Prey is the first book written by Michael Crichton I've read in at least 8 or 9 years. The last one was Timeline, and I gave up on that after 200 pages. I did finish Prey, with all the time I spent in airports the last 3 days, there wasn't much else to do (I'm not one for people-watching).
Prey is nanotechnology growing beyond the control of the people who made it. The plot is about trying to stop the nanotech before it grows too much, but the story is more about humanity's inability to perceive all possible results of an action. It's also about the tendency of people to ignore possible negative consequences because they're more concerned with their own skin, in the financial or reputational sense. Basically, humans are easily smart enough to develop something that will kill them all, but may not be smart enough to avoid actually killing themselves with what they developed.
The plot is about Jack, formerly a computer programmer/manager-type, now stay-at-home-husband, being hired as a consultant because the company his wife Julia works for, is having some trouble with the programming code of their supposed nanotech breakthrough. Mistaken assumptions and death ensue. Unfortunately for Jack, the problem can't be solved by changing a code and sending it to the nanotech. The answer is more action-oriented, and while Jack does OK, it's clearly not a situation he's accustomed to.
When I was in 7th grade, I went through a heavy Crichton phase. Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, Eaters of the Dead, The Great Train Robbery, The Terminal Man, maybe Sphere. I read all those in about a year, which was strange, considering how often I was dissatisfied with how not enough was happening. "Not enough" probably meant explosions, gun fights, and car chases. I know the reason I enjoyed Eaters of the Dead so much was it was half the size of his other books, and so he got right to the point, lots of fighting and killing of monsters. The other problem was much of the technical jargon (usually lots of that in a Crichton novel) went right over my head. With Crichton's books, he always did (or gave the appearance of doing) a lot of research, and was going to share what he found. If you aren't interested in the topic, it's probably not going to be a fun read. I don't care about medieval French castle architecture, so Timeline bored me.
If I reread the books from 7th grade now, would I enjoy them more? I think I'd certainly understand more, and I don't require nearly so much action movie stuff to keep my attention. In the case of prey, it actually was the technical discussions that kept me interested. I didn't feel any particular concern for any of the characters' fates. Some of them died, and well, did the survivors learn anything new from what happened? It was frustrating seeing Jack, who was largely passive, a peacemaker, become more aggressive and demanding at precisely the time he shouldn't. It seemed convenient to cause problems for him. But I was really into the idea that programmers model their work on what living organisms do in the wild. At Jack's old job, they designed a program modeled on the focus of a hungry predator on achieving its goal. Namely, finding something to eat. This was supposed to make sure what ever was running the program would stay focused on its goal, rather than being distracted too easily by changing external stimuli. The biologist in me thought that was pretty cool.
Whether you'd want to read this book or not depends on how interested you are in the subjects of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and programming. If the answer is "not very" give it a pass.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment