Sphere

Rating:
Summary: Sphere is one of the best science fiction novels written!
Review: This book is a must read!

It all starts out when Norman Johnson, a psychologist, is asked to come to a crash site in the middle of the Pacific. When he arrives at the site, the Navy informs him that it wasn't a plane that crashed but a spacecraft. When Norman asks when the spacecraft had crashed (assuming within the last 30 years), he is told that it crashed nearly 300 years ago.

What makes Sphere such a phenomenal novel is the unbelievable suspense. Sphere is one of those books that you cannot put down; there is not one dull part in this novel. Crichton writes so descriptively that the situation could be real. I found so many mysteries and questions in this book, and when they were resolved, the solutions blew my mind away.

Sphere is filled with action, suspense, and mystery and fills my imagination even now. Anyone who reads this book will definitely enjoy it, and will keep wanting more.


Rating:
Summary: Crichton at his best
Review: Psychologist Norman Johnson accepted a grant to predict the likely reactions of human beings to alien first contact because he needed money to buy his family a house. Not because he could take such a task seriously. The last thing he expected, years later, was to find himself applying his study's conclusions in real life. But here he is, nevertheless. On his way to a habitat beneath the Pacific Ocean, with a team he hand picked - just long enough ago so that its members aren't exactly the same people they were when he selected them. The habitat has been set up for easy access to a sphere that's been lying on the ocean's floor for 300 years.

No 53-year-old in average (less than optimum) physical health belongs where the Navy has decided Norman Johnson should go. He realizes that as he and the rest of the first contact team, of which he is a member rather than the leader, explore the ancient spaceship. When a storm forces the Navy to withdraw surface support, stranding the team, Norman finds out exactly how right he was in some of his theorizing. He also finds out how wrong he was.

Sphere is Crichton at his best. The ensemble cast of this novel rings true as the plot sweeps them from crisis to crisis, through twist after twist. Its ending is perfect, after a wild ride that's everything a sci-fi thriller ought to be.



Rating:
Summary: Movie, not a book
Review: Unreal characters. Bickering, vain, almost comedic. SNL could use these guys in a skit.

Would make a pretty good movie but not good in book form.

Rating:
Summary: a thrilling page-turner!
Review: Like others who have written reviews about Sphere, I could NOT put it down. I had to read the other half in one day before I even started my school work.

Sphere, of course, is about a group of men and women from different backgrounds selected by the Navy to go down to the depths of the Pacific in order to investigate a very large spacecraft..... possibly of alien origin.

Down there however, Crichton turns the novel into a thrilling mind game with a surprise in the last 20-30 pages.

Norman and the others must not only discover the purpose of this craft and any technology in it, but must also discover it before time runs out in the habitat and on themselves as well.

Typically, I'm not a fan of authors whose books are constantly turned into movies but Sphere was a different matter entirely.

Give it a read and see for yourself what a masterpiece Crichton has written!

-Travis S.