“A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.”

American author and filmmaker

John Michael Crichton was an American author and filmmaker. He is best known for novels and screen stories that blend science fiction, techno-thriller, and medical fiction, and for work that sold more than 200 million copies worldwide. His fiction often examines technology, biotechnology, and the effort to control nature, usually with dangerous or disastrous results. Many of his books draw on medical or scientific ideas, and several focus on genetic modification, hybridization, paleontology, or zoology.