Richard Preston

Richard Preston is an American science writer and novelist best known for The Hot Zone, his bestselling nonfiction account of Ebola and other filoviruses, which helped establish him as one of the most trusted popular-science voices writing about outbreak biology and infectious disease. That expertise led Michael Crichton's estate to select Preston to complete Micro, a nanotechnology thriller Crichton left unfinished in manuscript form at his death in 2008, drawing on the same rigorous, research-grounded approach to hard science that had defined Preston's own nonfiction career. Completing another author's unfinished manuscript required Preston to match Crichton's close-third narration and his signature technique of treating scientific exposition as suspense rather than lecture, extending Crichton's premise of feral, out-of-control nanotechnology into a finished thriller consistent with the tone of Crichton's other work. Preston has written extensively elsewhere on biology, technology, and scientific ethics across both fiction and nonfiction, including The Cobra Event, a novel about bioterrorism, and The Demon in the Freezer, a nonfiction account of smallpox. His scientific background and reputation for meticulous research made him a natural, credentialed choice to bring Crichton's final manuscript to publication in a way that honored the technical rigor for which Crichton himself was known.