JURASSIC WORLD

Undoubtedly, Jurassic Park is what made Michael Crichton most famous. He wrote the novel and a sequel The Lost World (the only case in which he wrote a sequel to one of his works), got involved in the screenwriting of the movie and is credited as creator of the characters in all five sequel films that completed the franchise. The second film took the title of his second novel, but followed a completely different storyline. Long before Jurassic World was chosen to be the title for the second trilogy, an edition of both novels in one volume used this title.
















A short film was set between JW: Fallen Kingdom and JW: Dominion, titled Battle at Big Rock. It shows dinosaurs roaming free and attacking a camping site, as a consequence of the liberation of the dinosaurs at the end of the 5th film:



Michael Crichton revisited the world of dinosaurs in his unpublished manuscript that was released posthumously as the novel Dragon Teeth. Unlike his other novels, this one is based on real events in the context of the competitive hunt for dinosaur remains in the American West in the 1870s.

Michael Crichton's contribution to the popularization of paleontology was honored by the scientific community by naming a dinosaur after him: the Crichtonsaurus Bohlini:





The Jurassic Park phenomenon sparked an incredible range of  merchandise, toys, games, apparel, clothing, gadgets and collector items that are still today popular and very much part of popular culture everywhere. 






WESTWORLD

Long before Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton had already used the theme park setting for another cautionary tale about robots and artificial intelligence going rogue. It started as a screenplay, which Michael Crichton directed himself as the movie Westworld. It was the first movie ever to use computer generated graphics. Without his involvement, it was followed bu a (terrible) sequel titled Futureworld and an (even worse) TV series called Beyond Westworld, of which only three out of its five episodes were aired before the show was cancelled.


 In 2016, Jonathan Nolan brought back Westworld in a reboot set 40 years after the first movie (the same time that passed in real life). Just as the first film, this 4-season TV series was ahead of its time in the way it addressed societal issues related to robotics and artificial intelligence. See for example  https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jspc_00030_1 




Hospital worlds

Chicago County General is Michael Crichton's best known hospital world. Although he wrote the pilot episode in 1974, it wasn't until 20 years later that Drs Mark Greene, John Carter, Doug Ross or Peter Benton became familar faces for TV viewers for 15 seasons.


However, Michael Crichton's experience as a medical student took place at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Based on this Experience in 1970 he had already written the non-fiction book "Five Patients. The Hospital Explained". A previous novel from 1968 initially written under pseudonym, "A Case of Need", and made into a film under the title "The Carey Treatment" (1972) is also set in a hospital, as is  Robin Cook's "Coma", whose film adapation he wrote and directed in 1978. I would also add "The Terminal Man" (novel, 1972; film 1974) to Crichton's hospital worlds, as it deals specifically with issues around neurosurgery.
 
      

On a personal note, "A Case of Need" was the first Michael Crichton novel I ever read, back in 1994 during a summer in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I borrowed a copy at the Niels Bohr Institute. That wasthe beginning of the journey that has taken me to read/watch everything by and about Michael Crichton I could find and that is listes on this website.