Prey

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing book
Review: The first book by Michael Crichton I watched adapted for television was the Andromeda Strain. His stories are filled with intriguing technological concepts that usually end up teaching a lesson of how manmade technology does not mix well with nature. There are parts to the book that left me wondering why certain things would happen. Crichton does an excellent job of explaining concepts, but still falls into that trap of a "bug" in the program to make explanations short. overall its a good read.

Rating:
Summary: SCARY BOOK WITH A NEW LOOK AT A NEW TECH
Review: THIS TIME Mr. CRICHTON HAS DECIDED TO TELL THE STORY FROM A FIRST PERSON PERSPECTIVE. IT IS THROUGH THE ACCOUNTS OF THE PROTAGONIST THAT WE COME TO KNOW ABOUT THE SEEMINGLY COMMON-ENOUGH THIRD PERSON ANGLE IN A HUSBAND AND WIFE RELATIONSHIP HAS A MUCH DIFFERENT AND FRANKLY,SCARY INTERPRETATION.

IMAGINE LOSING YOUR JOB FOR BEING HONEST, IMAGINE BEING STRANDED IN HOME WHILE YOUR WIFE IS WORKING AND BEHAVING WEIRDLY, IMAGINE SUSPECTING HER ABOUT HAVING AN AFFAIR AND THEN IMAGINE HER ACCUSING YOU OF CREATING A RIFT BETWEEN YOU AND THE CHILDREN AND SUITABLY PLOTTING TO GET A DIVORCE! WONDERING WHERE DOES MICHAEL JURASSIC CRICHTON COME IN ALL THIS ? AS WE KNOW SCIENCE FICTON IS Mr.CRICHTON'S FORTE. BUT ALL THESE ARE TRUE FOR THE PROTAGONIST OF 'PREY'.HE EVENTUALLY HAS TO GO TO THE TOP-0SECRET INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH FACILITY WHERE HIS WIFE WORKS UNDER A NEW JOB CONTRACT(AFTER SOME PRETTY WEIRD INCIDENTS AT HOME),PARTLY DUE TO THE REASON OF HOPING TO UNCOVER HIS WIFE'S INFIDELITY.
ENTER TECHNOLOGY. AT THE RESEARCH FACILITY NANOPARTICLES ARE BEING CREATED BY A NEVER-SEEN-BEFORE TECH UNDER A DEFENCE CONTRACT. THESE PARTICLES HAVE AMAZING SELF-SUSTAINIG CAPABILITIES,INTELLIGENCE,SPEED,ENERGY AND THEY AR'NT SHY TO LEARN A TRICK OR TWO EITHER. WORST OF ALL IS THAT THEY ARE SOMEHOW RELEASED IN THE SURROUNDING DESERT AND WHLIE WRECKING HAVOK THE PRODIGAL SONS WANT TO INFILTRATE THE FACILITY. SOON THE HERO REALISES THAT SOMETHING FISHY IS GOING ON AND NOBODY IS WHAT HE/SHE MAY SEEM.
THE BOOK PRODS THE MOST RELEVANT QUESTION OF TODAY - ARE WE SURE WHAT WE ARE DOING? AND ALSO WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU REALISE THAT YOUR MOST LOVED ONE IS'NT THE PERSON HE/SHE USED TO BE(LITERALLY)? HAVE NO DOUBT THAT THIS BOOK WILL SCARE YOU STIFF AND WILL PROVOKE THOUGHT IN THE MOST UNIMAGINATIVE OF MINDS.
THE BOOK AT TIMES SEEMS SLOW AS ITS PACE IS IMPEDED BY THE LECTURE SESSIONS IN TECHNO-SCIENCE TO ELUCIDATE THE PROCEEDINGS AND MAY EVEN SEEM DULL.ALSO SPEAKING IN THE FIRST PERSON IS'NT SRTICTLY Mr.CRICHTON'S STYLE.ALSO AS WE ARE USED TO EXPECT HEROS AND VILLAINS IN HIS THRILLERS AS HIGH PROFILE SCIENTISTS,THE CHOICE OF A HOME-STRANDED MAN IN THIS ROLE SHOCKS.
THIS AND THE HOME SCENARIO GIVES A DIFFERENT FEEL TO THE BOOK WHICH MAY BE LIKED OR DISLIKED ACCORDING TO THE INDIVIDUAL READER'S TASTE.
BUT READ THIS BOOK - IT WILL GIVE YOU THE CHILLS.

Rating:
Summary: "Prey" That Your Intelligence Is Not Insulted
Review: I am a big Crichton fan, but this book ended by insulting my intelligence. It started out wonderfully. I couldn't get enough of the enlightening techno discussions and explanations, reminding me of the way Sphere started and progressed.

Now the honesty--unlike some other reviews I have seen on this book. I couldn't believe the dialog exchange in several parts of the novel. How much did Crichton and his publisher get for the deplorably obvious ... commercial.

This is the first book that I ever considered putting down. The ending is awful! I can't believe that as intelligent as Crichton is, he could actually agree to not only write, but also agree to publish such an ending. It is inconsistent, ridiculous, obviously forced and unbelievable. Crichton goes through over two thirds of the novel developing a somewhat consistent and complex story. Then he ends the novel with pathetic inconsistencies that seem to be forced so that we have a happy ending. I was anxiously awaiting the final third because I thought there would be a cerebral, complicated twist, but I was disappointed with a through-out-your-brain, amateurish, accomodating ending. Give me a break.

I "prey" that hope your intelligence will not be insulted as mine was.

Rating:
Summary: Solid yet implausible page-turner
Review: Prey is a fun book; I read it cover to cover in one sitting. If that's what you're after (and it was what I was expecting) great.

But the plot is a tad implausible. The technology itself, of course, is not -- nanotechnology does, as one character points out early in the book, have the potential to save millions of lives each year, and it does hold some dangers as well. The implausibility in the plot, though, can be summed up by one question: why don't gnats, termites, etc., in the real world behave as Crichton's "swarms" do? That is, why don't the real-world organisms the nano-machines' programming is based on evolve in the same way the nano-machines do in the book? Crichton's only answer, in one sentence buried in the middle, is that the nano-machines are man-made and therefore evolve faster, so they learn in a matter of days how to emulate human appearance, communicate, hunt, avoid danger, etc. But why should their being man-made make any difference?

It's worth noting that at least one of Crichton's implicit predictions (the one in Rising Sun) was totally, unquestionably wrong -- the Japanese system of trade and industrial policy led to a huge recession and a near-collapse of the Japanese economy, instead of the corporate domination Crichton foresaw. The problem with Rising Sun, too, was the fact that it didn't ask precisely why this problem hasn't already occurred. In the case of Rising Sun, Crichton predicted that an economy with more government planning and sufficient ruthlessness would out-compete one with less planning. He didn't wonder, even in the book, why, if that were the case, the Soviet Union hadn't already forced the collapse of the U.S. in the sixties. A similar dynamic is at work in Prey. That's not necessarily a killing flaw, but for a novelist with ambitions (pretensions?) of contributing to serious, real-world public debate about current issues, it is worth pointing out.

Rating:
Summary: The REAL Human Weakness
Review: Crichton introduces his cautionary tale of technology run amok with a fairly dire summation of human shortsightedness. "The total system we call the biosphere is so complicated that we cannot know in advance the consequences of anything that we do." Add greed and arrogance to ignorance and technology and you have the basic ingredients for one of Crichton's page-turning plots. "Unfortunately, our species has demonstrated a striking lack of caution in the past. It is hard to imagine that we will behave differently in the future."

The story itself gets off to a liesurely start. A brief preface begins at the end - the kids sick, people dead, a world of scary uncertainty. The narrator, Jack Forman, reflects: "Sitting here in the dark, it's hard to believe that a week ago my biggest problem was finding a job. It seems almost laughable now." The novel then drops back to that week ago, to Forman's increasingly satisfying routine as a stay-at-home dad, refereeing arguments between his pre-teen daughter and son, changing the baby, getting everyone fed and clothed and ferried. Months before, Forman had lost his job as a computer programming manager as a result of trying to do the right thing - now he finds himself blackballed all over Silicon Valley.

But his wife, Julia, has a good job at Xymos, a nanotechnology company on the verge of a breakthrough. The company, she tells Jack, has had a stunning success. It has broken the nanotechnology manufacturing barrier and is producing a sub-microscopic camera, which can roam the human blood stream, with obviously spectacular medical implications. Crichton delivers a bit of technical data, explaining some of the stumbling blocks to successful nanotechnology, information delivered painlessly between Julia's increasingly irritable moods, and Jack's growing conviction that there's more than workaday tension behind her erratic behavior. He suspects an affair.

But before he can confront Julia, their baby daughter breaks out in a mysterious, painful, posibly life-threatening rash, which baffles the emergency-room doctors and then disappears as suddenly as it arrived. The pace begins to pick up. Strange events - a broken MP-3 player, out of place items in the baby's room, sightings of imaginary people - charge the atmosphere as Julia grows ever more hard and beautiful.

Then Jack is called in to consult at Xymos. Apparently it's one of his artificial intelligence programs, PREDPREY, "a goal-seeking program based on predator/prey dynamics" that Xymos is using to control their real nanotech project - self-guiding micro-cameras for the military - and they are having problems keeping the goal steady. Jack is uncertain, but after his wife has a car accident, he takes the job. Now the pace goes into overdrive.

There's been contamination, leakage from the plant resulting in some dead animals. The project manager, an old protégé of Jack's, is evasive, even deliberately misleading. But it's not giving anything away (the jacket copy does that) to say that the project itself has escaped human control and is evolving rapidly, according to the basic parameters of its predator/prey programming, but with lots of rapid and unforseen innovations. Humans have become the prey.

Can Jack stop the proliferating nano-clouds before they change the world?

Crichton ("Jurassic Park," "Congo," "The Terminal Man")mixes in the science effortlessly, giving his readers some fairly complex lessons without slowing the action. He's less successful with characters, though, and it's hard to believe Jack's motivations at times - refusing the consulting job, despite his suspicions and then abruptly taking it after his wife's accident - yes, there was an odd van that showed up at the scene and yes, maybe there was someone else in the car, but his wife's condition is critical and what about the kids? There are worse crimes though - Jack, the seasoned project manager, heading out on a mission of extreme danger and not bothering to organize the equipment they will need or even make sure someone else has done it. But these are minor quibbles and nothing you won't find in any Crichton novel. Crichton's strength is ideas and action and there's plenty of both in this one.

Rating:
Summary: Typical Crichton Cookie Cutter Book (except it was bad)
Review: I am a Crichton fan from way back. I was disappointed in this book, though. I am an Engineer and I enjoy the technical aspects of his research that comes through in his books. I also like his linear fashion of writing.....not a lot of subplots.

I was disappointed in this book because of the characters that were too dumb to get to safety, the ineptitude of a building full of Engineers/Technicians and the unbelievable plot.

The ending was very disappointing as well. In my mind, he couldn't come up with a good one, so he just made up something semi-real and stretched the heck out of it.

If you are a Crichton fan, find another book. This one is best left on the shelf.

Rating:
Summary: One of his best!
Review: I am a HUGE Michael Crichton fan. I have read all of his non-fiction works and loved all of them. So when I saw that PREY was out I didn't even stop to read what it was about. From the first chapter it grips you and carries you through it. I have already heard that 21st Century Fox purchased movie rights for it. It is wonderful. I couldn't put it down. Truly! This book is very smart and unlike some of his books that can get a bit confusing with all the technical information, this book really explains things out...so you don't have to guess. It's a wonderful book and if your thinking about it, just get it. You won't be disappointed. :)

Rating:
Summary: An interesting, if far-fetched premise with major flaws
Review: Michael Crichton has created a unique story based on glimmerings of emerging nanotechnology with excellent action and suspense values.

However, the story is fatally flawed-atleast as presented on DVD. There is a character, referred to in the beginning of the story, which uses a single flashback approach,who we find out later is actually dead at the time. Aside from this gaff,there are numerous logical flaws in the story that prove to be distracting from what otherwise could have been a riveting and thought-provoking story.

One has the feeling that the author tore through the writing of this book and that the editor did likewise, perhaps both driven by commercial pressures. More care next time, please.

Rating:
Summary: Jurassic park meets nanobots
Review: Michael Crichton has done it again! Yet another shallow novel based on a dubious premise filled with interesting scientific detail and characters as flat as matzoh bread. If readers find the plot eerily familiar to Jurassic Park, that's because it is -- secret lab loses control of its invention, which turns on them. Give me a break! And just like Jurassic Park, an "evil" scientist sabotages any effort to rein in those wacky new life forms. Captain Underpants dispatches his enemies in 70 illustrated pages -- why does Crichton require over 300. There is no suspense, no character development, and no attempt to create a credible antagonist, i.e. the nanobots. As Lincoln once said, "People who like this kind of book will like this". Otherwise, wait for the movie.

Rating:
Summary: A reversion to earlier days
Review: The first half starts off well. In the Crichton tradition it builds the mystery slowly. Little clues and red herrings are sprinkled throughout. The pages begin to turn faster until you are dying to know how everything ties together. It reads much like Disclosure or Airframe.

But then the ball drops into the basement, where Terminal Man days are relived.

Monster loose. Monster kills everybody. Hero uses gun/explosives/brown sludge. Hero escapes by helicopter. Hero calls Army (thankfully it's not the Costa Rican "more teachers than soldiers" Army this time, but rather the good old US Army who sits in a warehouse awaiting phone calls from panicked scientists to go blow stuff up).

All the clues, the buildup, and the tension were wasted. The wrapup was force-fit into a paragraph, and the grand mystery wasn't so mysterious after all.

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