In Prey, bestselling author Michael Crichton introduces bad guys
that are too small to be seen with the naked eye but no less deadly or
intriguing than the runaway dinosaurs that made 1990's Jurassic Park such a blockbuster success.
High-tech whistle-blower Jack Forman used to specialize in programming
computers to solve problems by mimicking the behavior of efficient wild
animals--swarming bees or hunting hyena packs, for example. Now he's
unemployed and is finally starting to enjoy his new role as
stay-at-home dad. All would be domestic bliss if it were not for Jack's
suspicions that his wife, who's been behaving strangely and working
long hours at the top-secret research labs of Xymos Technology, is
having an affair. When he's called in to help with her hush-hush
project, it seems like the perfect opportunity to see what his wife's
been doing, but Jack quickly finds there's a lot more going on in the
lab than an illicit affair. Within hours of his arrival at the remote
testing center, Jack discovers his wife's firm has created
self-replicating nanotechnology--a literal swarm of microscopic
machines. Originally meant to serve as a military eye in the sky, the
swarm has now escaped into the environment and is seemingly intent on
killing the scientists trapped in the facility. The reader realizes
early, however, that Jack, his wife, and fellow scientists have more to
fear from the hidden dangers within the lab than from the predators
without.
The monsters may be smaller in this book, but Crichton's skill for suspense has grown, making Prey
a scary read that's hard to set aside, though not without its minor
flaws. The science in this novel requires more explanation than did the
cloning of dinosaurs, leading to lengthy and sometimes dry academic
lessons. And while the coincidence of Xymos's new technology running on
the same program Jack created at his previous job keeps the plot
moving, it may be more than some readers can swallow. But, thanks in
part to a sobering foreword in which Crichton warns of the real dangers
of technology that continues to evolve more quickly than common sense,
Prey succeeds in gripping readers with a tense and frightening tale of scientific suspense.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2012
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