Prey

Rating:
Summary: This book was amzing, I loved it.
Review: This book really pulled me in, it left me wondering what was going to happen at the end of every chapter. I read the book in two nights because I didn't want to put it down. If you like science/action/mystery and suspense, this is a must read.

Rating:
Summary: Short...but Thumbs Up!
Review: Prey, the latest offering from Michael Crichton, could almost be called "Crichton-Lite", but it still delivers with a fast-paced, action-packed tale of techno-terror.

In Prey, Crichton visits the field of nanotechnology, which means really little computers. In this case, the tiny computers are being developed for medical purposes, and of course for a couple good ol' fashioned military applications. The microscopic computers are programmed to function as a swarm, since one is too small to be effective at anything.

Of course, everything goes to heck when the swarm escapes and goes berserk.

The story is told in the words of Jack Forman, an unemployed but brilliant computer programmer. Being first-person, it's a departure from Crichton's usual narration, but feels much the same. It's less formal, but the end result is a pretty lively story that is never dragged down with too much scientific jargon. The strong moments of the story are quite gripping, making the book hard to put down. It's a quick read, good for a couple weekend afternoons, but sometimes that's nice.

Still, it's far from his best book. The ending was a little crazy, some parts were quite predictable, and some of his explanations left a lot to pure fantasy. I'd say that despite my initial impressions, by the time I finished this book, I felt it was probably his most far-fetched aside from Timeline. Needless to say, I'm not very fearful of the "Prey" scenario coming to pass anytime soon. But I do recommend it to anyone looking for a quick, engaging read.

Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Money
Review: My opinion of Michael Crichton has sunk to a new low. This book reads like a sloppy first draft from someone who decided it was time to cash in on the current public and media interest in nanotechnology.

From a literary perspective, why would anyone care about the two-dimensional characters in this book, much less the gauzy excuse for a plot and sleep-inducing ending?

If viewed purely from a "hard science" angle, the book also fails miserably because the author couldn't be bothered to provide even a half-way plausible explanation for his nanotech swarms. Anyone with background in the physical or computer sciences will find the underpinnings for this latest variation on Shelley's Frankenstein laughable.

Good books from acknowledged masters of the genre feature one or more interesting ideas, are populated with fully formed, three-dimensional characters and plot elements, and furnish the reader with believable extensions to known scientific fact. This book, however, is drivel and I'm sorry I wasted money buying the hardcover edition. I expected much better from the author of the Andromeda Strain, and it will certainly be a long time before I take a chance on another Crichton book.

Rating:
Summary: Sorry Michael, you're fired.
Review: I love Crichton.. Jurrasic Park was awesome, so was the sequel. Timeline was a blast to read. So was just about every Crichton book I have read.

I was expecting something great but sadly this book is quite badly done. You get the feeling Crichton was forced into writing a book in 2 weeks with nothing but a copy of Scientific American and a few cups of coffee.

I would have given it 1 star, but in the begining he is worried his wife is having an affair and that whole thing was very well done and actually got me riled up, so he gets a star for that.

The rest of the book is pathetic.. with morbidly ignorant money chasing bad guy, boring characters, and action scenes I can only liken to a cheesey horror flick. The whole thing was just a quick replica of Sphere at the end. In fact it was exactly like Sphere, just spruced up with less developed characters and a contrived plot.

Don't bother with this book, unless maybe someone puts a gun to you're head. In which case I reccomend you just do whatever they tell you to do.

Rating:
Summary: Crichton drives me nuts!
Review: In Prey, Michael Crichton does it again: merges action with techno-zeitgeist by bringing nanotechnology into his familiar world of brainy, regular-Joe heroes; a supporting cast of death-ready, 2-dimensional characters; and bad guys so obvious they might as well be twirling Snidely Whiplash moustaches as they violate the boundaries of nature.

It's my firm conviction that, by now, Crichton-- a very smart, very tall man, with lots of connections and money-- has created his very own, personalized Novel Writing Machine full of evolutionary algorithms and whatnot such that, when he gets an idea (and he almost always has A+ ideas) he can shoot an outline and a few key concepts into his NWM and set it to cook for, oh, a week. In the meantime, he sells the movie rights and adjusts characters according to producers' casting concerns.

Which is my smart... way of saying this book, like many of his others, has a great "hook" to use a music industry term and one that continues to rook me in, despite the knowledge that I will be forced to read as one stock character after another (or, in Prey, the main character) describes in giant blocks of exposition how it is the science works. And, you know, all these tiny robots are cool but I could read Engines of Creation by Eric Drexler and care more about the characters... and it's non-fiction.

I would recommend Prey only to those who know what they're getting into, and to speed-readers with a long airplane ride ahead of them. Or to those with the constitution to become emotionally involved in soap opera plots and people.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful!
Review: This has to be one of Crichton's best. You can tell he really reasearched for this book. The scientific infomation is clear, understandable, and up to date. The action is intense. The science is facinating. The storyline is grand. If you love to read Crichton's novels than this would be a very good book to read and become an instant favorite. If you have not read any of Crichton's novels than this would be a good book to start off with. Wonderful, amazing, facinating, intense, grand, there are few words that can truly describe how great this novel is.

Rating:
Summary: Engrossing but way too technical - not Crichton's best!
Review: This was a typical Michael Crichton theme - you know, technology and science out of control due to human irresponsibility! Although engrossing, it was not my favorite Michael Crichton novel.

The whole premise of this book was based on the science of nanotechnology. My 2 major problems with the book were not the story itself (which was highly suspenseful), but with the fact that many parts got way too technical for the non-scientific layperson and there were too many different scientific elements. In addition to nanotechnology, for instance, the ideas of predator-prey relationships, evolutionary development and swarming characteristics were explored. Although these were all interesting topics and the author needed each of these elements to draw the story together, it got a bit confusing at times. I found myself skimming the super-technical parts to get to the core of the story. I also found the ending somewhat predictable.

I do think, however, that this could be adapted into a really exciting great screenplay and would translate well on the big screen (but first I want to see his book "Timeline" in the theaters! That was my favorite Crichton book!).

Rating:
Summary: A techno-thriller overburdened by having way too much techno
Review: "Prey" is Michael Crichton's latest techno-thriller with the emphasis on the technology at the expense of the thrills. Granted, I am somebody who never took Biology let along Chemistry or Physics in high school so my ability to assimilate scientific information gets maxed out at the level of "Jurassic Park." I understand the "what ifs" of finding dinosaur DNA and filling the gaps with sequences from frogs. But Crichton quickly leaves me in the dust in this novel.

After an introduction entitled "Artifical Evolution in the Twenty-first Century," which made me nervous that there might be some sort of quiz at the back of the book, we are given a glimpse at the end of the story before going back to the beginning: "Day 1, 10:04 A.M." Our hero is Jack Forman, currently an unintentional househusband but once the overseer of computer programmers attempting to solve problems by mimicking the behavior of predatory animals. Jack is staying home taking care of the three kids while his wife, Julia, is working lots of long hours at the top secret research labs of Xymos Technology. Jack is getting suspicious about her behavior (the first thing she does when she gets home is take a shower), but that seems the least of his problems when the baby starts screaming. Amanda's entire body has turned a bright, angry red despite no sign of fever or infection. The doctors are totally confounded and Amanda does not stop screaming until she is given an MRI, at which point she returns to normal.

This is a book where pretty much everything is connected, but knowing that you are seeing clue after clue paraded before your eyes is not going to do you much help in figuring out the mystery that confronts Jack. Crichton is telling the story in a first person voice and Jack constantly has to interrupt the narrative to explain the science involved in a particular plot point. Julia's company is doing something with self-replicating nano-technology, but whatever they are doing is getting way out of hand. Jack is called in as a consultant at factory in the Nevada desert to do some trouble-shooting, but quickly learns that nobody is telling him the complete truth or giving him the big picture on what is happening.

The more you know about science in general and nano-technology in particular (aside from the relevant episdoes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation") the more you are going to enjoy "Prey" for the simple reason that you will be able to understand what is going on a whole lot better than the rest of us. My gut instinct is that there is a point where the evolutionary growth of the little monsters becomes far-fetched, but I have little chance of knowing that for sure, let along of convincing anybody else. "Prey" was a book that I did not want to put down simply because I was going to have a hard time remembering all the technological aspects about what was going on when I picked the novel back up. I pity the writer who has to turn "Prey" into a film script because unless they figure out how to provide footnotes during the film audiences are going to have trouble understanding what is happening on a scientific level.

Rating:
Summary: "Every breath I take . . . "
Review: Michael Crichton recaptures his earlier ability to scare the hell out of you with the rather intricately woven, "Prey."

Jack Foreman is a software designer and designer team leader who blew the whistle on his old boss only to get fired, blackballed and currently severely unemployed. So with a totally unexpected result, he takes over the Foreman child rearing duties and becomes a "Mr.Mom" with an attitude.

The biggest problem he has is his wife, also a gifted software designer, who has recently become inattentive, ornery, flash fire tempered and guilty of unexplained absences. He begins to think that her research in artificial intelligence (AI) and as the moving force behind a 'next stage' of nanoparticles that can think themselves into an airborne camera for government snooping may be, well, more than meets the eye.

Jack gets a chance to consult with his wife's new company and arrives to see that the nanoparticles his wife has assembled, smaller than a human cell, truly have a mind of their own. Further, that they are regenerating at an alarming rate, that they are "learning" from the errors of prior generations, that they have escaped out of the company facility onto the Nevada countryside, and that they are beginning to kill animals of increasing size.

Too miniscule for the naked eye, able to slip through the cells of the human body, en masse they are able to 'chameleon' themselves into taking human form. Once in the facility, Jack realizes that the nanoparticles are now trying to get back into the facility with the intention of wiping the inhabitants out.

Kind of a mixture of "Jurassic Park" and "Andromeda Strain," with a touch of Stephen King's "Cujo." Not terribly in depth development of the characters, a constant criticism of a lot of Crichton's heroes and anti-heroes, yet offset by good scare tactics and an above average storyline.

Readers who long for the old Crichton and earlier stories won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing original, but the formula still works
Review: Michael Crichton likes to list non-fiction books that he used as source material for his novels. There is a lengthy list at the end of PREY, but he left a large category of literature out: his own back catalogue. PREY so heavily recycles Crichton's past premises, scenarios, character types, and clichés that had anybody else written it, that person would have been charged with plagiarism. The cardboard characters, always two or three steps behind the reader, are more nauseating than the intentionally gooey parts of the book, especially early on when Crichton is establishing their innocence and normalcy. Yet despite these flaws, nobody writes more suspenseful science fiction than Michael Crichton. Along with all the cliches, Crichton manages to recycle the fast pace and genuine suspensfulness of some of his better, earlier books.

Beyond copying himself, Crichton's original inspiration has always been FRANKENSTEIN. PREY, like so many of his books, is about humans pushing a hot, exotic science too far. Instead of dinosaurs or should-have-been-left-alone warrior apes in the jungle, this time the monster is a swarm of omnipotent micro-cyborgs (actually, many such swarms). All the old elements are there - the conniving female lead who is eventually consumed by the consequences of her own greed, the subtly political male (this time Crichton manages to inject a paragraph about father's rights) protagonist, the company that puts profits ahead of safety, and the team of scientists who get picked off one by one.

How many times can these ingredients make a good soup? I don't know, but the stew hasn't lost its flavor yet. Since it is impossible to read this book in more than a week, there's no major commitment in taking it on, so I felt what I got what was worth what I put into it.