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Loading... Next (2006)by Michael Crichton
Bestseller Crichton (Jurassic Park) once again focuses on genetic engineering in his cerebral new thriller, though the science involved is a lot less far-fetched than creating dinosaurs from DNA. In an ambitious effort to show what's wrong with the U.S.'s current handling of gene patents and with the laws governing human tissues, the author interweaves many plot strands, one involving a California researcher, Henry Kendall, who has mixed human and chimp DNA while working at NIH. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.   tauruseducation | Mar 25, 2013 |  The crescendo of thrill that usually culminates in a enjoyablke climax is missing in this Crichton book. The story is thought-provoking and well told, but the thrill is limited. (  ) CarloA | Feb 14, 2013 | After hearing many wonderful things about the author i was rather disapointed in this novel. I found it rather scattered, Crichton tried to fit to many different stories into one. I feel the novel would of been not only eisier to follow but more enjoyable as a collection of short stories, still an interesting read and very thought proviking if nothing else. (  ) Buffy-Tinkes | Nov 16, 2012 | not his best ( ) pgeorge1 | Sep 22, 2012 | This was not necessarily a bad novel (I still rated it right around average!) but suffice it to say that it is the worst Crichton novel that I have read thus far. I think where Next fails is that Mr. Crichton tried to get too many storylines going in order to have them all running simultaneously in an effort to show a more grand scope to his issues of possible problems with genetic research. The main problem here is that many of the characters became washed out and meaningless. There is just so much going on with so many different characters that I kept having to reset and figure out who was who and exactly what was going on with them. I think that he had the bones here to craft a really good storyline, but would have benefited tremendously from a heavy dose of self-editing and then expanding the tales of those characters that he felt most essential to keep. What came out of this book for me was confusing and subsequently, quite boring. Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors in contemporary fiction however and I am not discouraged enough by one stinker to stop reading his novels. (  ) StefanY | Apr 16, 2012 |
 All science fiction has some element of titillation — a strategy of taking known facts and stretching them to the limits of credulity, for the purposes of both entertaining and enlightening. But Crichton seems intent on confusing his readers, pummeling them with a barrage of truths, half-truths and untruths, until they have no choice but to surrender. As one of the author’s numerous stand-ins warns a naïve interlocutor, “Disinformation takes many forms.” Here, finally, Crichton has a point that should be heeded.  ''Next'' would be a narrow, uninteresting book if its sole point were to condemn such tactics as transgressive. Instead Mr. Crichton moves far beyond questioning the morality of such experiments and acknowledges that they happen. His whole thriller-tutorial boils down to one troubling question, asked about each freakish breakthrough described here: Now what? Since ''Next'' is one of Mr. Crichton's more un-put-downable novels, the reader may experience some frustration. It's tempting to stop and look up each of the genetic, legal and ethical aberrations described here in order to see how wild a strain of science fiction is afoot. Save a step. Just believe this: Oddity after oddity in ''Next'' checks out, and many are replays of real events. ''This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't,'' Mr. Crichton writes, greatly understating the book's scary legitimacy.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0060872985, Hardcover)Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction--is it worse than the disease?
We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes... Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect. The future is closer than you think. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:28:34 -0500) "Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction - is it worse than the disease?" "We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes." "Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn."--BOOK JACKET.… (more) |
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