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Prey 225

Posted by timothy from the meat dept.
cybrpnk2 writes with the review below of Michael Crichton's latest book, Prey, which he says is "classic Crichton." Only your thoughts on Crichton can determine whether that's an endorsement or a warning. Read on for the review. Update: 12/07 15:29 GMT by T : The link I originally placed to the movie Them "is some 1996 made-for-TV junk, not the 1950s classic." The link has been updated.
Prey
author Michael Crichton
pages 367
publisher Harper Collins
rating Excellent - Among his best
reviewer cybrpnk2
ISBN 0066214122
summary The latest sci-fi on nanotechnology from the author of Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton has gone full circle and done it again, effectively updating his original sci-fi novel The Andromeda Strain for the 21st century. In his latest book Prey, he has gone from using gigantic T. Rex dinosaurs as the big bad back down to microscopic agents once more. All the classic Crichton trademarks are here -- the race against time, the super-hi tech, the twists in plot and theme. It's his best and in some ways most original novel since Jurassic Park and just as likely to be made into a smash motion picture now that morphing animation is well established. In fact, several scenes in the book almost seem gratuitously tacked on to ultimately make use of some special video effect rather than advance the plot, but that's a minor criticism. Overall this is a great, fun read that's destined to be a SF classic.

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.
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  • Prey? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by ThrasherTT ( 87841 )
    And here I thought Prey [3drealms.com] had been cancelled...
  • 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?
    • Wouldn't evolution have constructed lifeforms of this kind long ago if they were stable and competetive in a natural environment?

      Who says they'd be stable and competitive? Nanomonsters, grey goo, and most other hypothetical boogymen are the antithesis of "stable and competitive". They only have to exist long enough to devour the entire food supply (us) before becoming extinct.

      Similarly, Bengal tigers would probably not thrive if you dropped a bunch of them off in northern Vermont. But they could still do a lot of damage in the short-term.

    • Well, evolution does not give a rat's ass for stability. It is just a mechanism for filtering the blind-man's walk of random mutation into winning and losing genetic strategies.
      Oops, got side-tracked there. Actually I wanted to say that 'mindless hive swarm' describes humanity pretty well. Our structures (cities, businesses, networks) follow Zipf's law whether we believe we're in control or not.
      • This made me think of the Matrix when Agent Smith described humans as viruses. He really hit the nail on the head with that one. I think we are a swarm... a big sneeze ball of viruses.
        • Of course he was making the comparison to justify a nasty exploitative system. But yes, there does not seem to be any intrinsic value in human society (except to us humans), nor any real difference between the way we work (choose the best strategy to play the genetic cards we receive at conception) and the way any other lifeform (alien or not) would work.

          All life is a swarm. We share a common ancestor with every virus.

    • 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?       (2002 Köhntopp)

      No.

      Köhntopp, Kris. "Plausible Story?" Slashdot. 6 Dec. 2002 <http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=47035&c id=4826780 [slashdot.org]>

    • Re:Plausible Story? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lexarius ( 560925 )
      Not necessarily. Just as in the business world, not all the neat inventions make it to market. Our current hive societies (bees, ants, etc) could develop a more advanced hive mind than they already have, right? A swarm of army ants acts like one big organism as it is, and there is little that threatens it other than humans with flamethrowers. Individually the ants wouldn't be able to cross water, but the swarm knows how and it only hurts it a little to do so (a few ants drown). Who can say where this might go, given a few million years and some competition?
    • Wouldn't evolution have constructed lifeforms of this kind long ago if they were stable and competetive in a natural environment?

      Exactly. Bacteria are the ultimate nanomachines, far more complex and efficient than anything we will be able to design for years and years. Yet no one is worried about bacteria replicating exponentially and turning the entire world into gray goo or having swarms of flying malicious bacteria that are intelligent and attack people. I found it very hard to suspend my disbelief at the incredible feats the nanobots performed in Prey.

  • Hire this guy... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sleeperservice ( 62645 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:38AM (#4826795)
    ...to do book reviews. This is one of the best book reviews I've seen on any site for some time.

  • I believe he has had only one really good book (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lyapunov ( 241045 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:38AM (#4826796)
    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.
    • 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.

      • Re:You didn't read Jurassic Park? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Graff ( 532189 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:18AM (#4827065)
        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 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.
        • However, I thought Sphere was amazing and engaging.

          Hey Sphere is my favourite too! JP is my second favourite, but Sphere always stood out.

          Congo the movie sucked, but the book was decent.

          Timeline sucks.

          Jurassic Park is definitely the best one that was made into a movie. Andromeda Stain is second best.

    • The question is, which one was it?

      I've read a few of MC's books, and guess I enjoyed JP, but I'm mostly disenchanted with MC's perennial theme of "technology is bad, and technologists are at once stupid, arrogant, and evil." Prey sounds like more of the same to me, so I'm not sure I'll bother reading it.

    • Read "Airframe" - I would rate that as his best thriller after Jurassic Park. Also this book prooves what an author of verstality he is when you consider his ability to switch easily (and so thoroughly) beteween such a wide spectrum of disconnected themes as: Airframe, Rising Sun, Disclosure, Timeline (going back and forth between the present and the medieval era of Knights), The Great Train Robbery. Surely, more than just one book of his deverves applause.. Of course, the best sci-fi thriller I've read, that is set against the backdrop of medicine was "Coma" by Robin Cook. Enjoyed that one.. Gautam
    • 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.

  • A movie? Depends... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fredrikj ( 629833 )
    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....


    • > Indeed, Spielberg did a fantastic job with Jurassic Park.

      Feh. Superb dinosaurs, tolerable plot, third-rate actors, execrable script. Never have so few characters spoken so many bad lines in so few movies (the sequel was actually worse!). I've heard better dialog in porno flicks.

  • "Classic Crichton" ? (Score:4, Funny)

    by DrTrogg ( 586983 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:40AM (#4826817)
    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 ?
  • The book might be OK. But, I don't read stuff from shark-jumping authors. However, let's all hope and pray that a movie is never made. "Congo", 'nuff said.

  • Lawyer fetish. (Score:4, Funny)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) <<ten.elcychtneves> <ta> <kram>> on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:43AM (#4826831) Homepage
    I only like Crichton books where they eat lawyers...

    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.

  • I used to love his stuff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AssFace ( 118098 ) <stenz77.gmail@com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:45AM (#4826848) Homepage Journal
    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)
    • >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.
      • But for realistic techinical I rather read Robert J. Sawyer.

        I like RJS, but, huh?

        He only includes enough real science to enable his philosophical musing. It's hardly realistic.

        For well-researched hard SF, try Clarke, Bear, Egan, or Baxter.

    • MC is just jumping on the bandwagon

      "Jumping on the bandwagon?" Has there been a rush of fiction books about nanotechnology lately that I'm not aware of? The Diamond Age, by itself, does not a bandwagon make.

      Maybe I'm just a dick, or an elitist snob.

      No "maybe" about it. People who hold the opinion that that which is popular cannot also be good are wrong as often as they're right.
    • Generally speaking, if a lot of people read and like an author, I'm finding that I don't tend to like it.

      Because Neal Stephenson is pretty much a nobody that only you have discovered. You know that his last book was on the NYT best seller list, right? Guess you should steer clear of Neal from now on.
    • Does anyone know what Stephenson's working on now? Cryptonomicon was out, what, three years ago now?

      I need my fix.

    • And NS wrote about nano way before MC. MC is just jumping on the bandwagon...

      Wait a minute, I thought you said you've read all of Crichton? You've forgotten about The Andromeda Strain. That was nano before the term was part of the vernacular. Not sure about Neal's age, but I'm willing to bet that Andromeda Strain was written before Stephenson got started.

      Hardly makes Crichton jumping on the bandwagon. One might even go so far as to say that Crichton helped build that wagon in terms of putting real science into SF.
    • ...and Greg Bear wrote about nano before Neal Stephenson (see "Blood Music" from the late 70's) or "City of Angels" for a really well-though-out example of nano-technology in everyday life.

      Just because Crichton is just getting into nano now doesn't mean it won't be a good story. I read "Andromeda Strain" one afternoon in the late 70's when I was in high school and it was a great read. I read it again a couple years ago and still enjoyed it. It's OK if MC is targetting a wider audience than NS or GB, the book could still be good.

      Believe it or not, there is intelligent fiction that makes it into the best-selling lists. I haven't read this book, but another author, who happens to be my favorite, Terry Pratchett, is quite big in the U.S. and huge in the U.K. I've been a fan since "The Light Fantastic" and I was quite surprised how popular he ended up being since his books are often quite complex and the humor is often both subtle and obscure (how many popular authors do you know who routinely make Latin puns?).

  • Timeline to be released in 2003 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:45AM (#4826851) Homepage
    His book, Timeline, should be released in 2003. Here [imdb.com] you can see some information. I am really looking forward to this film, as I enjoyed the book.


    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.

    • I read Timeline. Honestly, I wasn't impressed with it, but it was a fun read, not hard sci-fi though. I thought Andromeda strain was better sci-fi, and impressed me as I read some of Chrichton's less than stellar work first.

      Timeline should make a great, fun movie though, and I look forward to it! Actually, considering the complete sh*t that's out now, I can't wait...

    • I would like to see Andromeda Strain redone as another movie

      Only if they could fix the ending somehow to be a little less "reset-button-esque." Sure, the idea that the organism mutates into a harmless form in short order is scientifically sound, but it results in a pretty lame ending to a story.
    • Ugh. Timeline is a horrible book. There was no character development, the entire plot was dead obvious from the very beginning. I kept hanging on hoping for a twist...it never came. Not to mention the quality of the writing in general just wasn't up to par, although that will make no difference in a movie adaptation. I've really enjoyed some of Crichton's other novels, particularly Andromeda Strain, but Timeline seemed like he wasn't really interested in writing so much as trying to meet some contractual obligation.

      That doesn't mean the movie can't be good, though. Since typically 90% of a book gets chopped out and rewritten anyway, it could actually redeem the book, although I won't hold my breath given the last couple of JP movies.
  • Could someone please run demoroniser over stuff before posting it?

    They?re
    that?s
    Crichton?s
    Check ?em
    watch ?em

    That's what it looks like to me.

  • I had a similar idea for a story 3 years ago. Should have copyrighted it.

    • I had a similar idea for a story 3 years ago. Should have copyrighted it.

      Wouldn't have helped. Copyright protects works, not ideas. You can't, for example, copyright the idea of a book involving runaway nanotechnology.

      Besides, Crichton himself owns the notional "copyright" on this idea, having used it before in The Andromeda Strain.
    • It wouldn't make any difference. Since he wrote a completely different story, unless Crichton used *extremely* similar elements in his book (e.g. characters, places, etc. all have the same names, and your text was clearly used as a source material, with only small revisions) the reuse of the same idea is not a copyright violation. That's what patents are for, but patents don't cover artistic works, so you're basically SOL.

  • Crichton isn't really an SF author (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Johnzo ( 94306 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:50AM (#4826880) Homepage
    The New Yorker had this criticism of Crichton:

    [Crichton is] forever describing things that could change the world--but don't. The Andromeda strain of space germs mutates into harmlessness and goes away; the lost city of the Congo is wiped from the map by lava; in Sphere, the discoverers of the extraterrestrial artifact of untold power use that power to wish it into retroactive nonexistence. The fact that Crichton has no interest in showing what might have happened is what makes him a writer of suspense fiction, rather than of science fiction. A science-fiction writer would naturally want to see what would happen if the technologies stayed out of control (as most do), and might even want to ask whether the consequences would be all bad (as they often aren't). Might not free-range dinosaurs make Costa Rica an even more interesting place than it is today? What if nanoswarms offered promise as well as peril? Prey, with its kill-them-all-and-get-out approach, is neither as frightening nor as fascinating as Greg Bear's novelette of twenty years ago, "Blood Music," in which the characters, transformed by the nanotechnology within them, become both far more and much less than human.
    I think they're pretty much dead-on. I've always been unsatisfied with Crichton's stuff. His books read like kinda like Star Trek episodes: when they end, the genies are always jammed back into their bottles. (taken from Patrick Nielsen Hayden's blog [nielsenhayden.com])

    • Re:Crichton isn't really an SF author (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HyperbolicParabaloid ( 220184 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:08AM (#4826991) Journal
      I agree with the review, but don't consider it a bad thing. So what if he isn't a Sci-Fi writer? He is a good suspense writer. He succesfully explores social and scientific issues in a thought-provoking way. Some of the technology is a little over-the-top (including the scenes in Prey that are tailor-made for a film), but if you didn't read Jurassic Park (sp?) and come away with an appreciation for how arrogent engineers (and particularly programmers) can be, then you missed the point. And if you read Prey and don't get that it is as much a commentary on the notion of industry self-regulation and corporate governance as it is about nanotechnology, then you missed the point.
      So there.

      • Re:Crichton isn't really an SF author (Score:5, Funny)

        by gilroy ( 155262 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:23AM (#4827132) Homepage Journal
        Blockquoth the poster:

        if you didn't read Jurassic Park (sp?) and come away with an appreciation for how arrogent engineers (and particularly programmers) can be

        Funny, I read Jurassic Park and came away an appreciation of how lame an author can be when he picks up a buzzword (chaos, in JP and nanotech here) but doesn't really have a clue what it means.


        BTW, I mean lame in many senses: uncool and "marked by stiffness" and "lacking needful or desirable substance".

      • Scuse me?

        "An appreciation for how arrogant *fictional* engineers and programmers, written to be arrogant" would be more on the money. Remember that every character in the book is saying words bcos Crichton wants them to, not bcos of a psychological assessment of all engineers and programmers!

        Back in the real world, shit that can get you killed has backups, and backups of the backups. If you don't, you get what you deserve, which in this case is to be eaten by ravenous dinosaurs. :-) The moral is that if you make dumb decisions, you suffer, whether you're an engineer, a lawyer or an archaeologist.

        Grab.
    • MC makes books with semi-resolved endings to make them believeable. If only a certain amount of people are involved and most of them die, then it gives a feeling of "what if this really did happen". If you want to know about the what-if's use your imagination. I don't understand why books just can't end anymore, not everything was designed to be a freekin series.

      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.

  • Here [imdb.com] is the correct link for the cited movie Them!

  • Agree with the review (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stugots ( 601806 ) <johnderosaNO@SPAMme.com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:54AM (#4826908) Homepage
    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.
    • Plus the team composed of experts from very different fields. Don't forget the team, that's classic Crichton.

      I've got several of Crichton's books, and that's what always sticks in my mind. Giant dinosaurs? Killer virii from outer space? Alien extraterrestrial spheres crashing into Earth from outer space (as one friend described Sphere once)? More giant dinosaurs? Nope, it's a book about a TEAM! (And you can always bet on who is gonna survive and who is gonna die).

      Of course, some books like Eaters of the dead and Disclosure dont fit into the Crichton stereotype, and that's A good thing (tm) in my opinion. Real writers don't write a gazillion books with the same idea over and over (well, some do, but probably shouldn't).

      Anyway, I haven't read Prey, and I'm looking forward to giving it a try. In paperback, of course.

  • 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?

  • Women in Crichton Books (Score:5, Insightful)

    by the_rev_matt ( 239420 ) <slashbot&revmatt,com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @10:58AM (#4826939) Homepage
    >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.
    • 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.

      I thought Princess Leia was pretty three dimensional - especially in that metal bikini outfit. Rrrr.
  • 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.

    • Re:Formula for a Chrichton novel... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1) Man challenges nature
      2) Man appears to be successful in challenging nature
      3) Nature awakens and bites man in the ass!
      4) ???
      5) Profit!!
    • 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.

  • Does it have an ending? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JasonUCF ( 601670 ) <{moc.orplnj} {ta} {twadhsals-nosaj}> on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:05AM (#4826968) Homepage
    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).

    • I'm not sure if that is true or not (haven't read him recently), but *if* it's true, the explanation might be rooted in the seemingly widespread (at least in this thread ;) theory that he writes "for the movies". In which case, having the book not end conclusively is a great thing if you care about making sequels.

      Just my 2 kopeks.
      -DVK

  • Disappointing (Score:2, Insightful)

    by brunnock ( 18853 )
    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.

  • The Chronicle's headline (Score:4, Informative)

    by basso ( 230632 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:11AM (#4827008)
    [sfgate.com]
    "Crichton stretches out another nano-idea" brightened my morning the other day.

  • Crichton not admirable (Score:3, Insightful)

    by wfmcwalter ( 124904 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:11AM (#4827009) Homepage
    Crichton really doesn't write books - he writes "treatments" - stories so easily turned into movie scripts as to really not work properly as books in their own right. He's far from the only perpetrator of this. Here's some telltale features of such faux-books:
    • very few characters
    • few locations, and most of those easily built as sets
    • an exciting, action-based finale
    • a largely linear plotline
    • lots of dialog, and little effort expended on writing that would be lost in translation to the screen (description, introspection)
    • plenty of violence, but little or no sex or sexual/vulgar language (after all, there's less money in R-rated movies, and sex and pottymouthery gets you an R far more readily than does violence)

    Sphere may be the worst book I've ever (tried) to read, but it made a reasonable (rental) movie.

  • Well, maybe not quite. More like he got to the end and, well, it just sort of ended.


    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-

  • The two skills of writing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by iiii ( 541004 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:11AM (#4827012) Homepage
    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.

  • Eh... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by anicklin ( 244316 )
    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.

  • Point of Singularity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cap'n Canuck ( 622106 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:20AM (#4827092)
    The best thing about the review was the link to this [umich.edu] article by Vernard Vinge entitled Technological Singularity (1993). Michael Chriton may have read this article for inspiration on his book, or perhaps Vinge's book, Marooned In Realtime (1986).

    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:
    "God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension."
    This asks the question - when Man changes, will our God change as well?

  • Another hate-filled, bigoted book about our kind! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tsar ( 536185 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:21AM (#4827102) Homepage Journal

    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 /.'ers to avoid this book like the Plagu^H^H^H^H^H trash that it is. A civilized society has no place for hivophobia!

    Respectfully,
    536185 of 630000
  • I hate Crichton books. It's like reading a movie treatment and when cute kids are part of the plot you just know he's hoping Spielberg will buy the movie rights. The Lost World book was absolutely ruined by the inclusion of those annoying little bastards.


    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.

  • Movies (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeboone ( 163222 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:28AM (#4827161) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • For those who haven't tried eBooks yet, this title is available at Peanut Press [peanutpress.com] for 14.95. It's also avail at some other spots [google.com]. Try it, you'll like it.

    M@
  • I've read this review somewhere before ... Can't find it now.
    • Aha [scifitoday.com].

      Judging by the rickyjames in his e-mail address, there's no plagiarism involved though! Good review.

      • Thanks for the compliment. Yep, cybrpnk2=rickyjames=me. Slashdot sat on the review for a week, I thought it was dead so I put it on SciFiToday [scifitoday.com]. GREAT site, basically a science-oriented Slashdot, check it out!!!

  • Hmm... Classic Crichton? Let me guess... (Score:4, Funny)

    by derinax ( 93566 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:54AM (#4827388)
    There's a park or a hospital or a biotech lab...

    AND SOMETHING GOES TERRIBLY WRONG!!!

  • What does grey goo eat? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Phronesis ( 175966 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @11:56AM (#4827398)
    I always had trouble with the grey goo concept, on which Crichton bases this book, on the grounds that I have a hard time figuring out what the damned things do for food.

    The dominant energy source around us is organic matter. You can't get much energy out of eating inorganic matter (rock) because, aside from carbon (coal, graphite, diamond), it's mostly well-oxidized and sitting in a free-energy minimum. That's why we don't burn rocks other than coal in the fireplace. This means that the nanobeasties would be competing with natural life forms for organic matter and I doubt they would do well in the competition.

    The machinery by which living things extract energy from organic matter is quite sophisticated and I don't see any prospect for engineered nanotechnology out-competing basic bacteria on this front.

    Similarly, if most of the energetically favorable raw material around is organic, if the nanobeasties are to reproduce, they will likely be built of organic compounds, so they are again competing with bacteria that have a 4 billion year head start in optimizing themselves for the environment. If they are built of inorganic compounds or make much use of elements that are not generally found in living matter, then they will need to use much of their metabolic output to fighting entropy as they purify (reduce sand to silicon, for instance) and synthesize the necessary building blocks.

    Until the question of where a nanobeast gets its food and how it reproduces are plausibly explained (we don't need reduction to practice, but some plausible background is necessary), I will not take scenarios involving huge swarms of malevolent grey goo seriously, even in fiction.

    • Spoilerific reply (Score:3, Informative)

      by Kerinsky ( 321187 )
      In Prey the nanite production method is based on genetically engineered E. Coli bacteria and, I think, self assembling components. I read the book yesterday and ALL of the tech in the book is handled at a Newsweek or Time level. The individual nanobots are solar powered and have a battery or capacitor that can keep them powered for 3 hours. Each nanoswarm carries its own E. Coli bacteria around with it and will kill animals (snakes/rabbits/coyotes but NOT birds for some inexplicable reason) and leave the E. Coli to eat it and make new nanoparticles. They create their own little nanoparticle factory in a cave and after eating all the bats in it proceed to drag their prey back to it to be consumed.

      This is science fantasy however so you must remember that Crichton will give the nanoswarms strengths or weaknesses based on how it fits his plot, not on how it fits the realistic constraints or ramifications such tech might have if it were real. In Prey evolution and emergent behavior are treated as magical forces than can cause anything to happen. Within two weeks of creation nanoswarms that couldn't even handle 8 mph wind have become capable of totally taking over a human's body and consciousness. I think. Even after reading the entire book I'm still not sure what exactly these swarms were and were not supposed to be capable of. I doubt Crichton does either.

      In the end it was a forgetable book to me, but not a waste of time. I really enjoyed Jurassic Park, Sphere, Congo and the Andromeda Strain but just like Grisham Cricthon seems to be getting worse with each book he puts out. If they do make a movie I'll probably watch it just to see a scene where 5 humans "herd" themselves away from the hunting nanoswarms. Possibly the funniest scene ever in a Crichton book.
      • Each nanoswarm carries its own E. Coli bacteria around with it and will kill animals (snakes/rabbits/coyotes but NOT birds for some inexplicable reason) and leave the E. Coli to eat it and make new nanoparticles.

        The swarms didn't eat the birds because the birds spent all their time flocking and apparently, despite becoming smart enough to imitate human consciousness, the swarms were unable to hunt anything that flocked.

    • Light (Score:3, Informative)

      by Wonko42 ( 29194 )
      The nanobots in Prey are fairly unique. They're actually solar-powered, but not only that, they're also existing in symbiosis with E. coli bacteria, which Xymos used to fabricate the nanobots via a cheap, semi-self-replicating organic method. Basically, they tricked the bacteria into assembling the nanobots. It's actually not a fictional concept, and it's one that's used quite often for somewhat less advanced research.

      In short, the nanoswarm is powered mostly by light, but at a few parts Crichton implies that the E. coli has mutated to consume mammalian flesh as well.

  • Travels (Score:3)

    by Kraft ( 253059 ) on Friday December 06, 2002 @12:01PM (#4827440) Homepage
    I haven't read any of MCs fiction, but his autobiographical Travels, is wonderful.

    It simply describes, in no particular order, the places he has gone, spiritually and physically. Just anecdotes, really.

    Every chapter can be read seperately, perfect for reading out load. Some of them are really funny; swimming with sharks, sex with celebs, spoon-bending parties etc.

    Anyway, I found a bunch of little gems in the book...
  • I almost bought Prey, but the more I hear about it the less I'm interested -- even the glowing reviews are turning me off.

    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...

    • I really enjoyed George RR Martin's books: A Game of Thrones, Storm of Swords, Clash of Kings.

      The fourth book is almost done - A Feast For Crows.

      I re-read them three times in the first four months I had them.

      Puppetman.
    • Read any of Pat Cadigan's stuff? Her cyberpunk classic "Synners" is out again in trade paperback, and you can always find her more recent stuff like "Dervish is Digital", etc. in book stores as well. Rudy Rucker is another writer I like, and his last SF book "Spaceland" was a fun read.

      Personally, I'm looking forward to Cory Doctorow's "Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom", but I don't think that'll be out until Jan or Feb. I'm going to read "Prey" and a couple others in the meantime, reviews be dammed.
  • 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.

  • Definitely not his best (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <(ryan+slashdot) (at) (wonko.com)> on Friday December 06, 2002 @01:53PM (#4828146) Homepage
    I finished Prey last night. While I was intrigued, the overall feeling the book left me with was disappointment. It really started off with a bang; I had high expectations throughout the first section of the book. It had me riveted, turning each page with anticipation. But as soon as Jack flies out to the lab in Nevada at the start of the second section, the book starts a sharp downward spiral that doesn't let up.

    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.

  • I've been there.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Denor ( 89982 ) <denor@yahoo.com> on Friday December 06, 2002 @05:53PM (#4829126) Homepage
    the secretive Xymos desert lab in Nevada where nothing is as it seems.


    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.
  • 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.
  • What this review utterly fails to mention is that the "science" part of this science fiction is utterly lacking. (warning: spoilers !)

    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.

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