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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.
Well, what do you think?
Wouldn't evolution have constructed lifeforms of this kind long ago if they were stable and competetive in a natural environment?
...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 suppose by that you mean that the female character arrogantly and ignorantly intiates a series of "bad things" that the male characters must overcome ?
I hope the microbes in this book get some lawyer while he's on the can...
I don't like spoilers, but anyone read this? I must know if there's a lawyer eating involved, and if the book is worth my time.
Thank you, slashdot folks. You have always proven yourselves helpful.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I'm sure you didn't mean to call the author of "Frankenstein: A modern Prometheus" a hack.
My uncle got me one of his books when I was in middle school. I then proceeded to read everything he ever had published that I could get my hands on.
Now I don't enjoy his books at all and I find him to be sort of behind the curve (but in terms of what the general public knows, he is still ahead of the curve).
I'd much rather read Neal Stephenson in terms of books that have a technical backing to the story. And NS wrote about nano way before MC. MC is just jumping on the bandwagon - and will likely cause a "stir" with it simply because more people read his stuff.
Generally speaking, if a lot of people read and like an author, I'm finding that I don't tend to like it.
Maybe I'm just a dick, or an elitist snob. But if a book makes the NYT bestseller list, or Oprah's list, then I steer clear of it.
(that said, I did enjoy Cold Mountain)
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I would like to see Andromeda Strain redone as another movie -- it was an excellent read and view, but I could see some major differences in how it would be adapted for today's audience. It would be great.
Click here or here.
Could someone please run demoroniser over stuff before posting it?
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That's what it looks like to me.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
I had a similar idea for a story 3 years ago. Should have copyrighted it.
Here is the correct link for the cited movie Them!
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.
It's been a few months since I finished Timeline and I'm in some serious Michael Crichton Voodoo-Science(tm) withdrawl.
Just one question, though...
If we can't figure out time travel, and we're relying on quantum theory in such a way that when we try to send someone through time the person who arrives was actually sent from a parallel reality where they do understand time travel and not actually the person we sent...why do transcription errors happen? Can't we just rely on a parallel reality where they don't have transcription errors?
>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.
That's my only problem with Crichton. It seems every book of his -- from Andromeda to Sphere to Jurassic Park -- suffers from the same abrupt ending.
I respect that the stories do end and that it's over -- but you have to look at it from a story arc. You can run the arc a number of ways, but essentially in a mystery/suspense you've got this curve that's going up and up and up, and then has a climax or two, then comes down.
I always got the feeling from his books of the curve going up, up, up, and then... flatline. No climax, just like "Oh, 300 pages, time's up." Sort of thing.
I thought it might just have been my problem with one or two of his stories, but after reading a few of them I started to feel it something more like the "Crichton Climax"(tm), (or anti-climax, if you will).
JP was his greatest book, IMHO. If they had filmed the movie exactly like the book, you would have shit your pants in the theatre!
(And the movie would have been 5 hours long.)
I've read all his books, and to me, JP stands out by far. Those others you listed (Congo, Terminal Man, Sphere) had interesting ideas, but were not his best work. I believe if you liked Andromeda Strain, you will like this book. I bought it as a present for my brother, and started reading the opening pages... next thing I knew, page 100. Whoops.
"And like that
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.
"Crichton stretches out another nano-idea" brightened my morning the other day.
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 thought it was a good book. It's not a classic, but it's not The Lost World. And it probably won't make as terrible a movie as Congo. It was a nice break from more plot heavy books: kind of techno-mindlessness and a leads to b leads to c.
Like I said, though, it just kind of came to a rather disorganized end. I'm ok with stories that don't wrap everything up, but this one just kind of petered out.
-h-
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
>I'd much rather read Neal Stephenson in terms of books that have a technical backing to the story.
I've always hated his books because to me they had no realistic technical backing and it appeared that he was trying to cover up by making things obscure/hazy/long winded. Techinical fantasy, sure.
But for realistic techinical I rather read Robert J. Sawyer.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
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 bought this book for my father for Christmas, and while waiting to be picked up from the mall, decided to sneak a peek at the first 20 pages or so. Unfortunately, I have this annoying habit of being unable to leave a book unfinished, so I plowed through the remainder of the book that night.
This post will contain minor spoilers. Read at your own risk.
If you've enjoyed Chrichton's past novels, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Prey, but it's really just a collection of tired sci-fi cliches made to look new by the addition of nanotechnology. I won't comment much on the actual science of the book, since I really don't know much about nanotech, but some of it just seemed a tad hokey. The whole Body Snatchers idea seemed both implausible and overused.
Timeline was much better; I cared about its characters a lot more, which were more fully-developed. Most of Prey's characters, especially the "hacker" types, are nothing more than Star Trek redshirts: they get few sentences of exposition, and a few chapters later, they're dead. The most interesting ones get killed off first, too. Also, all of the hacker characters fit into a broad geek stereotype: there's the quiet geek, the punk grrl geek, the fat slob geek, and the anal geek. Not much imagination there.
Overall, it's entertaining, if you don't think too much about it, but Crichton's done better.
The article talks about a "Singularity" in humankind's development, an event where man develops a machine that will outhink him. This leads to an acceleration, a new evolution, an exponential runaway beyond any hope of control.
The author explains why this will occur, how, and when; between 2005 and 2030. He also gets into ramifications of a post-Singularity world, and the paths that may lead us there, along with some pros and cons of each choice.
There are references to some works of science fiction (though none from Chriton), and a passing reference to the possibility of engendering a set of laws in the machines. Surprisingly, Asimov's Laws Of Robotics was not metioned.
His final quote is taken from Freeman Dyson:
This asks the question - when Man changes, will our God change as well?
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.
The ants in Them.
The rats in Willard.
The bees in The Swarm.
The Borg in Star Trek.
And now the nanites in Prey.
As a Slashdotter, I am grossly offended by hive-minds being consistently portrayed as the bad guys. I hereby call subliminally to all my fellow
Respectfully,
536185 of 630000
Just for once, I'd like the cute kids to be introduced only to die horribly and painfully soon after. That might make his books barely tolerable even if the rest of it is one cinematic plot device after another.
It's a good book and it's going to make a great movie.
This is my main complaint with the Crichton books in the past 10 years. All of the ones I read are basically movie scripts "disguised" as books. I read The Great Train Robbery (one of his books from the 70s) a couple years ago, and it was much better writing.
All life is a swarm. We share a common ancestor with every virus.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
But my fellow /.er we must analyze our enemy, get to know our enemy, even love our enemy so that we may thoroughly understand our enemy. Then we destroy the enemy. Not just hurt them, but put hurt them so bad that they don't get back up.
612884 of 630000
Life moves pretty fast; if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. -FB
I would agree that his fiction varied greatly in quality (compare the Real Foundation Trilogy with the sequels that he wrote ~30-40 years later, if you dare), but his non-fiction was consistently excellent.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
1. protaganist witnesses/writes/experiences something they shouldn't have.
2. Bad Guys find out and try to kill protaganist.
3. Government agency gets involved on behalf of Bad Guys.
4. Protaganist comes through by threatening to reveal Bad Guy secrets to world.
I need my fix.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I personally love every one of MC's books and own them all. He spices a touch of science fiction, but uses the same idea as Sixth Day with "the not so distant future". He takes new technologies that are more than likely going to become standard ... and puts them in his books. Some people really need to understand that there's a reason there are so many books, obviously no one is going to like them all.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Can someone recommend something to me? I just got done rereading Harry Potter (guilty pleasure), so I'm headed for the bookstore tonight. Here's sort of what I'm interested in: I'd like to read something by Niven, Gaiman, Stephenson (even the Big U), Gibson, Bret Ellis, Eric Nylund or Chuck Palahniuk, but I've already read everything they've written. I'm looking for something on that range; I'm not ready to read anything too brainy at the moment -- getting ready to embark on another Karen Armstrong book...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Now that book was terrible. First one that I had read of his that I didn't like. I was so disappointed.
Maybe I'm just looking at it through rose-tinted reading glasses but the Andromeda Strain and Congo, I thought, were two of his absolute best. Sphere was totally engrossing at first then kind of a let down. Terminal Man was certainly interesting, although I can not remember much from it being great. Never read Jurassic Park, though.
I was in high-school when I read all these though. Maybe he has lost it, however.
why run from Vincenzo?
Ever consider the acronym for Duke Nukem Forever? D(id) N(ot) F(inish)... a sign?
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
Arrogant scientists unleash a horror which gets out of control.
Hero dispatches said horror after it kills arrogant scientists.
Conclusion (voice-over): "There Are Some Things That Man Was Not Meant To Know".
I'll stick with Neal Stephenson, thanks.
at any rate, it's a hell of a book, and a stark departure from his usual works. the closest comparison is probably to The Terminal Man (incidentally one of my favorites), but only because they both deal with medical stories.
pick it up if you get a chance. amazon link
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.
Don't you hate that? I mean, you go through all the trouble and background checks and retinal scans to get to these cool secretive labs and then, almost immediately, everything goes straight to hell.
Oh well, at least that won't happen this next time. I've got this great job lined up at a place called 'Black Mesa'. I'm pretty sure everything there is on the up-and-up.
-Denor
He's extremely tall - six feet nine inches.
He's extremely rich - from movies like Jurassic Park, and especially the TV show he created, ER, one of the most successful shows in history. He's got hundreds of millions of dollars.
He was going through a nasty divorce with his wife while writing Prey, a fact which perhaps influences the good-dad-bad-mom dynamic in the early part of the book.
They use Thermite to blow up swarms of nanobots. Except thermite does not explode, only burn with a very high temperature.
He confuses photovoltaic with piezoelectric in several places, this is high-school stuff...
Many of the measurements are off. One device is described as one billionth of an inch. Only problem is that this is about the size of a single atom, and thus it's inconceivable that you could construct a nanobot this small.
His concept of "evolution" is absurd, and would appear so to anyone with even a very basic understanding of evolution. Evolution has to do with the survival of the more fit organisms. "evolution" can not be used to explain that one swarm of nanobots learn to evade the thermite after watching another nearby be anihilated by it. This is called "learning" and is not the same as evolution.
The list goes on. Frankly, for me it was enough to make the entire story more annoying than enjoyable. Everything doesn't need to be 100% realistic, but it's too stupid when a person writing about science doesn't even know high-school stuff like what a the photovoltaic effect is.