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Prey
In some ways willing suspension of disbelief has to be applied less to the technology depicted and more to the relationships between our protagonists Jake and Julia. They're the typical Silicon Valley couple, all right, but oh how conveniently their relationship advances the plot. He's the between-jobs programming team manager who's specialized in code that models distributed processing and genetic algorithms. She's the cute PR talking head who is lining up funding for the revolutionary Xymos nanobots. He's the cool, loving house-dad that takes care of the cute kids. She's the always-working cold bitch who's having an affair -- isn't she? With the tanned surfing god Xymos exec we hiss at as soon as we meet him? Or is this whole plot line perhaps a little too obvious after being set up by page 18? Maybe Crichton has something a little more twisted in mind for the 350 pages that follow ...
Yep, he sure does, and as fast as helicopters can fly we're at the secretive Xymos desert lab in Nevada where nothing is as it seems. Those swirling little dust devils out there on the parking lot security cameras are considerably more menacing than Taz in a Loony Tunes cartoon, but damned if anybody will give Jack a straight answer about just how ... or especially why. Seems the escaped particles that make up the clouds have been programmed with distributed computing algorithms Jack came up with in his last job -- Xymos wants HIM to tell THEM what's going on. Uh, oh -- Jack used the concept of predator / prey stalking dynamics to keep distributed agents focused on a concrete goal.
Jack's subsequent experiences, experiments, thought processes, and realizations lead the reader into a fascinating exploration of the concept of hive mind. In one sense this is a book about prejudice -- people are the most evolved social mammals on Earth, and as such are always misinterpreting the capabilities, actions and behaviors of a swarm that has neither leaders or followers, only members. As such, Prey is a rare SF book that truly does explore a uniquely alien life form with some very interesting twists. It's also a thought-provoking possible example of Vernor Vinge's technological singularity concept.
It's a good book and it's going to make a great movie. If you just can't wait for the movie, though, no problem. Crichton's three-act structure for Prey follows the well-trod path of a trio of 50s-style sci-fi movie classics: Tremors , Them! , and Invasion of the Body Snatchers . Check 'em out and watch 'em in order after you read Prey for a fun follow-up. To include the tension of Jack and Julia's romantic triangle, watch Casablanca first ... and remember, a kiss is just a kiss, as time goes by.
You can purchase Prey from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
...to do book reviews. This is one of the best book reviews I've seen on any site for some time.
I really enjoyed THe Andromeda Strain, and thought it was superb I then read a few of his other; Congo, Terminal Man, Sphere, and couple of others whose name escape me and was not all that impressed. I have given up on him.
If anybody feels the same way I do, I can recommend this book I will then read it, else it holds no chance.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Indeed, Spielberg did a fantastic job with Jurassic Park. But the movie based on Sphere (which in my opinion is Crichton's best book) was a disaster. Although I haven't read Prey, I bet it'll be possible to make a great movie out of it, if only given to the right producers. Slim chance. I will certainly don't take for granted that such a movie turns out good....
I'm sure you didn't mean to call the author of "Frankenstein: A modern Prometheus" a hack.
Typical Crichton book: great underlying idea, 2-dimensional characters, obvious plot contrivances saved by a couple of clever twists, and chapters laid out in a way tailor made to be a blueprint for a script. It's worth a trip to the library, or buying it in paperback. Don't buy it hardcover.
>She's the always-working cold bitch
That sums up pretty much every female in every one of his books. Crichton is like Lucas, he has some great ideas, interesting twists, and generally strong plots. His character development, particularly of women, barely qualifies as one dimensional. His dialogue is laughable at best. He should come up with the ideas and let other people who can actually write do the writing part.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Man challenges nature... Man appears to be successful in challenging nature... Nature awakens and bites man in the ass!
Makes for good books though doesn't it? Jurassic Park, Congo...others.
I agree with the review, but don't consider it a bad thing. So what if he isn't a Sci-Fi writer? He is a good suspense writer. He succesfully explores social and scientific issues in a thought-provoking way. Some of the technology is a little over-the-top (including the scenes in Prey that are tailor-made for a film), but if you didn't read Jurassic Park (sp?) and come away with an appreciation for how arrogent engineers (and particularly programmers) can be, then you missed the point. And if you read Prey and don't get that it is as much a commentary on the notion of industry self-regulation and corporate governance as it is about nanotechnology, then you missed the point.
So there.
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A person of moderate zeal
I love Mr. Chrichton's novels because they're original. Not this time. Prey is a mixture of past themes: dangerous organisms at a research lab in the desert and an isolated group of people being stalked by dangerous predators. Plus a "Sixth Sense" style plot twist.
I would recommend Andromeda Strain, Eaters of the Dead, Congo, Rising Sun and Disclosure instead.
Not necessarily. Just as in the business world, not all the neat inventions make it to market. Our current hive societies (bees, ants, etc) could develop a more advanced hive mind than they already have, right? A swarm of army ants acts like one big organism as it is, and there is little that threatens it other than humans with flamethrowers. Individually the ants wouldn't be able to cross water, but the swarm knows how and it only hurts it a little to do so (a few ants drown). Who can say where this might go, given a few million years and some competition?
Sphere may be the worst book I've ever (tried) to read, but it made a reasonable (rental) movie.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
I've always thought that there are two very distinct skill involved in writing. The first is storytelling, the ability to weave a yarn that is enthralling, touching, satisfying, etc. The second is skill with the language, the ability to create a rich imaginary world, enticing to all the senses, with only the written word.
There are some writers who clearly excel at both. The first that comes to mind is Pat Conroy.
Crichton (note the correct spelling, which is used selectively in the original post) falls into a category of writers with superb storytelling skills but merely competent language skill. Also in this category is Grisham. I suspect it may even have aided them in their success; in a country where supposedly the average adult reads at a fifth grade level maybe dumbing down the language is what's needed for mass market appeal.
That said, I like Crichton's past books. Sometimes it's fun to be able to zip through a book without taxing the language processing lobes of the brain much or thinking about how the story was delivered to you. But oftentimes I leave his work feeling that the story was shovelled at me with no finesse, or style, or creativity.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
Having read the book, I can say that Crichton is just churning out yet another book in his series of pulp semi-sci-fi novels. His writing style is simplistic and requires little intelligence or thought; very few (if any) questions are asked of the reader. And all his books carry the same theme: do we take our ideas of technology too far without thinking? Crichton always says that we do, but somehow we muddle through anyway. Doesn't that imply that we really should just keep doing what we're doing?
If you actually like to have a challenging text and interesting things to think about, check out Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash.
I have two words - yard sales. Now is not really the season but you sometimes can find some good stuff for 25 cents. I personally hate yard sales but my girlfriend is an expert and she often comes back with nice gifts for me. I also recommend finding the local public library. Not only will they have a more extensive fiction section but they might also have book sales occassionally where you can also get books for under $1.
By the way, this is completely off-topic and I deserve the moderation.
It really felt like Crichton himself lost interest after the first act and had an intern finish off the story from there. He sets up the science and the mystery very nicely in the beginning, then turns it into a stupid "predator hunts prey, prey kills predator" story that's been done much better thousands of times before (even by Crichton himself). He even goes so far as to completely and intentionally ruin every possible element of suspense by dropping extremely heavy hints and using copious amounts of foreshadowing at every possible turn. By the first ten pages of the second section, I knew how the book would end and who would die.
As if the plot flaws aren't enough, Crichton chose to write this book in the first-person, which is uncommon for him. I'm not sure what his reasoning was there. At first I enjoyed the perspective; Crichton's third-person narrative tends to be one-dimensional and patronizing, and in the beginning it looked like that was going to change. But, like everything else, that too stopped being the case after the first section. It seems like Crichton really struggled with the fact that he had limited himself to being able to tell the story from only one point of view. At one point, he even goes so far as to have the narrator describe, in detail, a scene that takes place without him present, explaining it by saying that the narrator saw the events later by watching security tapes. Nevermind that he's already told us the security tapes only show ten-frame intervals from each camera and cycle through all the cameras in this huge facility, nor do they record sound (and yet, strangely, the narrator somehow heard the dialog in this particular scene).
In short, while it's not a horrible book, Prey is no Andromeda Strain and no Jurassic Park. It's not even a Lost World. It's better than Timeline, but only just barely.