Prey

Rating:
Summary: Important warning about the future!
Review: This book, which I hope gets turned into another Crichton blockbuster, shows how dangerous things will get in the near future.

Michael Crichton says in the introduction to the novel: "Sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power. One area where this will occur is in the meeting point of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computer technology. What all three have in common is the ability to release self-replicating entities into the environment."

This idea that we will soon have weapons that can make copies of themselves is troubling!

One of the last sentences of the novel says: "'They didn't understand what they were doing.' I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race."

Michael Crichton is obviously warning us that weapons that can make copies of themselves could cause the DEATH of the human race. Powerful stuff!

I actually got my book for free since I am a member of the Lifeboat Foundation. They are taking his book so seriously that they are trying to get some people off the planet before this weapon is unleashed!

A nonfiction book that discusses such dangers is "Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind's Future In This Century-On Earth and Beyond" by Martin Rees. I recommend this book as well!

Rating:
Summary: Solid mystery thriller plot
Review: I love to figure things out and stayed close, but crashed on a few curves. Tracks right along, deeper and deeper into trouble. The end ties up the beginning. A fun read all the way through.

Rating:
Summary: Good, not great
Review: This book was pretty good. However, way too predictable. Reading the summary of the book, they talk about nanotechnology escaping. Through the first quarter of the book, the guy is suspicious of his wife being weird. He knows that his wife works at a place that makes nanotechnology. Now isn't it obvious that some nanotech has gotten into his wife?

The ending of the novel was weak as well.

Rating:
Summary: I preyed that it would end
Review: Michael Crichton has a great formula for people to continue purchasing his books - it's a gamble that you will either be thoroughly entertained and enrapt in the story or thoroughly disappointed. I'd put Prey in the latter category.

Jack is an unemployed computer programmer who's wife Julia is wholly consumed in her work on bio-and nano-technology at Xymos. But Julia becomes more and more distant, a changed person - no longer the loving wife and mother. Thus, the first 1/3 of the book deals with Jack as Mr. Mom, while trying to figure out if Julia's having an affair, as well as how he can get a job in a field in which 6 months of unemployment is a career-ending situation. I felt as if I were watching a mid-afternoon soap opera.

Then Xymos contacts Jack for help. It seems the computer program Xymos is using for its nano-technology ventures was originally started by Jack and his team and now the program has some "bugs" in it that needs his expertise. Meanwhile, Julia's been in a car accident, Jack's sister is pushing him to get a divorce, his kids continually fight, oh the horror!

The sad thing is...this is when the book turns south. The events and people that Jack encounters at Xymos are confusingly put together, very disjointed, and does not allow the reader to grasp just where Crichton wants to take us. The "prey" itself was confusing, its progression disjointed, its ultimate reason for killing not evident, its purpose left in the Crichton's mind only.

I was not entertained, I was not horrified, I was not moved at all. This was a very easy book to put down each day. I finished it because I have finished EVERY book I have ever started (as well as it being recommended by some friends). But beyond those friends remaining my friends, this venture with Crichton was not worth the time taken to write this review.

Rating:
Summary: Crosses the border from Science Fiction to Science Fantasy
Review: One of the things I always like about Crichton's books was that there was always a feeling in the back of my mind that the story was somehow possible.
From Jurrasic park's "DNA locked in amber" to the "alien life form" brought down by a satelite in the Andromeda Strain - I always believed that someday - this kind of thing might happen,
In Prey - however - I just didn't get the same feeling and I think the book goes way beyond what can someday be possible.

Crichton puts the story line of Prey in present day terms when in fact - technology such as this won't be available for many, many years - not in our lifetime anyway.
If Crichton had put this story a few hundred years in the future - it may have worked

Rating:
Summary: Crichton Delivers
Review: Just when you think Michael Crichton has written his best work, he comes up with an even more fascinating topic.

I have been interested in the possibilities of nanotechnology since the late 80's when I read a book by Drexler called "Engines of Creation". Crichton has taken this idea and coupled it with some of the latest ideas in Computer Networking theory to produce an exciting, fast-paced, nightmare of a book. I read it in one day. I especially loved Crichton's editorial comments explaining the scientific concepts including actually providing the code that the programmers where concerned about.

I'm just grateful that Crichton continues to aim his books at his most loyal audience. Those who actually "get" what he's talking about. Its refreshing to read Sci-Fi that is based at least partially on some scientific premise rather than the more commercial "And then it happened Automagically!" approach.

Rating:
Summary: Been there, done that---with dinosaurs. A Snooze-a-Thon.
Review: How do I hate "Prey:a Novel"?----let me count the ways.

1) Michael Crichton's tale of nanotechnology is crammed full of filler and fluff; indeed, the first 1/3 of the book (sadly the best part) has nothing to do with nanotechnology, and everything to do with our protagonist Jack's life of house-husbandry and slowly (ever so....slowly) crumbling marriage. Even the *title* of the book is fluffy, for pity's sake: "Prey: a Novel"???? A Novel? As distinguished from what, "Prey: a Coloring Book"?

2) Fluff, if it's well-written, can be good, if it is used in the service of a higher goal and the novel pays off. Sadly, the novel does not. In a nutshell, the plot: Jack, unemployed computer programmer and devoted house-husband of Julia, worries (for 1/3 of the book) about his fraying marriage, and Julia's increasing distraction and strange behavior.

You see, Julia, a senior executive of biotech start-up Xymos, is evincing the signs of a woman having an affair. She's distracted, she's cranky, she's irritable, she's distant, she works late and takes a shower when she gets home---and she's starting to really shape up! After his wife's car accident, Jack finds out the lovely Julia has been spending entire days at Xymo's microchip fabrication plant, and gets hired as a consultant to figure out what's going on.

What's going on? The Gentle Reader can probably figure it out. Xymos, you see, is making little biomechanical machines on a nano (extremely small) scale, and the little devils have gotten out of control. When Jack gets to the lab, the little devils (actually nano-sized military cameras for battlefield surveillance) are outside the lab---but for how long? Worse, because nanotechnology replicates, they're breeding---a little swarm of nano-cameras buzzing all over the desert, and they're not out to have you say 'cheese.'

3) If I've made "Prey: A Novel" sound more exciting than it is, and I have, then I'm sorry. We've seen all of this before in Jurassic Park, except that book was fresh and interesting. This is just a boring rehash, a book that dissolves into a frantic chase when our hero gets to the lab and finds the little velociraptors (I'm sorry, nanomachines) devouring anyone they can find. Go ahead and slog through the first 1/3rd of the book hoping for a payoff---you'll regret it.

4) Nanotechnology is an exciting concept that many companies have already employed; doubtless we'll see more extensive and imaginative applications of it in our lifetime. But Crichton has taken this marvellous concept (with its ominous implications, as both K. Eric Drexler and Greg Bear have suggested) and turned it into a monster-of-the-week novel---and a long, tedious, boring read, at that.

If you want to see what the nanotechnology-gone-horribly-wrong theme looks like in the hands of a master, then grab the appalling and unsettling "Blood Music", by Greg Bear. In the meantime, save your money and your time and avoid "Prey".

Rating:
Summary: Good idea, Lacking substance
Review: This was the first novel I read by Crichton and overall it was pretty good. The concept of nanotechnology is very interesting. I have also read By Light of the Moon by Dean Koontz which dealt with nanotechnology but in a different way. The major complaint I had was with the whole focus on the narrator's family life. Although it played a role in the plot, I felt it went too deep into it and took away from the story. Also, the I didn't like the way the author portrayed the kids. The kid's behavior didn't seem real life, the name calling was something an adult might imagine children saying to each but in reality don't. And after awhile it just got annoying reading about them. I gave it three stars because of the idea and also the second half of the novel was better than the first half.

Rating:
Summary: Crichton Does His Homework
Review: I really enjoyed this novel, and especially liked how Michael explained various technical concepts through the course of the book. There were no boring parts in the whole book - something was always afoot, from beginning to end.

Rating:
Summary: When's the movie coming out?
Review: The book presentsan interesting concept about artificial intelligence but while reading Prey I couldn't help wondering when the movie would be coming out. Many of Crichton's books, such as Jurassic Park, have been made into successful movies and I kept feeling that this book was written with a future film adaptation in mind, which is not, in my mind,a good thing. I was mentally casting the characters in my mind and this ultimately proved to be quite a distraction. This is obviously fiction for the masses. It makes you think a little but ultimately it feels like cotton candy which quickly dissolves in your mouth, It just doesn't linger in the mind for long...it's just empty calories; It's not bad but could have, should have been much better.