By: Michael Crichton Publisher: Harper Collins Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Format: Bargain Price Label: Harper Collins Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 384 Publication Date: November 01, 2002
In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.
Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey.
As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence-in a story of breathtaking suspense.
Prey is a novel you can't put down. Because time is running out.
Amazon.com Review: 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. --Benjamin Reese
Great Read, has something for everbody! "Prey" by Michael Crichton is a wonderful book. Even I, one who is usually strongly opposed to the Science-Fiction genre, found many things about this book that made me think, and many more that were just good. Maybe it was the romance, perhaps the incredibly performed suspense, or another element. The author definitely created a successful balance of technical terms and understandability, so even the least tech-savvy people can still understand the general "big picture" Michael is trying to communicate, while the same passage will be filled with brain food for anyone who understands it. This book is an edge-of-your-seat novel, full of romance, intrigue, and a colorful assortment of vocabulary. A highly recommended read, but be warned: once you start to read, it may be hard to stop!
Better than Next, worse than Jurassic Park. Stuck square in anonymity, this book would never have had more than a handful of reviews if not for the author. Attach a big enough name to anything that isn't awful and some people will love it.
Others have summarized it, you can read those reviews as well as you can this one, so I will save time and point out what is right and what is wrong.
First, the good. The characterization is better here than it is in most Michael Crichton novels. This is refreshing, although he still can't write an intelligent and dynamic female character to save a novel. Strangely. In any case, Jack Forman, our protagonist, is much more three dimensional than previous, and later, Crichton characters. It was too bad that it was really a one-time thing.
The bad. The ending was lame. Really lame. I saw it coming about halfway through the book. And it could have been so much better, too, which was even worse. Also, all of the characters except for Jack Forman are awful. Truly, jaw-droppingly bad. Many of them are retreads from other books by Crichton. As if his Word file says, "Insert ubiquitous fat, obnoxious, computer expert guy here."
The science in this one is also bad. No matter how you build nanotechnology, Escherichia coli cannot live in the desert. It is too dry, there is too much UV light, etc. At least this time, though, the people who he has villainized are merely a single company, and not an entire business, like lawyers or molecular biologists. It is more reasonable that a half-dozen people could fall into the mental traps that appear in this book than the entirety of an academic discipline, which is just awful.
Worth reading, but probably only once. Worth owning for Crichton fans, who will like it.
C
Harkius
Intriguing and suspenseful plot Crichton mixes science fact with science fiction to create an irresistible book that keeps you up at night to finish reading the entire book. Character development is somewhat weak but the science facts woven into the fiction will pull you in and not let go until you have reached the end. It's one thrilling read!
The worst possible book i've ever read in 50 years! Well here it is 2008 and I bought this to read while on a flight to Cancun to work. The plot is basically terrible, the first part of the book reads like a General Hospital episode. The part of super manager fails unbelievably. Worse, I already had a better way to destroy the supposed villain at half the book's length than the ending. AVOID THIS BOOK! Anyone that has seen the movie, (yeah, I know I'm using a movie reference here) The Matrix knows that EMP will kill any computer type device unless it is hardened to MILSPEC (I'm thinking that Dude missed this movie....). So to kill nano machines that use electrical circuits? EMP! DUH! This book is dull and boring and not worth the cash I paid for it.
Okay This book is pretty good. Since anything "nano" is all the rage these days in science, this book was pretty much inevitable. A good read.
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