Michael Crichton Wrote “State of Fear” & Dies Within 3 Years of It Being Published

In His Own Words

I didn’t want to write it. I decided I wouldn’t write it. I had breakfast with a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in 30 years and I told them my dilemma and he said no, you have to write it.

I said I might get killed for this.

He said, no, you have to write it. I would like to be able to say that as a result of that conversation I decided to write it. I didn’t. I went home and I thought, you know, I’m not writing this. It doesn’t matter. Keep my opinion to myself. I started to work on something else and I felt like a coward and I thought what are you going to do? You have looked at the data and you really believe that it’s in effect but not something that we as human beings should be worrying about. […] It’s low on the totem pole. We ought to be taking care of disease. We ought to be taking care of world hunger. We ought to be taking care of a lot of things before we do this.

John Michael Crichton 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 are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. Wikipedia

Born: October 23, 1942, Chicago, IL

Died: November 4, 2008, Los Angeles, CA

In His Own Words

My way of thinking about this is: The United States was organized as a government by a bunch of really smart people, and one of the core principles of the way they organized it was checks and balances. They had institutions that were really either opposed to one another or in some way monitoring and tolerating a certain level of conflict. When I look at modern society today, I see politicians and media and lawyers. Don’t forget, we have three-quarters of all the lawyers in the entire planet—they’re a phenomenally powerful group. These three really have a stake in the promotion of ongoing fears and crises. There is no countervailing institution that has its purpose, or has a reason to stand up and say, “No. don’t be afraid of that one. No that one’s fake. No, don’t be buying into that.” The poster child for false fears is of course, Y2K, which is recent enough that most people can still remember it. For months—years, really,—we heard fears expressed about what terrible things were going to happen: airplanes were going to drop out of the sky, financial markets were going to collapse. People sold their houses, they withdrew all their money, they moved to higher ground, they bought guns. Nothing happened.

John Michael Crichton 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 are usually within the science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction genres, and heavily feature technology. Wikipedia

Born: October 23, 1942, Chicago, IL

Died: November 4, 2008, Los Angeles, CA