Scare tactics
Ten ways that Michael Crichton touched popular culture
Last Updated: Thursday, November 6, 2008 | 11:03 AM ET
By Sarah Liss, CBC News
Author, screenwriter, director and doctor Michael Crichton had a profound impact on the entertainment world. (Jim Cooper/Associated Press) Popular author, screenwriter, television producer and medical doctor Michael Crichton died Nov. 5 at age 66, after a private battle with cancer. The Renaissance man had a profound impact on the entertainment world — mostly good, but occasionally dubious. Here are Crichton’s 10 enduring contributions to popular culture.
1. The Andromeda Strain. This cautionary novel was the first book Crichton published under his own name. Released in 1969, this twisty tale follows a team of scientists investigating a creepy mutant microorganism that’s dropped down from outer space. The writer played with a virus as a symbol (microscopic disease molecules = ominous, abstract global threat) a decade before Susan Sontag released her seminal text Illness As Metaphor.
2. Deep-seated distrust of green crusaders. No, not martians. Crichton was a longtime critic of the environmentalist movement — he compared tree-huggers to religious zealots — and repeatedly questioned the veracity of global warming. In 2003, he even presented a paper at the California Institute of Technology entitled “Aliens Cause Global Warming,” which may or may not have helped him earn the ire of Al Gore, who (subtly) slammed Crichton in a 2007 U.S. House committee meeting. (Seriously, since when does Al Gore get mad?)
3. E.R. Crichton was a co-creator and executive producer of the long-running prime-time medical drama, which takes a bow this year, after a staggering 15 seasons. Crichton injected a heady dose of hard science and insider jargon into a TV genre that often tends toward soapy sentimentality. His participation lent E.R. an air of egghead authority that’s still unrivalled by most, if not all, of its competitors.
(Knopf) 4. Jurassic Park. This ambitious tale of a prehistoric theme park gone awry transformed the humble dinosaur — long an obsession for pre-pubescent boys and tweedy paleontologists — into a major cultural moment. Crichton’s novel flagged the perils of DNA engineering and man’s attempts to conquer nature. The story also inspired one of the most iconic book covers of the 20th century. (Thanks, Chip Kidd!)
5. He had a dinosaur named after him. Around 2002, the fossilized remains of a Cretaceous-era ankylosaur were discovered in China. The beast was officially dubbed the Crichtonsaurus, in recognition of Jurassic Park. The prehistoric creature’s full name is actually Crichtonsaurus bohlin; the writer shared the honour with a Swedish scientist.
6. Westworld. Written and directed by Crichton, this 1973 interstellar sci-fi-Western (slated to be remade in 2009) was the first film to use two-dimensional CGI technology. It also deserves mention for introducing the world to the awesomely absurd spectacle of Yul Brynner as a robot cowboy.
7. He was one of the fathers of the techno-thriller. With The Andromeda Strain, Crichton helped lay the groundwork for a sci-fi hybrid genre that combines meticulous factual details with intense anxiety around technology and man-made global chaos. Crichton’s medical background allowed him to deftly fold in themes like genetic engineering and virulent epidemics (which likely led to a generation of paranoid, information-saturated hypochondriacs). Crichton arguably did more to popularize the mass-market medical thriller than anyone –save for possibly Robin Cook, whose book Coma Crichton turned into a film.
(Warner Home Video) 8. Disclosure. In this controversial 1994 novel, a dot-com exec’s life is thrown into shambles when he’s accused of sexual harassment by his spurned ex (basically a glorified vagina dentata). Several years later, the book was turned into a film starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore. Though the anti-feminist undertones could be viewed as loathsome, the story epitomized an ethos that lurked beneath the surface of the cutthroat corporate jungle of the late ’80s and early ’90s. According to Crichton, his gender-flipping conceit was intended to reveal hidden nuances in the subject matter, not slam feminism — though he did precisely that when he attacked Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Woman as unsubstantiated nonsense.
9. Amazon. In 1984, Crichton teamed with future E.R. producer John Wells to develop the videogame Amazon. The computer program was very popular. It represented a breakthrough in the medium for the way it incorporated visuals and sound, expanding the staid format of text-based adventure games.
10. A multi-platform hat trick. At some juncture in 1994, Crichton became the first (and still only) entertainment figure to have the top-ranked book (Disclosure), the top-ranked film (Jurassic Park) and the top-ranked TV show (E.R.) in the U.S.
Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.
