Book Review: Michael Crichton’s Prey

I was running errands on Friday and decided to stop to eat.  I hate eating alone and I didn’t have anything to read, so I ran in the bookstore and bought Michael Crichton’s new novel PreyI finished it over the weekend.

It’s a story of genetically-evolving nanotechnology gone bad.  I’m interested in the technology foundations of the story, but the book read like the storyline of a soon to be a big Hollywood movie screenplay.  It’s all there:

  1. Pleasant family life disrupted by intense overworking at a technology company by one of the parents.
  2. Strange symptoms manifested in family member.
  3. Other parent investigates, discovers evil corporation playing with science it doesn’t understand the risks of.
  4. Technology gets worse.
  5. Chase scene.
  6. Explosions.
  7. Repeat 5 & 6 as necessary for dramatic tension.
  8. Heroic investigating parent saves the world from dangerous technology only to discover own spouse is infested by same technology.
  9. Has to kill spouse.  With last breath, spouse denounces evil.
  10. Chase scene, minus spouse.
  11. Explosions.
  12. Investigating parent, wounded but alive, escapes final devastating explosions with potential new love interest.
  13. Hopeful denouement with soliloquy by investigating parent, undermined by fear that it’s not over and their might be a sequel if the movie pulls in enough money.

I used to love Crichton’s work.  Andromeda Strain was a great book.  Jurassic Park, the book, was engaging, smart, and pointed.  The movie destroyed the story, then Michael wrote a sequel to the movie instead of the book.

The success of the movie must have gone to his head as well as his pocketbook.  He hasn’t written anything since that wasn’t blatantly scripted to the flow of an action flick.

In summary, don’t bother with Prey.  Read some nonfiction work about the technologies instead.  They have more character development and plot.

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