Prey

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Summary: Fast paced book where nanotech, biotech, and AI meet
Review: Prey is a novel about the possible consequences of nanotechnology going wrong. Crichton very cleverly describes how nanotechnology, molecular biology and computer technology (AI) will fuse in the nanotech world. He does careful research and the arguments are presented by the protagonist who is a project manager in the nanotech world.

The book describes how one application of nanotech will be based on a Predator-Prey system, which will be modeled upon animals in the real world (like a colony of ants). Such systems may not have a central intelligence (like humans or a company) but instead have collective intelligence based on simple rules. It is a largely a tightly written book, quite well paced and the characters are real. The appendix at the end provides references to seeming interesting material on nanotech - both technical and social from scientists working in the field. Every book I have read written by Crichton has been interesting and I have learned something from it. But then it is just my bias towards someone who is a Dr from Harvard and very well travelled? In any case, I enjoyed it and look forward to the next one!


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Summary: Not Crichton's best effort
Review: After reading most of Crichton's books, it gets hard not to compare the latest effort against the previous books. With such books as 'Jurassic Park', 'The Andromeda Strain', and 'Disclosure' it makes it difficult to always hit a home run.

This book takes on the dangers of dealing with nano-technology. Crichton is such a good writer that he grab the reader and keep them captivated sometimes in spite of the subject. I think that is a great skill and still enjoyed the book.

The story did lose me a little regarding the mass of nanobots and their life like abilities. It is hard to believe some of the books imagery. This may be partly due to the limited knowledge regarding nano-technology.

If you a Crichton fan or some looking for an enjoyable easy read, then this book is good. However, if you're looking for Crichton's next great novel, I didn't think this book stood up with the rest.

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Summary: A peak into our powerful and dangerous future
Review: As part of a broad public discussion, not a specifically scientific one, Michael Crichton reaches into the deep thick darkness of our future with his new book, "Prey," and viscerally pulls out some issues, some potential realities, with his poetry-prose, that are so central to our continued breathing and cognition that we are well advised to ignore the obvious scientific weaknesses of many parts of this book. The issues he brings up include the development of nano and bio technologies, artificial life, and swarm and emergent behavior.
The plot of "Prey" is formulaic in many respects, following closely in the footsteps of books such as "Frankenstein," which was the first real story about artifical intelligence, "2001: A Space Odyssey" and, of course, "Jurassic Park."
In ignoring these varied faults, as we read "Prey," we sit quietly on this beautiful dark night and get a glimpse of the deeper issues that glimmer, simmering, on our nearest horizon.

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Summary: A High Tech Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Review: Crichton does an excellent job of writing a heart-pounding high tech thriller! This is a story of nano-technology gone out of control. Those familiar with Ben Bova's tales (Venus, The Asteroid War series, etc.) would know the concept of nano or microscopic computer technology going in. In both cases the potential is there for both good results and total disaster. It is scary because science is probably trying very hard to perfect this technology and the way things seem to be designed today; the odds are greater for disaster than good.

In this novel, a man (Jack) out of work has to take care of his kids until he can find a new job while his wife starts putting in incredibly long hours. His wife starts acting very strange (like a Stepford Wife), being very standoffish with her family and acting very "weird" around them. She starts beating her baby when he starts crying and is constantly snapping at her kids. She starts looking "younger" and leaner especially in the face. Jack starts suspecting that she may be having an affair and when he discusses her behavior with a few people they tell him it is typical behavior of someone who is.

Jack seems to not want to face that possibility or maybe senses something else linked to the job. Weird things start to happen like a mysterious black line that seems to engulf his wife and then disappear and then Jack sees what appears to be a young man in his wife's car with her who seems to vanish mysteriously.

Other strange things occur like Jack's baby gets a mysterious rash that engulfs his body. Jack rushes him to the emergency room and the doctors are perplexed as the baby gets worse and worse. Finally, they call for an MRI. When the baby is put in there the MRI gets damaged and the baby is mysteriously better. The doctors mentioned that the MRI has a strong magnetic field so the reader immediately suspects that the magnetism of the MRI destroyed whatever was harming the baby. Being in the computer field, I know that magnets destroy computer components, so you can kind of guess what was affecting the baby.

When Jack's wife is injured in a car crash, Jack is asked to go back to work (at the same company she was at) and go to where his wife was working to solve a computer programming problem that is threatening to wreck a major project involving nano-technology the company is working on. Jack goes to the facility in the desert to try to help. When he gets there he finds that some of the people working there, like his wife, are acting very strange. For some reason Jack never suspects the truth about them even when he sees evidence of duplicates of some of the people being made.

Crichton has written a riveting tale that I highly recommend. The only drawback for me was that the first two pages of the book take place at the end of the story so you know that Jack and his co-worker (Mae) will survive throughout most of the "inescapable" perils of the book. This took away some of the suspense of those scenes.

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Summary: One of his best
Review: Crichton returns to top form with "Prey". This time out his protagonist must deal with an apparent crisis at a fabrication plant in Nevada. Jack Forman is a programmer, and presumably the underlying difficulty is a code glitch, but events seems to implicate the plant's use of nanotechnology, and some mysterious behavior by Jack's wife, a top executive at the fabrication plant.

None of these elements would distinguish this book from a hundred other thrillers, but Crichton brings some special ingredients to the mix: fewer cliches than most of his peers, though more than I would have liked; a plausible technology well backed by information; a slick writing style that goes down like ice cream; more attention to character development than usual.

As compared with some recent Crichton efforts, notably "Timeline" and "Airframe" this book is taut and quite brief. The characters are better written, the situations much less implausible. This book marks a return to the form of "Andromeda Strain" and "Jurassic Park" Most of the action occurs within a forty-eight hour period, and Crichton does a good job of showing how the limits of time and the characters' knowledge of the situation restrict their choices. I believe that some other reviewers considered these "holes" in the plot, but I cannot agree. Jack would have done things differently had he known what he was getting into, but he plausibly does not know these things.

The technology under discussion here, nanotechnology, has been a fixture of science fiction and science speculation for over fifteen years. Experienced SciFi readers might approach this book with a certain amount of reserve, wondering why it took Crichton so long to follow Drexler, "Blood Music", "Gryphon", "Nanotech Chronicles", "Assemblers of Infinity" and "Aristoi", among others.But Crichton writes thrillers, rather than pure Science Fiction, and his take on nanotechnology owes as much to population biology, artificial life, emergent behavior, and microbial behavior as it does to K. Eric Drexler. He has clearly read a good deal, his bibliography was lovely, and he only fell into the didactic mode about 5 times during the novel-- not much for Crichton.

"Prey" is told in the first person, and the character of Jack Forman dominates the novel. Crichton invests far more effort than usual in giving Jack depth, and the results are quite pleasing. Much of the early section of the book takes place against the backdrop of Jack's career as a stay-at-home Dad, buying place mats and picking kids up from soccer practice. Some readers, seeking escape from a similar life, will not find this part entertaining. But it does ground Jack's character in a reality different from the technocrisis, a new twist for Crichton.

As stated above, the book is quite brief, and seems shorter than it is. The climax and ending come with the speed of a short story, and the resolution seems to make far too little emotional impact on the protagonist. The emphasis on Jack also drains most of the life out of the other characters--- they are mere acquaintances of Jack's, and it shows. None of this really detracts from the book, and the refusal to milk the ending may simply show restraint by a seasoned writer.

I confess that I am writing this review because I find too many of the other posted reviews unjustly harsh. Comparing "Prey" with recent work by Clancy, Preston and Child, and other work by Crichton himself makes this book look even better. It has definite limitations, to be sure, but within those it has a richness the competition can only envy.

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Summary: Prey Review
Review: Great book, great stuff about nanotechnology, compelling plot. I liked this even better than his new anti-ecology tome, State of Fear.

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Summary: Not one of Crichton's Best
Review: I bought the hardback of this because I was looking so forward to a new Crichton novel. I had read Airframe, Timeline, Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain, and Sphere and I loved them all. Prey is a mediocre novel, that just doesn't hold up to Crichton's past works. The subject of nanotechnology sounded like it could be interesting, but I found myself fairly bored with it the whole time. Crichton didn't "sell" the story to me like he did with his past ideas. I didn't feel as if it was plausible at all, possibly because the concept of nanotechnology is so new that no one really knows much ab out it. Looking at all of the works he cited, it looks like he did a LOT of research into his subject. So why are there so many problems with the logic in it?

It seems like Crichton has become somewhat formulaic in this book. The book clearly mimics many of the themes, plots, and cliffhangers from Jurassic Park, but lacks the overall threat of 60 foot tall T-Rex ready to rip your throat out. It's hard to develop suspense in a novel where the main threat is microscopic (although it was done in 'Strain effectively, so why not here?)

If you're a fast reader and want something for the weekend, it's not a bad read, but I wouldn't suggest spending any time or money on Prey.

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Summary: Another technology thriller!
Review: I could not put this book down. In all, I finished it in just under five hours. Gripping is hardly the word for it.
Crichton has again brought us a high-tech novel that studies the recent advances in science and technology.
In this book, a company 'accidently' releases a group of nano-particles in to the air. They have some intelligence, communication and power skills, and are equipped with a PREDPREY programming that allows them to learn from mistakes. In the wild, they begin to evolve, gaining a group intelligence and create their own reproduction lab. Now, they're trying to get back into the lab that they started in. And they're hungry. They kill several people and animals, using their bodies for materials.
What happens is unexpected and exciting as the programmers inside struggle to find out what's going wrong.

I found somethings difficult in the book. First, the main character takes a long time figuring things out. What the particles can do, the difficulty with his wife and what's going on with some other programmers. It fits his character, but is painful to read at times.
His kids are nothing short of annoying. The same thing popped up in Jurassic Park: Annoying kids. At least this time they didn't play much of a role, although we do see them here and there.

Crichton follows a predictable pattern with his novels. Like Timeline and Jurassic Park, the book is about the hubris of scientists, and how their actions are doomed to fail.
There are some strong parallels with Jurassic Park in this book. Genetic Engineering is a large portion, except that it is nano-manufacturing. For a majority of the book, the characters are cooped up inside their labratory, like in JP, and there is also a scene where the characters go the the breeding grounds of the particles, like in JP. The pattern is danger, hiding/studing/arguing, then boldness and the solution of the problem. There's nothing wrong with this, but it is predictable.

Like in Timeline, Crichton also gave us a slew of scientific information about the sciences in the book and that are being worked on now. I've enjoyed reading this, and it makes the book worth reading, if only to get the current happenings in a science world. Its all very interesting.

The result is an excellent, well paced read, that is painstakingly studied and has all the elements of a great book. Action, explaination, and a very interesting science problem.

Rating:
Summary: Good read
Review: I enjoyed the book, a bit technical at times, but what you would expect from Chricton (name hard to spell, lol) anyway I would suggest you buy it is a "required" book for any ones collection.

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Summary: Are You Kidding Me With This??
Review: I had never read any of Michael Crichton's work, but I was familiar with those books made into movies, and so I knew that what I was getting myself into with "Prey" would certainly be no literary feat of genius. On the other hand, I expected that, for his work, "Prey" included, to sell so well, there had to be some redeeming quality to it.

I was wrong. There is no redeeming quality to this book. It was like reading a rendition of a make-believe fantasy game that children play, only this was far less believable. The children could also probably have written their version much better.

In a word: Lame.