Birthday: Michael Crichton, who said, "I am certain there is too much certainty in the world."

John Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

Author

He was both freakishly tall- he topped out at 6’9”- and freakishly smart, publishing an article in The New York Times when he was 14.

Michael Crichton went to Harvard to be a writer. After recurring spats with a professor Crichton felt graded artificially low, he submitted an essay by George Orwell under his name. His teacher gave it a B-, and Crichton switched his major to biology/anthropology.

He graduated top of his class, won a travel scholarship, and lectured on anthropology at Cambridge University. Crichton returned to Harvard Medical School, graduated, did his residency and a fellowship year at the Salk Institute, and settled down to write books. HIs works emphasized technology and science gone awry to create thrills and menace; in one about air safety- Airframe- Crichton included pages and pages of fake but realistic design specs and blueprints.

He set a blistering pace: five novels in 1966; two in 1968; three in 1969; three in 1970; and two in 1972. One of his early books, The Andromeda Strain, was a hit and made a successful movie. After the success of 1974’s The Great Train Robbery, Crichton decided he could direct the film version himself, and pursued a serious side career as screenwriter and director for the rest of his life.

The 1990s saw Crichton soar into the stratosphere: his Jurassic Park books made him several fortunes alone. In 1994 he became the first American to have, at one time, the #1 TV show (ER); the #1 film (JUrassic Park); and the #1 bestselling book (Disclosure). Estimates of his income ran as high as $100 million per year.

A workaholic, he spent six to seven weeks outlining each of his 27 novels, then put himself on a strict writing schedule. This had some collateral fallout: he was married five times and forgot to update his estate planning documents to include the child his last wife was pregnant with when he fell ill with lymphoma and died. The wife made a $7 million claim under her prenup; Crichton’s daughter went to court to remove her as an estate executor, since wife Sherri’s son stood to inherit a third of the estate and Sherri was his guardian, which could have invalidated the prenup. Crichton’s last book, left unfinished, was completed by another author and published in 2008. With that, the world’s tallest goose laid his last golden egg.

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