It’s the birthday of Michael Crichton (1942-2008), author of numerous bestselling technological thrillers and one of surely few authors ever to have a dinosaur named after him, a species of squat little ankylosaur. (Actually I have no idea how many authors have had dinosaurs named after them. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

Crichton was born in Chicago but grew up on Long Island, the oldest of four. He graduated from Harvard in 1964 with an anthropology degree, taught for a year at Cambridge, and then returned to Harvard for med school, writing on the side to help pay the bills. By “writing on the side” I mean that he wrote four novels in his three years of medical school, one of which, A Case of Need (1968), was his first medical thriller and won the Edgar Allen Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. (There just isn’t enough to *do* in med school.) In 1969, he published three novels, one of which, The Andromeda Strain, was his first bestseller and was his first published under his own name; the 6’7” Crichton had been publishing under the pseudonym John Lange, “lange” meaning “long” in German. Andromeda was about an extraterrestrial microorganism that could kill humans in two minutes.

In 1970, Crichton finished up his postdoc work at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and also published three more novels, like you do. (I feel dizzy and slightly sick—hopefully a case of raging envy and not extraterrestrial microorganisms.) As he continued publishing at an insane rate into the 70s and 80s, his novels began to be made into movies left and right: The Terminal Man (1972), The Great Train Robbery (1974, film starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland), Congo (1980, Laura Linney), Sphere (1987, Dustin Hoffman). And then in 1990 Crichton published Jurassic Park, a big huge freakin’ T-rex-sized blockbuster that forever changed the lives of anyone with boy children. The novel spawned a whole series of books and movies and video games and Lego sets even now scattered across our family room floor, and for our family movie night this weekend we’ll be on the couch watching genetically-enhanced hybrid dinosaurs run amok amidst erupting volcanoes. Yes, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) is now available for streaming. It’s maybe not going to win an Academy Award but you gotta love Chris Pratt, right?

I think what Crichton was trying to say, throughout his incredibly prolific and imaginative career, is that THE SCIENTISTS HAVE GONE TOO FAR AND NOW THERE’S HELL TO PAY.

Crichton married five times (let’s try to keep it to three and under, people) and died of cancer at the age of 66. Two manuscripts were discovered after his death and reconstituted with the help of DNA scientists: Pirate Latitudes came out in 2009 and Dragon Teeth in 2017.

Have a Tuesday completely devoid of dinosaurs and hot lava and stay scrupulously honest to the data.