Published in 1969, The Andromeda Strain established Michael Crichton as a major best-selling novelist whose popularity was due as much to the timing and significance of his subject matter as to the quality of his writing and the accuracy of his research. As Crichton had correctly judged, America was ready for a tale that treated both the rationalism and the paranoia of the Cold War scientists' response to a biological threat. From that first success onwards, Crichton continued to embrace disagreeable or disturbing topical trends as a basis for exciting, thriller-related fiction. That several have been made into highly commercial movies, and that he himself expanded his career into film and television, has made him a cultural fixture in late twentieth-century America. If this was in doubt, his position was cemented by ER, the monumentally successful television series, which he devised.

Born on October 23, 1942 in...