Prey

Rating:
Summary: Rocking sci-fi/horror, one of his best in a long time
Review: After the dismally pretentious "Timeline," Michael Crichton took three years off before coming back with "Prey." And the time off did his writing a lot of good.

For the first time since "Rising Sun," Crichton writes in the first person, and while his narrator seems little different from, say, the protagonists in "Rising Sun" or "Disclosure" (i.e., white male, 35-40, dad), the style works here for a number of reasons. First, his slowly building suspicions carry you along, propelling you into the narrative. Second, the reader is not subjected to the pages-long pedantic asides that plagued "Timeline" (and even "Jurassic Park"). Of course, there are the techno-touches that make it a Crichton novel, but these are integrated much better into the story.

The plot is described well above, and in brief, is as follows: Jack Forman, former Silicon Valley computer programmer, is now a stay-at-home dad while his wife Julia works intense hours at a nanotechnology company. But Julia is really moody, not to mention, absent much of the time. She keeps working late, and Jack starts to wonder if she's having an affair. When she is home, she yells at the kids and at Jack, and then apologizes, only to blow up again later. Is she cheating on him? Is she on drugs? That's only the beginning, as Jack ends up getting called out to the nanotech factory, only to face even worse problems.

"Prey" has something of the feel of a good Dean Koontz novel, like "Midnight" or "Fear Nothing." In other words, it could be put in the horror section of the bookstore, but isn't really like Stephen King horror. It's more up the alley of another story about BIG SCIENCE gone bad.

Rating:
Summary: Crichton's New Prey.
Review: I love reading Michael Crichton novels. He seems to be the only author that I can breeze through with little effort and in a reasonable time. The reason for my inability to put his novels down is the suspense and the technological depth. I'm kept on edge while being fed an intriguing thesis. Prey is no different, in fact it uses exactly the same formula as his other hits.

If you're looking for an "A typical" Crichton novel, one that introduces you to a collection of top level geeks, who find a scientific problem, and work as a dysfunctional team to disarm threat after threat, then this book is for you. I know what I am getting when I buy a Michael Crichton novel. Not a literary classic, not an analysis of characters, but a techno thriller.

Jack Forman is a house husband, unemployed because of his strict work ethics. His wife, Julia, works for Xymos, a company on the edge of breaking new ground with Nanotechnology. Just as Jack believes that his marriage is on the verge of complete breakdown, with his wife acting like she is having an affair, she has an accident. Jack is then drawn into Xymos as a contractor to oversee his old team that developed his agent based program that is at the heart of the Nanosystems Xymos manufacture. The suspense spirals upward as Jack is drawn into a battle with "Nano-Borg".

Prey reminds me of a mix between Sphere and Jurassic Park, with the threat of a touch of Disclosure thrown in for legal good will. Locked in an isolated fab plant, cut off from the rest of the world, with an engineered threat, while dealing with a family emergency that could end up in the courts. Talk of the latest anti-male threats of "Alienation of Effection" makes me wonder if there isn't just a little autobiographical material thrown in. I loved both novels, so it made it easy for me to enjoy Prey.

With Timeline and Jurassic Park The Lost World I couldn't help but see him setting up scenes for a cinematographer. Prey, on the other hand, didn't read as much like a movie. I guess it is always in the background, especially when the rights were purchased by Fox before publication (see "Fox Snag's Michael Crichton's PREY"), and he is well know for his movies. It just didn't distract like the others.

As usual Crichton explorers some of sciences latest areas, artificial life and nanotechnology. Jack led a team involved in creating distributed processing, creating computer applications that spread the workload across a number of agents. The field has explored swarm technology, the same processing that a colony of ants or bees use to work together as a team. Combined with nanotechnology the possibilities explode. As do the potential problems. Science is truly on the verge of all these possibilities, with Gaak the escaping robot, a robot that learns how to fly, and a circuit that reinvents radio, all recent scientific creations. For anyone with a passing interest in the future, Prey is fascinating reading.

Prey certainly seems to be the pinnacle of Crichton's mountain of suspense. He builds layers as any breakout novel should. Don't pick it up expecting literary or character depth, but as an easy to read suspense filled novel it is hard to put down. If you've enjoyed Crichton's novels or movies, then Prey will be an enjoyable read. As a primer, it is worth reading Bill Joy's paper in Wired Magazine, "Why the future doesn't need us". Combine them both and it becomes evident that we have to be very careful with what we do with science. We may have learnt much in the past few decades, but we don't know near enough.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent, enthralling, and exciting Techno-Thriller!
Review: I have been reading Michael Crichton since I read Jurassic Park ten years ago, which soon became one of my favorite books. Since then, I have avidly read Crichton's entire fiction collection as well as Travels, and Crichton has become one of if not my number one favorite author. His eloquent, chilling, enthralling, and most of all unique books are second to none. Released almost three years after his previous book, Timeline; Prey is another well-researched, cutting-edge, techno-thriller.

Prey is considerably different than Timeline, besides the common link of a science lab in the middle of the desert. I want to say Timeline is a bit more exciting than Prey, because up until the 40 or 50 page climax, the antagonist(s) are relatively intangible. Those familiar with Crichton's works will notice many more similarities with The Andromeda Strain (also in a lab in the desert) and later in the book Jurassic Park and The Lost World. Like The Andromeda Strain the bad guys are microscopic and constantly evolving, but this time there's a twist, and possibly by the end on Prey, it may twist beyond all scientific possibility (I don't know, maybe not...hell, his last book was about time travel...it is science fiction), which to me may have be the only flaw for those who try to approach the book as an essay in a scientific journal and not as a novel (which the earlier portions of the book will temp you to do).

Throughout the book are the ever-more-concrete evil nanoparticles (little robots), driven by programming intended to simulate artificial life (not, Michael Crichton emphasizes, to be confused with artificial intelligence...at least until late in the book where the vacuum left when the science disappears is filled with action), and so-called "emergent behavior" engendered by genetic, evolutionary, predatory behavioral algorithms...strait out of recent advancements in computer science.

...I know to most that may seem like a foreign language to those whose faces would go blank if I told them to obey me, because I am root, but in fact the book is very readable, and the science and pace make the concepts interesting and within the grasp of most readers. The book's action scenes are very exciting, but can be a little repetitive, nothing compared to his dinosaur evading, medieval battling past books.

The strongest point of this novel are Crichton's characters who are much more human than most characters in his past books. This is amplified by his choice to use 1st person, which he has not used before in anything I have read of his (not counting his autobiography, Travels of course).

The rights to make the book into a movie were bought by 20th Century Fox around six months ago (extremely early...it came along with the announcement of the book's existence), and with good reason, as the book is very cinematic and I look forward to it as well as Paramount's upcoming Timeline movie, and hopefully Disney will take advantage of its $10 million investment on movie rights to Airframe (another wonderful Crichton book). When the plot comes together, and the theme expressing the dangers of these rather new and unexplored areas of science, you will realize that this is a very good book, one of Crichton's best. His message is clear, the book is very fascinating, the action is innovative and exhilarating, and the pages fly by, and I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I recommend this book to any fan of thrillers, science fiction, or just plain science.

Rating:
Summary: Believe the hype
Review: A little slow getting started, like a roller coaster, then hang on. Get in line for your movie tickets. A fast, educational thrill ride.

Rating:
Summary: The new Michael Crichton....?
Review: Well I am really at a loss for words with this book. He appears to be writing a new form of science fiction in this book, with the science being more of the story then the actuall human characters in the story. It's a long novel, slow and tedious, and makes you want to throw it away after the first 96 pages. It's too dark actually and Crichton seems to be going in a new direction in his writing that in many ways is totally inconsistent with his early work....

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book, so-so ending
Review: Like some of his previous works, the author builds up suspense, but the ending seems a little hurried. A good read, nonetheless.

Rating:
Summary: AS BAD AS IT GETS
Review: This book reads like it was written for 10 yr olds. Silly plot and most of all the writing is BORING and PEDANTIC

Airframe was his last decent book

Rating:
Summary: Crichton finally back in his prime
Review: Crichton is finally back in his prime, covering what he does best: fact- and science-based fiction. This time around, he's got the good sense to not let the book degenerate into a direct-to-video scripted action sequence halfway through the book (read Timeline if that's what you're looking for). Having read all of Crichton's books (including Travels), I can say that Prey is one of the better ones, combining the how-cool-is-that aspect of technology (Jurassic Park) with the confusion and paranoia of being attacked by a force that's not well understood (Sphere). What puts the icing on the cake is that Crichton has again written a great character that's fleshed out a lot more than his usual protagonists. Long-time readers might even be distraught at the amount of character development that exist within Prey. All in all, a satisfying read, although not the most intellectually challenging.

Rating:
Summary: It was ok
Review: It was ok. The plot falls short - which is disapointing because I enjoy the fact that his books are typically plot driven. Like I said it was ok - it almost seems like there were two stories going on - but you only get to hear one story. I guess that's how life usually is most of the time - so if his intent was to be realisic in that sense then he did a good job. I didn't mind his science lectures - often times they were as interesting as the story itself. It's not his best but still it's still a lot of fun.

Rating:
Summary: Another technology thriller!
Review: I could not put this book down. In all, I finished it in just under five hours. Gripping is hardly the word for it.
Crichton has again brought us a high-tech novel that studies the recent advances in science and technology.
In this book, a company 'accidently' releases a group of nano-particles in to the air. They have some intelligence, communication and power skills, and are equipped with a PREDPREY programming that allows them to learn from mistakes. In the wild, they begin to evolve, gaining a group intelligence and create their own reproduction lab. Now, they're trying to get back into the lab that they started in. And they're hungry. They kill several people and animals, using their bodies for materials.
What happens is unexpected and exciting as the programmers inside struggle to find out what's going wrong.

I found somethings difficult in the book. First, the main character takes a long time figuring things out. What the particles can do, the difficulty with his wife and what's going on with some other programmers. It fits his character, but is painful to read at times.
His kids are nothing short of annoying. The same thing popped up in Jurassic Park: Annoying kids. At least this time they didn't play much of a role, although we do see them here and there.

Crichton follows a predictable pattern with his novels. Like Timeline and Jurassic Park, the book is about the hubris of scientists, and how their actions are doomed to fail.
There are some strong parallels with Jurassic Park in this book. Genetic Engineering is a large portion, except that it is nano-manufacturing. For a majority of the book, the characters are cooped up inside their labratory, like in JP, and there is also a scene where the characters go the the breeding grounds of the particles, like in JP. The pattern is danger, hiding/studing/arguing, then boldness and the solution of the problem. There's nothing wrong with this, but it is predictable.

Like in Timeline, Crichton also gave us a slew of scientific information about the sciences in the book and that are being worked on now. I've enjoyed reading this, and it makes the book worth reading, if only to get the current happenings in a science world. Its all very interesting.

The result is an excellent, well paced read, that is painstakingly studied and has all the elements of a great book. Action, explaination, and a very interesting science problem.