The late Michael Crichton, probably one of the most well known contemporary sci-fi writer due to the success of Jurassic Park, deserves a thread of his own. He has written more then 20 books over 30+ years, few compared to machines like Stephen King, but prolific non the less. Most of his early books were written under a pen name and may not be very well known, but his latter books were mostly blockbusters, with numerous films made from them. More on him at wikipedia.

Books written as Michael Crichton:

The Andromeda Strain
The Terminal Man
The Great Train Robbery
Eaters of the Dead
Congo
Sphere
Jurassic Park
Rising Sun
Disclosure
The Lost World
Airframe
Timeline
Prey
State of Fear
Next

I'll try to write some reviews for these books later on in the thread. Feel free to chip in a review or two if you're a fan as well.

A fellow fan! To be honest, I don't have timeline myself. I heard it was kinda 'meh' and never got down to buying it. The rest of the books are OK. Prey was good. State of Fear is abit controversial because of the whole global warming issue. Next was actually disappointing - I somehow felt it lacked a plot, a protagonist, and a clear direction. Instead of was a bunch of stories chained together at the end. In the end it just turned out to be a pamphlet warning us about the dangers of genetic engineering.

Am now waiting for his posthumous book.

As promised, here's the first review of Crichton's books:

The Andromeda Strain

This was the first sci-fi thriller Crichton wrote, and a remarkable effort for a first novel. The basic plot is based on the premise 'what if our space probes and astronauts were to accidentally carry back an alien microorganism'. The novel starts with the retrieval of a fallen low orbit probe in a small American town, Piedmont. It doesn't take long for the agents dispatched to collect the probe to realize the town has died, and they follow suit soon enough.

What follows is a dramatic recount of a week in a high tech underground lab, where four scientist work to find out what was contained within the probe, and seek a cure. Together with them are the only two survivors from Piedmont - an old man with a drinking problem and a child with colic, two highly different individuals that somehow share a trait making them immune to the alien microorganism.

The book climaxes as the team realizes the microorganism has spread above ground, and that they are running out of time to save humanity. A secret from one of the team members complicates matters further, delivering a explosive end to the book.

It is in this book that Crichton first showcases his 'fiction as a real event' style of writing. He peppers his book with memos, declassified documents, computer printouts etc, oft times making the reader wonder if the event actually happened. He would later use this style of writing in most of his books to great effect, especially his masterpiece: Jurassic Park, but that is a review for another day.

From what I gather, the book will indeed see posthumous publication, sometime in the middle of 2009.

Mmhmm, Crichton was also a profilic TV/film producer. ER is probably his most well known series, but he has worked on most of the film adaptions of his books, as well as films like Westworld and Twister.