Next by Michael Crichton
Dec 17th, 2007 by craig
My father originally introduced me to Michael Crichton way back in the early 70’s. Dad recommended that I read The Andromeda Strain and I’ve enjoyed reading Crichton ever since. I do think The Andromeda Strain remains very near the top of the list of his best works; however, I don’t believe I’ve ever been disappointed. Next is at least consistent in that way.
I suppose that part of what he is trying to say in Next is that the world of genetic research is mostly unregulated and out of control. He does that very well, but all that out of control material makes the novel a little scattered. He does have a tendency to try to tell a number of stories within some of his novels, and thus often leaves me with the thought that I would have liked to have more of an account of fewer characters. That’s definitely the case with Next, though in fairness he does sort of tie some of the stories together in the end.
I would recommend Next for anyone that enjoys reading, though with the caveat that it’s probably not his best work.
I don’t understand the point of telling several stories in one book if you aren’t going to tie them all together, if not to each other than a few to a few others. Such as in The Night’s Dawn. At least in that novel, each character introduced came into contact with at least two more. Josh came into contact with most of the universe it seems…
My first introduction to Michael Chrichton was the movie “Coma” back in the 70s – which was totally creepy…. I never read the book. I am not sure if I ever read Andromeda Strain or not…. I did read and enjoy Jurassic Park….
Maybe I’ll look into TAS, before Next 🙂
Funny that you would post this review up because I had just read this book a few months ago. I read it specifically because I was doing a little research on the way that popular culture portrays genetics (for my bioethics degree), and coming from a genetics background I have to say that this book was so incredibly ridiculous that could hardly finish it.
Micheal Chriton does get most of the genetic issues right, but he takes the controversy to such extremes that no one with a minimal level of genetic understanding should believe that 99% of what they were doing with the science would actually happen. And its not just that the technology he was proposing is too advanced: rather, he just had most of the science wrong. It was like a farce – but then again, that might be what Chriton was trying to do.
I guess he was trying to raise awareness of the issues by making genetic research as frightening as possible (even if that required bending the truth a little), and it is true that genetics does need some more regulation. (Although, in my personal opinion, one of the biggest problems in genetics is gene patents – which is kind of the opposite of under-regulation)
So, I would have to give this book a thumbs down – but that is probably just because I know enough about genetics to be shocked at how he was dealing with the subject.
Randal
PS – I think the whole disjointed story thing was to mimic the way that DNA provides info by bringing together a number of seemingly random and independent segments to create a unified whole, but I think Micheal Chriton did a sloppy job of tying all of the different plot-lines together
Which is my point exactly.
And genetic technology frightens me, not because of the tech in and of it self but because of the fact that we as a society are not mature enough to responsibly handle it.
Sam, yes, Night’s Dawn tied everything together really well, and it was in the end one big story – a REALLY big story, but one story none the less, and all the relationships were clear. And Josh was as central a point as there could be, though he suffered a little from the “Captain Kirk” syndrome…
Allison, if you haven’t read the Andromeda Strain, you should. Coma was pretty good too, but not the movie. The movie was indeed creepy.
Randy, I actually thought of you several times while reading this, wondering what you thought of some of the legal things. It’s obviously exaggerated, particularly in the science areas, but that’s what Michael Crichton does – I would expect no less. However, I think his point is to raise the questions that need some answers: in this case all the legal (and not so legal) implications of gene manipulations. Although his stories are far-fatched, the questions are valid. In fact, the part of the book I liked best (or just liked in that I didn’t think the rest of the book was that good) was the ending chapters where he expresses his opinions on what may need to be done – like the patenting of genes. (That was the case with State of Fear as well, I liked his summations at the end much more than I did his story.) He agrees with you that the ability to patent a gene, or in some cases to patent a disease, is ridiculous.
I think Crichton’s best books are those that don’t get so much into the scientific world: like Rising Sun (though I guess there is some forensic science there), Disclosure, Airframe (the science is more practical physics), and Timeline (in which the science is so far out there it can’t be interputed as anything but fiction). However, he made his name writing fiction about scientific issues (I wonder if he considers it “science fiction”) and will continue to be a force in that field as well as the entertainment industry as a whole.
Sam, we as a society are woefully immature… but what are we going to do? We “grow up” by dealing with these issues, often dealing with them very badly, but dealing with them…
Did you know he has a house in Hanalei, just off the beach?