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Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature technology and are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres. His novels often explore technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings, reflecting his medical training and scientific background. Crichton received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1969 but did not practice medicine, choosing to focus on his writing instead. Initially writing under a pseudonym, he eventually wrote 26 novels, including: '' The Andromeda Strain'' (1969), ''The Terminal Man'' (1972), '' The Great Train Robbery'' (1975), '' Congo'' (1980), ''Sphere'' (1987), '' Jurassic Park'' (1990), '' Rising Sun'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and one of the most prestigious and highly ranked universities in the world. The university is composed of ten academic faculties plus Harvard Radcliffe Institute. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences offers study in a wide range of undergraduate and graduate academic disciplines, and other faculties offer only graduate degrees, including professional degrees. Harvard has three main campuses: the Cambridge campus centered on Harvard Yard; an adjoining campus immediately across Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston; and the medical campus in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard's endowment is valued at $50.9 billion, making it the wealthiest academic institution in the world. Endow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sphere (novel)
''Sphere'' is a 1987 novel by Michael Crichton, his sixth novel under his own name and his sixteenth overall. It was adapted into the film '' Sphere'' in 1998. The story follows Norman Johnson, a psychologist engaged by the United States Navy, who joins a team of scientists assembled to examine a spacecraft of unknown origin discovered on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The novel begins as a science fiction story but quickly transforms into a psychological thriller, developing into an exploration of the nature of the human imagination. Plot summary A group of scientists (namely psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, zoologist Beth Halpern, astrophysicist Ted Fielding, and marine biologist Arthur Levine), along with U.S. Navy personnel, travel to a deep sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, where an enormous spacecraft has been discovered. During the descent, Levine becomes claustrophobic and is returned to the surface. The other scientists ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The First Great Train Robbery
''The First Great Train Robbery'' (known in the United States as ''The Great Train Robbery'') is a 1978 Irish heist comedy film directed by Michael Crichton, who also wrote the screenplay based on his 1975 novel '' The Great Train Robbery''. The film stars Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland and Lesley-Anne Down. Plot In 1855 Edward Pierce, seemingly a charismatic member of London's high society, is secretly a master thief. He plans to steal a monthly shipment of gold from the London to Folkestone train which is meant as payment for British troops fighting in the Crimean War. The gold is heavily guarded in two heavy safes in the baggage car, each of which has two locks, requiring a total of four keys. Pierce recruits Robert Agar, a pickpocket and screwsman. Pierce's mistress Miriam (Lesley-Anne Down) and his chauffeur Barlow (George Downing) join the plot, and a train guard, Burgess, is bribed into participation. The executives of the bank who arrange the gold transport, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coma (1978 Film)
''Coma'' is a 1978 American mystery thriller film based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Robin Cook. The film rights were acquired by director Michael Crichton, and the movie was produced by Martin Erlichmann for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The cast includes Geneviève Bujold, Michael Douglas, Elizabeth Ashley, Richard Widmark, and Rip Torn. Among the actors in smaller roles are Tom Selleck, Lois Chiles, and Ed Harris. The story was adapted again into a two-part television miniseries broadcast in September 2012 on A&E television network. Plot Dr. Susan Wheeler, a surgical resident at Boston Memorial Hospital, is devastated when her friend, Nancy Greenly, a young healthy woman, is left brain dead after undergoing a routine procedure there. Her suspicions are aroused when, soon after, another young and otherwise healthy patient also falls comatose during knee surgery. Susan investigates and discovers that over the previous year an unusual number of other fit, young patients have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer-generated Imagery
Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The images may be static (still images) or dynamic ( moving images), in which case CGI is also called ''computer animation''. CGI may be two-dimensional (2D), although the term "CGI" is most commonly used to refer to the 3-D computer graphics used for creating characters, scenes and special effects in films and television, which is described as "CGI animation". The first feature film to make use of CGI was the 1973 film '' Westworld''. Other early films that incorporated CGI include '' Star Wars'' (1977), ''Tron'' (1982), '' Golgo 13: The Professional'' (1983), ''The Last Starfighter'' (1984), '' Young Sherlock Holmes'' (1985) and ''Flight of the Navigator'' (1986). The first music video to use CGI was Dire Straits' award-winning " Money for No ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Westworld (film)
''Westworld'' is a 1973 American science fiction Western film written and directed by Michael Crichton. The film follows adult guests visiting an interactive amusement park containing lifelike androids that unexpectedly begin to malfunction. The film stars Yul Brynner as an android in the amusement park, with Richard Benjamin and James Brolin as guests of the park. The film was from an original screenplay by Crichton and was his first theatrical film as director, after one TV film. It was also the first feature film to use digital image processing to pixellate photography to simulate an android point of view.A Brief, Early History of Computer Graphics in Film , Larry Yaeger, August 16, 2002 (last update). Retrieved M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Next (Crichton Novel)
''Next'' is a 2006 satirical techno-thriller by American writer Michael Crichton. It was the fifteenth novel under his own name and his twenty-fifth overall, and the last to be published during his lifetime. Premise A number of characters, including transgenic animals, try to survive in a world dominated by genetic research, corporate greed, and legal interventions. Plot summary "This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't." Frank Burnet has contracted an aggressive form of leukemia, and undergoes intensive treatment and four years of semiannual checkups. He later learned the checkups were a pretext for researching the genetic basis of his unusually successful response to treatment, and the physician's university had sold the rights to Frank's cells to BioGen, a biotechnology startup company. As the book opens Frank is suing the university for unauthorized misuse of his cells, but the trial judge rules that the cells were "waste" and that the university could dispo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Of Fear
''State of Fear'' is a 2004 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, his fourteenth under his own name and twenty-fourth overall, in which eco-terrorists plot mass murder to publicize the danger of global warming. Despite being a work of fiction, the book contains many graphs and footnotes, two appendices, and a 20-page bibliography in support of Crichton's beliefs about global warming. Many climate scientists, science journalists, environmental groups, and science advocacy organizations dispute the presented views as being error-filled and distorted. The novel had an initial print run of 1.5 million copies and reached the #1 bestseller position at Amazon and #2 on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list for one week in January 2005. The novel itself has garnered mixed reviews, with some literary reviewers stating that the book's misrepresentation of facts and stance on the global warming debate distract it from its plot. The book is thought to have popularised the Antarcti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prey (novel)
''Prey'' is the thirteenth novel by Michael Crichton under his own name and the twenty-third overall. It was first published in November 2002, making it his first novel of the twenty-first century. An excerpt was first published in the January–February 2003 issue of ''Seed magazine.'' Prey brings together themes from two earlier Crichton best-selling novels, Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain and serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology, in particular, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and distributed artificial intelligence. The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing. Fields such as population dynamics and host-parasite coevolution are also at the heart of the novel. Film rights to the book were purchased by 20th Century Fox. Plot summary The novel is narrated by protagonist Jack For ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Timeline (novel)
''Timeline'' is a science fiction novel by American writer Michael Crichton, his twelfth under his own name and twenty-second overall, published in November 1999. It tells the story of a group of history students who travel to 14th-century France to rescue their professor. The book follows in Crichton's long history of combining science, technical details, and action in his books, this time addressing quantum and multiverse theory. The novel spawned Timeline Computer Entertainment, a computer game developer that created the ''Timeline'' PC game published by Eidos Interactive in 2000. Additionally, an eponymous film based on the book was released in 2003. Plot In northern Arizona near Corazón Canyon, a married couple driving through the desert encounter an elderly man. They take him to a hospital in Gallup, New Mexico. Hospital staff learn that he works for the company ITC. After he suddenly dies, an autopsy reveals that he had unexplainable abnormalities in his blood vessels. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airframe (novel)
''Airframe'' is a novel by the American writer Michael Crichton, his eleventh under his own name and twenty-first overall, first published in 1996, in hardcover, by Knopf and then in 1997, as a paperback, by Ballantine Books. The plot follows Casey Singleton, 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 56 injured. ''Airframe'' remains one of Crichton's few novels not adapted to film. Crichton stated this was due to the great expense needed to make such a film. The novel's dense technical details for the accident investigation may also have hindered cinematic adaptations. Plot summary Over the Pacific Ocean, TransPacific Airlines Flight 545 experiences severe pitch oscillations, leading to dozens of injured passengers and several deaths. The plane, a Norton Aircraft N-22, has an excellent safety record, and the ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Lost World (Crichton Novel)
''For the original novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, see here'' ''The Lost World'' is a 1995 science fiction action novel written by Michael Crichton, and the sequel to his 1990 novel ''Jurassic Park''. It is his tenth novel under his own name and his twentieth overall, and it was published by Knopf. A paperback edition () followed in 1996. In 1997, both novels were re-published as a single book titled ''Michael Crichton's Jurassic World'', which is unrelated to the 2015 film of the same name. Plot summary In August 1993, four years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, chaos theorist and mathematician Ian Malcolm - who is revealed to have survived the events of the previous novel - encounters and reluctantly agrees to team up with wealthy paleontologist Richard Levine. The two men attempt to search for a "lost world" of dinosaurs following rumors of strange animal corpses washing up on the shores of Costa Rica. They learn of Site B on Isla Sorna, the "production facility" where ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
