Authorship, Co-Authorship, and Multiple Authorship

In this article, I use the example of the novel Micro, authored by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, to tease out the relationships between an author and his work and with other authors of that work. The case presents a complication for a number of contemporary views on authorship and co-authorship, which suggest that Crichton is either not an author of the novel or an author but not a co-author-both, I suggest, are counterintuitive views. After working through the leading views on the topic, I present my own view of authorship, co-authorship, and multiple authorship, centrally resting on issues of power, responsibility, and creation.