Michael Crichton is American author, producer, director, and screenwriter best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. He has an estimated net worth of $175 million.

Not unlike John Grisham, Chicago-born author-turned-director/screenwriter Michael Crichton took current events - often with a wealth of "authenticating" detail - and melded them with meticulously-constructed, gripping narratives that made him a white-hot commodity and a veritable one-man industry in Hollywood. Crichton's topical forte, however, lay not in the legal arena but in that of cutting-edge science. The son of an Advertising Age executive editor, Crichton grew up as the oldest in a family with four children, and reportedly (as one who reached 6' 7" at age 13 and grew to a towering height of 6', 9" as an adult) felt socially awkward and a bit out of place.

Recreationally, Crichton immersed himself in pop-culture and fell in love with Hitchcock. He entered Harvard as an undergraduate, and then Harvard Medical School, where he began turning out sensationalistic novels under various pseudonyms and used those efforts to pay his tuition (despite criticism from at least one literary professor that his work was shallow and commercial). He graduated from med school in 1969, but by that time began to realize that a traditional medical career would be an ill fit, given his imaginative and creative leanings.

Crichton died of cancer at age 66 in early November 2008, about five months after the premiere of a cable television remake of his Andromeda Strain.

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