Michael Crichton, the novelist and creative force behind the television series ER, has died. He was 66 and had cancer.
Best known for the novel Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World, he was regarded as the father of the "techno thriller", entertaining readers with modern-age nightmares involving rogue scientists and the consequences of technology turning against humans.
But along with forging a career as a film director and writer who sold more than 150m books, he also made his presence felt in the global warming debate by endorsing controversial theories at odds with the majority of scientific opinion on climate change, and even gaining the ear of President George Bush.
His fame reached a peak in the mid-90s, when he brought dinosaurs back to life in the most popular film of the time, Jurassic Park, as well as enjoying a number one bestseller, Disclosure, and a number one TV series, the Emmy award-winning ER.
Born in Chicago in 1942, he was the eldest of four children and grew up on Long Island, although early years were spent in smalltown Colorado after his father, the editor of a New York advertising journal, went to fight in the second world war.
At the age of 14 he had an article published in the New York Times travel section, and he wrote for his student newspaper at Harvard, where he studied English but switched to anthropology and later studied medicine. His breakthrough novel, in 1969, was The Andromeda Strain, which featured a space virus unleashed on Earth and was sold to Hollywood.
Crichton was soon bringing his own vision straight to the screen, directing Westworld, about a wild-west theme park where technology goes out of control, but it was Jurassic Park that made his name. The film adaptation was directed by Steven Spielberg and grossed more than $900m worldwide, breaking boundaries with its special effects depicting dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric DNA.
Drawing on his medical experience, he then turned to television and created the acclaimed hospital drama ER.
Crichton's own life was often the stuff of thrillers: he came face to face with armed robbers in his Santa Monica home the year after he narrowly missed being on one of the planes used in the September 11 2001 attacks. Four marriages ended in divorce; the last one cost him a settlement of £20m.
In 2004 Crichton published State of Fear, an environmental thriller portraying global warming as a scientific hoax used to justify acts of eco-terrorism. Environmentalists accused him of blurring fiction with fact. Nonetheless, he was invited to the White House for a discussion with a man said to be among the book's fans: George Bush.
In an interview last year the writer told the Observer what kept him awake at night: "Unfortunately, my nightmares are disappointingly dull: I can't get the computer code right; I can't find my way through the train station; I am trapped at a tedious cocktail party and can't leave; I can't remember the names of people I meet. Ordinary life events."
A new novel by Crichton had been tentatively scheduled to come out next month, but publisher HarperCollins said the book was postponed indefinitely.
A statement issued by Crichton's family last night said: "Through his books, Michael Crichton served as an inspiration to students of all ages, challenged scientists in many fields, and illuminated the mysteries of the world in a way we could all understand."
Michael Crichton - October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008
