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 by 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
In May 2026, an unpublished manuscript by Crichton was released as the 9th John Lange novel under the title A Murder in Hollywood. It was written in 1973, the same year he was making Westworld. In it, there is a mention of a imitation old western town called Old Tucson, half hour from Tucson, AZ, where they were shooting a Western in the novel. He writes:
"In between productions they open it up to the public as a sort of mini-Disneyland attraction. You pay a few bucks to get in, and you can see a show - gunfighters duelling it out every hour, stuff like that"
Sounds like Crichton had his mind on Westworld when he wrote this...
Watching this video by train enthusiast and YouTuber Jaggo Hazzard where he jokingly suggests a connection between the name of "Somerwest World" in the UK and Westworld, I wondered if at least there was some "inspiration" for it. Here is a map of the park, as found on Butlin's Minehead Facebook group:
