, which centers on an expedition searching for diamonds in the tropical rain forest of Congo. They discover the legendary lost city of Zinj and an unusual race of barbarous gorillas. The novel was loosely adapted into a 1995 film, starring Laura Linney, Tim Curry, and Ernie Hudson. Seven years later, Crichton published Sphere, a novel which relates the story of psychologist Norman Johnson, who is required by the U.S. Navy to join a team of scientists assembled by the U.S. Government to examine an enormous alien spacecraft discovered on the bed of the Pacific Ocean, believed to have been there for over 300 years. The novel begins as a science fiction story, but rapidly changes into a psychological thriller, ultimately exploring the nature of the human imagination. The novel was adapted into the film Sphere in 1998, directed by Barry Levinson, with a cast including Dustin Hoffman as Norman Johnson, (renamed Norman Goodman), Samuel L. Jackson, Liev Schreiber and Sharon Stone.

Crichton's novel Jurassic Park and its sequels made into films would become a part of popular culture, with related parks established in places as far afield as Kletno, Poland.

In 1990, Crichton published the novel Jurassic Park. Crichton utilized the presentation of "fiction as fact", used in his previous novels, Eaters of the Dead and The Andromeda Strain. In addition, chaos theory and its philosophical implications are used to explain the collapse of an amusement park in a "biological preserve" on Isla Nublar, an island west of Costa Rica. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are brought in by billionaire John Hammond to investigate. The park is revealed to contain genetically recreated dinosaur species, including Dilophosaurus, Velociraptor, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus rex, among others. They have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA, found in mosquitoes that sucked Saurian blood and were then trapped and preserved in amber.

Crichton had originally conceived a screenplay about a graduate student who recreates a dinosaur, but decided to explore his fascination with dinosaurs and cloning until he began writing the novel.^[19] Spielberg learned of the novel in October 1989, while he and Crichton were discussing a screenplay that would become the television series ER. Before the book was published, Crichton demanded a non-negotiable fee of $1.5 million as well as a substantial percentage of the gross. Warner Bros. and Tim Burton, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Richard Donner, and 20th Century Fox and Joe Dante bid for the rights,^[20] but Universal eventually acquired them in May 1990, for Spielberg.^[21] Universal paid Crichton a further $500,000 to adapt his own novel,^[22] which he had completed by the time Spielberg was filming Hook. Crichton noted that because the book was "fairly long", his script only had about 10–20 percent of the novel's content.^[23] The film, directed by Spielberg, was eventually released in 1993, starring Sam Neill as Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler, Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm (the chaos theorist), and Richard Attenborough, as John Hammond, the billionaire CEO, of InGen. The film would go on to become extremely successful.

A mosquito preserved in amber. A specimen of this sort was the source of dinosaur DNA in Jurassic Park.

In 1992, Crichton published the novel Rising Sun, an international best-selling crime thriller about a murder in the Los Angeles headquarters of Nakamoto, a fictional Japanese corporation. The book was instantly adapted into a film, released the same year of the movie adaption of Jurassic Park in 1993, and starring Sean Connery, Wesley Snipes, Tia Carrere and Harvey Keitel. His next novel, Disclosure, published in 1994, addresses the theme of sexual harassment previously explored in his 1972 Binary. Unlike that novel however, Crichton centers on sexual politics in the workplace, emphasizing an array of paradoxes in traditional gender functions, by featuring a male protagonist who is being sexually harassed by a female executive. As a result, the book has been harshly criticized by feminist commentators and accused of anti-feminism. Crichton, anticipating this response, offered a rebuttal at the close of the novel which states that a "role-reversal" story uncovers aspects of the subject that would not be as easily seen with a female protagonist. The novel was made into a film the same year under the helm of Barry Levinson, and starring Michael Douglas, Demi Moore and Donald Sutherland.

Crichton then published The Lost World in 1995, as the sequel to Jurassic Park. It was made into a film sequel two years later in 1997, again directed by Spielberg and starring Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Vince Vaughn and Pete Postlethwaite. Then, in 1996, Crichton published Airframe, an aero-techno-thriller which relates the story of a quality assurance vice-president at the fictional aerospace manufacturer Norton Aircraft, as she investigates an in-flight accident aboard a Norton-manufactured airliner that leaves three passengers dead and fifty-six injured. Again, Crichton uses the false document literary device, presenting numerous technical documents to create a sense of authenticity. In the novel, Crichton draws from real life accidents to increase its sensation of realism, including American Airlines Flight 191 and Aeroflot Flight 593; the latter flew from Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport and crashed on its way to Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport in 1994. Crichton challenges the public perception of air safety and the consequences of exaggerated media reports to sell the story. The book also continues Crichton's overall theme of the failure of humans in human-machine interaction, given that the plane itself worked perfectly and the accident would not have occurred had the pilot reacted properly.

In 1999, Crichton published Timeline, a science fiction novel which tells the story of a team of historians and archaeologists studying a site in the Dordogne region of France where the medieval towns of Castelgard and La Roque stood. They time-travel back to 1357, to uncover some startling truths. The novel, which continues Crichton's long history of combining technical details and action in his books, addresses quantum physics and time travel directly and received a warm welcome from medieval scholars, who praised his depiction of the challenges in studying the Middle Ages.^[24] The novel quickly spawned Timeline Computer Entertainment, a computer game developer that created the Timeline PC game published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. A film based on the book was released in 2003, by Paramount Pictures, with a screen adaptation by Jeff Maguire and George Nolfi, under the direction of Richard Donner. The film stars Paul Walker, Gerard Butler and Frances O'Connor.

In 2002, Crichton published Prey, a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology; specifically nanotechnology. The novel explores relatively recent phenomena engendered by the work of the scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing. Reiterating components in many of his other novels, Crichton once again devises fictional companies, this time Xymos, a nanorobotics company which is claimed to be on the verge of perfecting a revolutionary new medical imaging technology based on nanotechnology and a rival company, MediaTronics.

In 2004, Crichton published State of Fear, a novel concerning eco-terrorists who attempt mass murder to support their views. Global warming and climate change serve as a central theme to the novel, and in Appendix I of the book, Crichton warns both sides of the global warming debate against the politicization of science.^[25] He provides two examples of the disastrous combination of pseudo-science and politics, the early 20th-century idea of eugenics, which allowed for the Holocaust, and Lysenkoism. The novel had an initial print run of 1.5 million copies and reached the #1 bestseller position at Amazon.com and #2 on The New York Times Best Seller list for one week in January 2005.^[26][27]

The last novel published while he was still living was Next, printed in 2006. The novel follows many characters, including transgenic animals, in the quest to survive in a world dominated by genetic research, corporate greed, and legal interventions where government and private investors spend billions of dollars every year on genetic research.

His last novel, Pirate Latitudes, was originally scheduled for a release date of December 2, 2008.^[28] However, it was postponed until November 24, 2009. Additionally, an unfinished novel, titled Micro,^[29] was published on November 22, 2011. The novel has been co-written by Richard Preston.^[4]

Non-fiction[link]

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Crichton's first published book of non-fiction, Five Patients, recounts his experiences of practices in the late 1960s at Massachusetts General Hospital and the issues of costs and politics within the American Healthcare Service.

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, a book which recounts his experiences of hospital practices in the late 1960s at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. 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 with a life threatening disease. In Five Patients, Crichton examines a brief history of medicine up to 1969, to help place hospital culture and practice into context, and addresses the costs and politics of the national healthcare service. As a personal friend to the artist Jasper Johns, Crichton compiled many of his works in a coffee table book, published as Jasper Johns. It was originally published in 1970, by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art and again in January 1977, with a second revised edition published in 1994.

In 1983, Crichton authored Electronic Life, a book that introduces BASIC programming to its readers. The book, written like a glossary, with entries such as "Afraid of Computers (everybody is)," "Buying a Computer," and "Computer Crime", was intended to introduce the idea of personal computers to a reader who might be faced with the hardship of using them at work or at home for the first time. It defined basic computer jargon and assured readers that they could master the machine when it inevitably arrived. In his words, being able to program a computer is liberation; "In my experience, you assert control over a computer—show it who's the boss—by making it do something unique. That means programming it....If you devote a couple of hours to programming a new machine, you'll feel better about it ever afterwards".^[30] In the book, Crichton predicts a number of events in the history of computer development, that computer networks would increase in importance as a matter of convenience, including the sharing of information and pictures that we see online today which the telephone never could. He also makes predictions for computer games, dismissing them as "the hula hoops of the '80s", and saying "already there are indications that the mania for twitch games may be fading." In a section of the book called "Microprocessors, or how I flunked biostatistics at Harvard," Crichton again seeks his revenge on the medical school teacher who had given him abnormally low grades in college. Within the book, Crichton included many self-written demonstrative Applesoft (for Apple II) and BASICA (for IBM PC compatibles) programs.

Then, in 1988, he published Travels, which also contains autobiographical episodes covered in a similar fashion to his 1970 book Five Patients.

Literary techniques[link]

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Crichton's novels, including Jurassic Park, have been described by The Guardian as "harking back to the fantasy adventure fiction of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Edgar Wallace, but with a contemporary spin, assisted by cutting-edge technology references made accessible for the general reader".^[31] According to The Guardian, "Michael Crichton wasn't really interested in characters, but his innate talent for storytelling enabled him to breathe new life into the science fiction thriller".^[31] Like The Guardian, The New York Times has also noted the boys adventure quality to his novels interfused with modern technology and science. According to The New York Times,