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Title: Prey CD by Michael Crichton, Leonard Robert Sean ISBN: 0-06-053697-7 Publisher: HarperAudio Pub. Date: 25 November, 2002 Format: Audio CD Volumes: 11 List Price(USD): $49.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.33 (522 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A peak into our powerful and dangerous future
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: Strong story, Incomplete idea
Comment: Prey is the first fiction book I've read in a while; a welcome change from having to take notes on every page of similarly-themed scientific works. It explores a nanotechnological disaster, with self-replicating machines working as swarms to overwhelm their creators. Crichton, as always, has done his homework on this one, with several pages of references contained in the back of the book.
The overwhelming theme of the book is man's hubris and our headlong rush into technological achievement. I was reminded several times of Jeff Goldblum's character in Jurassic Park saying "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they never stopped to think if they should." It was difficult to believe the extent the characters went to in protecting their precious achievement, (SPOILER AHEAD) though explained dubiously by the machines invading human bodies and influencing them biologically.(END OF SPOILER)
Many signs point to "emergence" (see the book by Steven Johnson) being an essential thing to understand for this book. In a nutshell, this is the idea that you can predict the actions and responses of individual agents in a system, but not the agents acting together. As Crichton puts it on page 173:
"The results of these interactions could not be programmed. It just emerged, with often surprising outcomes...For the first time, a program could produce results that absolutely could not be predicted by the programmer. These programs behaved more like living organisms than man-made automatons."
The scientists' solution to this unpredictability was to program the agents as predators--whose single desire is to feed. This consistent goal keeps the pack working together.
As the authors admit in the book The Experience Economy, "Those who decried previous economic shifts...failed to stop the progression of economic value to higher-echelon offerings. It happened despite their protestations." The question is not whether machines will reach this level--it is how we can benefit from that.
Crichton stops short of admitting that or any other further possibilities of this technology, but manages to create a good thriller nonetheless. 4 stars for the story, but the philosophy behind it will require more exploration.
Rating: 4
Summary: Nasty little nanocritters
Comment: Michael Crichton takes us back to the complex world of computer technology in his latest book, a non-stop page-turner about a cloud of nanoparticles -- manmade micromachines -- that have escaped (or were they released?) from a laboratory in the Nevada desert and proceed to raise all kinds of mayhem. These critters may be micron-sized, but they cause some macro-sized trouble. They operate in a swarm. They're smart. They learn from experience. They've been programmed to be self-sustaining and self-reproducing. And they've developed a killer instinct and an insane hunger to feed off any kind of life. Most sinister of all, they're learning how to replicate -- they can assume the shape and form of humans. And now their creators have become their prey.
Crichton is at his best when he writes about abstruse scientific and technical concepts in such a way that even the most hopeless techno-nitwit (like this reviewer) can understand what he's talking about. I've always thought Crichton missed his real calling; he would have made an absolutely superb teacher. He loves science and technology, he's read extensively (there are 44 references to genetics, nanotechnology and distributed intelligence for the reader to follow up at the end of the book), and he knows how to explain it in such a way that it seems endlessly fascinating and awe-inspiring. He's also a scientist with a social conscience, who emphasizes in "Prey" as he did in "Jurassic Park", that just because something can be done doesn't mean it should be. He's clearly disgusted with those gung-ho scientists and techies who are so involved with their work that they have lost sight of how the results will impact on the world outside the laboratory, either for good or bad.
"Prey" suffers from Crichton's usual one-dimensional characters, although his hero, Jack Forman, is a little better developed than his earlier protagonists; we see him as a concerned father (he's a calamity of the Silicon Valley implosion raising three children while his wife directs the lab that created this menace) as well as a very worried computer expert who realizes that something lethally wicked this way comes; but with Crichton the characters are never the main draw; he may be weak on characterization but he is one terrific storyteller, and "Prey", as much as "Jurassic Park", will keep you mesmerized from the first page to the last.
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Title: Timeline by Michael Crichton ISBN: 0345417623 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 24 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The King of Torts by John Grisham ISBN: 0385508042 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Reversible Errors by Scott Turow ISBN: 0446612626 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Four Blind Mice by James Patterson ISBN: 0446613266 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 29 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Airframe by Michael Crichton ISBN: 0345402871 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 28 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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