The admirable Crichton

King of the techno-thriller Michael Crichton, who brought us Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain and other frightening possibilities, is feeling much more at ease with himself these days.

The 6ft 9ins best-selling author, Hollywood director and creator of the hit TV series ER, can sleep at night; he no longer worries about scientists going too far - the case in many of his novels - and doesn't scare easily.

Part of the reason for this relatively new relaxed attitude is his extensive research into global warming, the backdrop to his latest thriller, State Of Fear.

Michael, a charming, witty man who looks much younger than his 62 years, spent three years looking at the facts and figures surrounding global warming and he has concluded that nobody really knows if it actually exists. He is expecting flak from environmental groups but isn't unduly worried.

The issues are brought to light in a taut page-turner in which a group of eco-terrorists attempt to manufacture earthquakes, underwater landslides and a tsunami to drum home to America the global warning message.

After reading a report about global warming in a scientific journal, Michael decided to look at temperature records for himself and found so many discrepancies he began to question the whole issue.

''I'm actually much happier since I did my research into this. I always had concern for my daughter and the world she would be in. It was an unspecific, nagging feeling and I wasn't really aware of it until it stopped.

''Are we inevitably on a downward march to some kind of desolation? No, we're not. I question everything. Look at the papers today. Do computers make men infertile? Maybe...''

State Of Fear is an exciting yarn which crosses the globe and sees the hero and heroine in all sorts of fixes, from plunging down an icy crevasse in Antarctica, to being struck by lightning, confronted by a mass of scorpions, stung by a deadly octopus and swept away in a man-made flash flood.

The stuff of movies, perhaps, but Michael is sceptical about whether the book will be made into a film.

''In Hollywood, everyone is so (politically) correct on this topic, it might not be. I don't know,'' he says.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, he gave up a promising career as a doctor to become a novelist and film-maker and joined the Hollywood set. His first novel, The Andromeda Strain, was made into a film and he has never looked back.

Initially he found life in Hollywood completely bizarre, compared with the studious, academic world of Harvard.

''I was unable to adjust, coming from an academic environment where people were extremely restricted in their emotional expression,'' he recalls.

''Now I was in a place where people screamed and pounded on the desk and yelled obscenities. I thought I was losing my mind. But once I decided that California was a different country, I was fine.''

Michael's talent lies in his ability to take serious, often quite heavy issues based on fact and create fictional stories around them, which appeal to the mass market.

You never read one of his novels without learning a lot on the way. He encourages debate and, in the latest one, talks about how, for generations, different societies have lived in a state of fear about one thing or another.

While little scares him, he has increased security to his property in Santa Monica, California, after he and his daughter were held at gunpoint two years ago by masked raiders.

''Two people in ski masks came in. I hardly got my head off the pillow and only had time to think, 'This is not a dream'. Then they brought my daughter in, put her in the bed next to me and tied us up. They seemed to have some idea of what they might find.''

They escaped with some watches and have never been caught, although one of the watches was recently recovered.

''I was quite casual about security before because I was under the impression that no-one knew where I lived. I was renting a very modest house. It turned out everyone knew where I was.''

He has enjoyed success with movie screenplays including Twister and Westworld, but moved away from directing for some years because it didn't fit in with family life and seeing his daughter, Taylor, from his fourth marriage to screenwriter and former actress ex-wife Anne-Marie Martin.

''I had Taylor when I was 46 and was about to start a film and I thought, if I do this film I won't see her crawl. I made the decision only to write because I didn't want to be away. Now she's getting older, I may go back to films.''

She's now 16 and Michael says he isn't a particularly protective father.

''I've always felt terror for the boys,'' he smiles. ''She's 6ft tall and very beautiful and voluptuous and she's just driving them wild.''

Taylor has been living with her mother for the past year, who lives three blocks away from Michael. Their relationship now, he says, is amicable.

His professional life has been far more successful than his private life to date. He has been married - and divorced- four times, and now lives with business magazine executive Sherri Alexander, who he has been seeing for three years.

He says his marriages didn't work, probably because for much of his career he has lived two separate lives - one of a quiet, solitary writer and the other, a more frenetic film producer and director, when he would be away a lot of the time.

''With my first wife, we were university students together, I was studying medicine, she was studying psychology and when that was over, it was over.

''The second marriage was during the period when I was in Los Angeles and she was very accustomed to movie life and all that. I was ready to have a family, but she didn't want children at that time.

''It would be impractical to imagine, or a matter of huge luck, that any single person could take the kinds of shifts that I made with any kind of synchrony.''

He met Sherri, who is 22 years his junior, on a blind date.

''Someone said, the two of you should be together because you're both very tall. She's 5ft 10ins. I've never really gone out with someone who's very tall. It's nice.''

He says she and his daughter get along very well, although he hints that there may have been a few hiccups along the way.

''My mother remarried at the age of 78. My father had been dead for two decades but even so, I found it difficult to adapt. So I'm sure it must be hard for my daughter to see me interested in someone other than her.''

He says he has no plans to marry again, but that his next novel may focus on the subject of marriage.

''Well,'' he laughs, ''I've had so many I might as well make use of it.''

* State Of Fear by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins £17.99).