Best-selling author Michael Crichton, who created a fictional world of dinosaurs, has died in Los Angeles from cancer. He was 66.
His books were translated into 30 languages. They included Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain and State of Fear.
He was also the creator of MTV medical drama ER, for which he won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer's Guild of America Award.
Crichton was a distinctive figure in the entertainment business. His first best-seller, The Andromeda Strain, was published in 1969 while he was still a medical student at Harvard Medical School.
He also wrote a story about a 19th-century train robbery, called The Great Train Robbery, and then directed the 1979 film version with Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland.
Both Jurassic Park, about a world of dinosaurs, and its sequel, The Lost World, were among the top-grossing films of the 1990s.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for Jurassic Park and for the 1996 tornado thriller Twister.
