Sphere (original 1987; edition 1988)

I can never forgive Michael Crichton. It happens again and again. His pace is unrelenting, his logic nearly flawless. His stories are invariably intense and suspenseful. I can never regain the sleep I’ve lost when reading "just one more chapter" each night. Michael Crichton, I rue the day you got me hooked.

"Sphere" is a terrific sci-fi thriller. Instead of space though, the story takes place deep within the Pacific Ocean, where a team of scientists, in support of a US Navy exercise, explore and try to understand what appears to be a spaceship.

Like most of Crichton’s novels, “Sphere’s” characters are created to give voice to varying personality types and perspectives. Crichton populates his undersea thriller with representatives from multiple scientific disciplines. Norman Goodman is a psychologist and explores the deepest parts of the human (and alien) mind. Beth Halperin is a biologist and brings her perspectives of earth and space-bound biological beings. Ted Fielding is the obnoxious astrophysicist, and Harold Barnes is the Navy commander who provides a militaristic, and conspiratorial, perspective.

Harry Adams is a savant mathematician with prodigious reasoning skills. The character seems to be an early sketch of the well-known Dr. Ian Malcolm from Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”. Adams serves as the big brain and foil to the narrow-sighted exuberance of the martial Barnes in “Sphere”, whereas Malcolm served the same role as counterpoint to John Hammond’s financially-fueled dinosaur fervor on "Jurassic Park".

Goodman works through the causalities of events and actions and gives Crichton a mechanism and mouthpiece for the exploration of human nature and motivation. Crichton utilizes Norman's field of expertise to provide the psychological context to the story. And instead of delivering the themes through a disembodied narrator, Norman’s internal monologue and dialogue with the other characters provides the mental framework driving the psychological horror and intensity.

Crichton uses his plot, as usual, to delve into numerous scientific theories and perspectives. The alien presence provides the platform for the discussion of extraterrestrial contact, space travel and time travel. The underwater setting provides Crichton with the physical background to delve into ocean biology, and the capabilities and possibilities of living for extended periods under water. Within all of the scientific disciplines, Crichton enables his characters to explore the most modern and extreme theories of science.

Norman uses the isolation and extreme existence of underwater habitats to provide readers with a view of a full-scale, real-time Rorschach test. Everyone and everything is viewed, absorbed and translated uniquely. Everything impacts the personalities in a different way, which drives the story's human elements in unison with the well-paced action surrounding and impacting the characters.

The book has moments of horror, but is fueled by suspense. The conclusion - literally the last 2 pages - is a little weak, but the ride to get there is fantastic and fast. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1952160.html

a Big Dumb Object is found on the ocean floor, and though it turns out to be of future human manufacture it also contains another Smaller Dumb Object which is alien. (I see that there was a film version starring Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, and Samuel L. Jackson as the three surviving scientists, which completely passed me by.) It teeters on the edge of becoming interesting, especially when it seems like the psychologist who is the viewpoint character may be an unreliable narrator, but basically all of this has been done better before, and Crichton's desperate attempts to address race and gender are rather painful to read. You can skip this one in good conscience. ( )

This was a very good thriller with many twists and turns. I like the way it was hard to distinguish what's real and what's not. ( )

An intriguing early book by Michael Crichton, in which a team of scientists is sent to the ocean floor to investigate an apparent spaceship that may have been there for three hundred years. Once there, they learn that the truth is stranger than they had first thought, and that the ship harbors a transformative power that could drastically alter the course of human development. The book was considerably better than the wretched movie, with Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone, I believe. ( )

An easy time filling read. Has all the hallmarks of a Michael Crichton novel; attention to detail, nice pace, plausible science. However, where this tale is let down is in the characters. There are a couple who are just not likeable and are almost caricatures of how real live people would behave, especially academics. ( )