Michael Crichton, the six foot nine summa cum laude graduate of Harvard and Harvard Medical School, creator of E.R., and writer of books such as Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, died “after a courageous and private battle with cancer” yesterday.  (I don’t think I need to quote Patton Oswalt’s bit about obituary writers here, but I’ll attach it after the jump.)

Crichton wrote a ridiculous amount of books, some of which I even read (!).  My favorite was probably The Great Train Robbery.  My favorite story about Michael Crichton himself?

At 14, he had an article in the New York Times travel section and wrote for the student newspaper at Harvard, where he studied English, only to find his writing style damned by a tutor with grades of C+. In what he describes as a scientific experiment, Crichton submitted an essay by George Orwell under his own name. It was marked B-. [Guardian]

Anyway, I imagine it probably sucks for a guy who writes about being able to clone dinosaurs and create pigeon-sized elephants with genetic engineering to find out he’s going to die of cancer.  Seriously?  You can’t cure this yet?  What the hell have you fags been doing back there? …In conclusion, dino-pope.