Sphere

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Enjoyable Popcorn
Review: You've got to give it to Michael Crichton: he writes one heck of a page-turner. Open one of his books with the idea that you'll just read a chapter or two before bedtime and you'll suddenly be bleary-eyed at three in the morning. And although this particular title, which is somewhat less well known than such Crichton novels as THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and JURASSIC PARK, it still packs a bestseller wallop.

The premise is classic Crichton. In his younger days, psychologist Norman Johnson was approached by the United States government to write a report on the psychological impact of an encounter with extra-terrestrials--and now, on the basis of his rather flippant recommendations, he finds himself en route to a possible UFO crash sight on the floor of the Pacific ocean. Once established with his colleges in an underwater habitat, the government team encounters a mysterious space craft that contains a still-more mysterious sphere, and those who come into contact with it undergo an unexpected change.

The writing is crisp and clean, the hard science is handled quite skillfully, and Crichton plays out his story at a breathless pace: yes, a page-turner if ever there was one. Still, it is worth noting that SPHERE displays Crichton's weaknesses as clearly as it does his strengths. Strictly speaking, Crichton hasn't had an original concept in some thirty years, and just as he rehashed his screenplay for WESTWORLD into the novel JURASSIC PARK, so does he rehash THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN into SPHERE. The novel also contains both the foundational sexism and ambiguous conclusion so typical of Crichton's work.

Ultimately, SPHERE is popcorn: we've all had it before and you can't make a truly satisfying meal of it. But it is tremendously enjoyable all the same, and where is SPHERE is concerned... well, you'll eat every kernal in the bowl.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but never hits the mark
Review: I vividly remember when I read Sphere that I thought it would play better as a movie; and if people think the movie is a bit meandering and weird, the book is certainly the same. Crichton gives us three partial stories for the price of one, but unfortunately none of them ever seem to click.

The book opens with an extremely promising, thought-provoking concept that is too quickly and unfortunately abandoned: Beneath the modern-day ocean a ship thought to be alien, sunken for three hundred years, turns out to be American-built, having apparently traveled through time to get there. There's no sign of any crew, and the flight recorder only gives them a hint to how the ship got there. It's a great story at that point, but there Crichton decides to deal with the one oddity found aboard: The sphere.

Without getting too much into the specifics, it's enough to say that the second two partial stories don't do the first one justice. We get a bit of mystery over what's inside the sphere, and what (if anything) might be trying to communicate and how. Then follows a tale of paranoia as the characters each have different suspicions about what's going on, and none of them can be sure whether they can even trust themselves. It all ends on an unsatisfying note, having accomplished little or nothing.

It seems clear that there was no set theme to Sphere, and as a result the story fragmented under stress. It started out so promising, but the really juicy and fascinating questions were never answered. To me the mystery of the ship and its origins and history was far more intriguing than the mystery of the alien sphere, yet the former was sacrificed to bring on the rest of the story. Having read some real classics, I don't count this among them; Sphere was a novel without direction or purpose, that seemed more like a bad echo of Forbidden Planet than an original work. In some ways it's an interesting read, but I wouldn't rank it too highly on the reading list.

Rating:
Summary: Better Than The Movie
Review: Annotation: A sci-fi thriller that has a twist at the end you couldn't see coming. Michael Crichton sets the stage deep in the ocean as a group of scientist explores an unknown spaceship and finds a mysterious sphere that causes strange things to happen.

Author bio: Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942 and attended Harvard medical school in 1964. He has produced books such as Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Congo. He also created the hit show ER and is the only person to have the number one movie, number one book, and number one show all at the same time.

Evaluation: This book was awesome! I couldn't put it down for a minute. One complaint I have is that when they made the movie, they tried to make it "hollywood adaptable" and messed up some key plot points. The part I liked best was when Harry uses his simple logic to determine that they were going to die in the spaceship because the ship was in the future and there was no sign that the future knew of them visiting the ship. It was so simple I was mad I didn't pick it out before I read it! This book is a definite read for anyone who is a science fiction fan.

Rating:
Summary: Enter the Unknown
Review: I have recently read Sphere by Michael Crichton. I found this book to be filled with adventure and intrigue. It follows a very intelligent psychologist, Norman Johnson. He is sent to what he thinks is a plane crash site. He normally goes to them to help the families cope with the loss of loved ones. He thought it was just a routine job and that he would be home shortly, he was wrong. The government called him in to research an underwater spacecraft with a team of experienced scientists. He set up the team and went underwater into a habitat to study the craft. He gets more and more involved as the team enters the craft. The suspense starts to build up when they enter the ship and terrible things happen to the crew. As they venture further into the craft they find a shiny silver ball about the size of a large merchant ship. They enter the ship and that's when everything goes wrong. The sphere seems to be able to look into their minds and know what they are thinking. It will carry out the task that that person is thinking about. As the story develops more, each team member gets scared for their lives and starts to distrust one another. The sphere begins to carry out terrible tasks and many team members lose their sense of sanity. Norman has to take complete control of the team and make sure that the rest stays sane and in a working manner. As the sphere gets more and more violent, the team has to make a choice between leaving and forgetting about a scientific breakthrough or continue on with their important investigation.

Rating:
Summary: A page-turner, but with a disappointing end
Review: This is one of the few novels is really couldn't put down before finishing it. Crichton succeeds in the first half of the story in building a powerful sense of mystery integrated in an admirably well-documented scientific and technical background. This background justified making the spaceship an american ship from the future as the only logical possibility. At this point, you can only expect the explanation to the mystery that is the sphere they find inside to be something extraordinarily imaginative, as the author dropped hints at what the possibilities are (I liked the idea of beings from a more than 4 dimensions world; how would they have interacted with our world? Our the possibility of time and space reversing roles.) Unfortunately, the author's imagination seems to suffer a breakdown in the second half of the book. Making the sphere a modern equivalent of the good old Aladdin's lamp, a device allowing one's to make anything one's wishes come true, was an easy and disastrous way out. Anyone who has ever tried writing knows there is no better way to kill the plausibility of your story than giving infinite powers to your characters (near the end, when Dr Goodman acquires these powers himself, why don't he uses them to get back home instantly and solve everything as if nothing happened instead of doing it the old, painstaking but more interesting way? And at the end, why don't the survivors use these same powers to resurrect their dead companions?) So after closing this book, we are left feeling a bit disappointed. It would be interesting to pick up this story from the middle and try to write a more imaginative conclusion.

Rating:
Summary: Another Crichton Masterpiece!
Review: I personally could not set this book down. I'd seen bits and pieces of the movie at a friend's house and decided to read the book to find out how the story ended. The book was much much better than the parts of the movie I saw... and they left out a lot of major story elements in the film. Whether you've seen the movie or not, Sphere is a must read for anybody who enjoys the science fiction genre.

Crichton is an amazing writer, but unfortunately his books are usually turned into second-rate science fiction flicks (with the possible exception of Jurassic Park, which was awesome back in 1993). I think this is at least partly because so much of the appeal in his writing comes from the mental dialouge and thought processes, which cannot be conveyed to viewers of a film.

Definitely hit this one up if you've got some spare time; it's worth every second!

Rating:
Summary: This is one of the best books ever!
Review: Sphere by Michael Crichton is one of the best books I've ever read, it's full of suspense action, and some of the best character interactions I've read. I would strongly recommend this to anyone who likes any other book my Crichton (Jurassic park, Andromeda Strain, Airframe, Congo etc.).
"For a decade, Norman Johnson had been on the list of FAA crash-site teams, experts called on short notice to investigate civilian air disasters... This time his wife, Ellen, had been annoyed because he was called away on July 1, which meant he would miss the July 4 beach Barbeque" (Crichton 4)
In the first chapter you meet Norman Johnson a 53 year old psychologist whose being called out to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, for what he thinks is just a routine crash inspection. He soon finds out it's much, much more than that. You quickly find out that there is a "Space Ship" 1,000 feet below the surface of the Ocean, and there's "something Alien" inside.
"They walked into the room, moving among the giant hands and claws. And they saw, nestled in the padded hand, a large, perfectly polished silver sphere about thirty feet in diameter. The sphere had no markings or features of any kind" (Crichton 104)
This is "The Sphere" and it is what the book is about. Without giving too much away, when you go in, everything changes and not necessarily for the better. As soon as this is introduced the book really starts to pick up.
"Now the feet of the body were swinging just above his head. Norman climbed another step, and one of the boots caught in the loop of the air hose that ran from his air pack to his helmet. He reached behind his helmet, trying to free himself from the body. The body shivered and for an awful moment he thought it was still alive. Then the boot came free in his hand, and a naked foot-gray flesh, purple toenails-kicked his faceplate... He turned the body so he could see the face. 'It's Levy.'"(Crichton 200)
If this type of writing doesn't intrigue you then this book really isn't for you, but as soon as I started to read this book I couldn't put it down. It's got everything a great book needs, action, suspense, philosophy, science, and everything else you need.

Rating:
Summary: A scientific thriller that will leave you spellbound!
Review: Psychologist Norman Johnson finds himself called to the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the South Pacific. Here, he is told that a spacecraft has crash landed--some three hundred years ago.

Sent down with a small group of qualified scientists, Johnson must help unlock the mystery the craft presents. But the very fact that the spacecraft is 300 years old is to be dwarfed by other discoveries they make...and their fears mount as people begin to die...

Michael Crichton is probably the best science/thriller writer currently behind the keyboard. His characters are real, and his plots, while outlandish, bristle with intense reality. "Sphere" is a classic novel of terror and discovery, and of the fate people must chose for themselves. A superb novel, one of the best works from one of the best writers.

Rating:
Summary: Chilling...
Review: This is another book from Crichton that I love...

It's about a huge spaceship found at the floor of the ocean, and the team of scientists that go down to find out what it is, and what it's for.

The strange part? It's been at the floor of the ocean for hundreds- maybe even THOUSANDS of years.

The cool part? It was and American ship sent there from the future and has a large sphere on the inside.

Soon after they discover the ship, one of the team members opens the sphere and walks inside. He's found later, unconscious outside it. And after that, strange, coded, messages appear on the underwater station's computers from an unseen character named 'Jerry'.

Bad things happen, presumably coming from Jerry; a huge squid attacks the ship over and over again, and soon only three members of the team are left.

From its interesting beginning to its chilling ending, this book carries you on a thrill ride that seems entirely possible... just like all the Crichton books.

Rating:
Summary: Very different from other Crichton
Review: This was one of Crichton's fastest books to read. I found it very hard to put down and extremely fun. The conversations between the characters are informative and match Cricton's style for teaching the reader about science. All of the fantasy aspects keep the suspense and excitement up. If you are able to suspend your disbelief, you will thouroughly enjoy this book. It is fast-paced and suspenseful, and in the end it will leave you thinking. This is one of Crichton's best and I recommend it to anyone.