New Michael Crichton novel is due in the fall

Associated Press

NEW YORK

A new, posthumous story of science gone wrong is coming in November from the late Michael Crichton, with help by Richard Preston.

Crichton, author of such blockbusters as “Jurassic Park” and “The Andromeda Strain,” died in 2008 and had written one-third of “Micro,” a thriller about a biotech company in Hawaii and the graduate students who end up stranded and endangered in a rain forest.

Preston, known for his best-selling nonfiction work about the Ebola virus, “The Hot Zone,” used Crichton’s outline, reference materials and notes to finish the book.

Publisher HarperCollins said “Micro” would be “a high-concept thriller in the vein of ‘Jurassic Park.”’

Preston said he was immediately captivated by Crichton’s manuscript. “Michael was writing at the top of his game, with a grand sense of adventure, into an eerie world that seems almost beyond imagining,” Preston said.

“For me, it was an irresistible challenge to finish the novel, and I was driven by a desire to honor the work of one of our time’s most visionary authors.”