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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.
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.
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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.
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
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).
"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'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 totally agree on Congo and Terminal man - interesting ideas, but they just didn't cut it and were lacking something. However, I thought Sphere was amazing and engaging. I guess it just depends on your tastes.
My favorite book of his is probably Travels, a autobiography of sorts in which Michael Crichton relates all of the wierd things he has seen in the late sixties, the seventies, and the early eighties. The cool thing is that he doesn't write it as an autobiography, but more like an explorer. It is a very cool read, pick it up if you haven't. He also has a similar book called Five Patients, in which he studies our health care system and uses five example patients to show what is good, bad, and ugly about health care.
Sapere aude!
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?
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
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.
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