Techno-Thrillers discussion

The Michael Crichton Challenge: Read any book by Michael Crichton (or one of his pen names)

Michael Crichton is author of Jurassic Park and a wide variety of techno-thrillers that have yielded many hours of great entertainment. Not all of his works had such excellent movie adaptions as Jurassic Park, ... and indeed some of them are almost cringeworthy, but he has certainly captured our imagination, and will likely inspire derivative works for years, such as the Westworld series. More recently, the emergency room series The Pitt has stood on the shoulders of the giants that came before, ... namely Crichton's original ER series.


Photo: Michael Crichton, by Jonathan Exley.

Simply post a list of what you've read here, and come back and edit your post later as you read more. Disregard the group Challenge page, which was impractically tedious. Just post your reads on this thread.

Please feel free to rate and rank the books on these lists too.

Techno-thriller lists:
  • Technothrillers: Best of All Time
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 20th Century
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 21st Century
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 1960s
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 1970s
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 1980s
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 1990s
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 2000s
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 2010s
  • Technothrillers: Best of the 2020s
  • Technothrillers: Favorite Authors

Additional Lists:
  • Best Technothrillers Ever
  • Best Science Thrillers
  • The Best of Michael Crichton

My Crichton list:

I've read most of Crichton's books … mostly in the 90s, or right when they came out, before Goodreads existed. Been rereading lately to rank them in the lists.



Books read:
- Lifetime: 24
- 2024: 1
- 2025: 14

Read < 20 years ago:
✓ (1969) The Andromeda Strain
✓ (1972) Binary
✓ (1974) Westworld
✓ (1976) Eaters of the Dead
✓ (1980) Congo
✓ (1987) Sphere
✓ (1990) Jurassic Park
✓ (1992) Rising Sun
✓ (1995) The Lost World
✓ (1996) Airframe
✓ (1999) Timeline
✓ (2002) Prey
✓ (2004) State of Fear
✓ (2006) Next
✓ (2009) Pirate Latitudes
✓ (2011) Micro
✓ (2017) Dragons Teeth
✓ (2024) Eruption

Read > 20 years ago:
A Case of Need (1968)
Five Patients (1970)
Terminal Man (1972)
The Great Train Robbery (1975)
Travels (1988)
Disclosure (1994)

TBR:
The Venom Business (1969)
Twister (1996)

I've read all of Crichton's novels, with the exception of those published under pseudonyms and the most recent posthumous release. I've recently begun to track these down to read them.

So, far in the past year I've read:
Binary,
Scratch One,
Zero Cool, and
A Case of Need.
These have been very interesting as you can see Crichton exploring different subjects and developing his craft.

I'm still looking for:
Odds On,
Easy Go,
The Venom Business,
Dealing,
Drug of Choice, and
Grave Descend.

With the recent change made by my library system, most of these are no longer available to me, so I'll have to find other ways to borrow them or buy them.