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Loading... Prey (original 2002; edition 2003)by Michael Crichton (Author)
Work InformationPrey by Michael Crichton (2002)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I'm feeling a bit bloated right now because I read two Michael Crichton books in a row. He's an author I love to hate. The writing is so bad, it takes my breath away. But a fascination for nanotechnology drew me into this absurd tale, and as much as I wanted to blue pencil every page, I couldn't put it down. As with his other tales, the best part is the introduction. The rest is sheer nonsense. ( ) Silly book. Oh, wait… It's Crichton's usual fare. Future tech moshed up to make a singular horror show in the wrong and stupid hands. This time it's Evolution AI x Nanotech Biological Thingamajigs = Massive chaos. All of his references are from the 1970s through the 1990s. A couple hit 2000 and 2001, and are solid science. The concepts are wild and well explained. It's the characters that put me to sleep. Boring, two-dimensional characters. I was a little surprised at some of the lower ratings on this one! While I do love the Jurassic Park books best from Crichton, I found this to be a similarly good science fiction horror story. Something I really like about both the Jurassic Park books and this one is how even though it’s a horror science fiction novel, Crichton still makes sure to give plenty of attention to the science details. Nano tech. is given a mind of its own in this story, in order to hopefully fix some issues with a nano tech product. But of course, this experiment quickly goes wrong. I can see that Prey is a little less action heavy though and that makes some parts a little slower. Overall I found it a cool speculative piece with a good amount of horror and science mixed in.
Prey is a thriller, well constructed and fun to read, like Michael Crichton's other books. Prey finds him in familiar territory, cooking up devilish situations for mankind at the hands of scientists working without restraint and manipulated by big business for their own greedy ends. As a writer, Crichton has always been a businessman, but his novels are usually competent. This one is dull, dull, dull. Science fiction can work (Alien, Blade Runner), but only where the mix of science and fiction is right. Crichton dresses up his stories in contemporary clothes, and the nature of the threat is as much a wardrobe decision as anything else. It is, in fact, the key decision, and his alighting on nanotechnology is inspired. But ''Prey'' blazes enough trails that no one will mind that none of them are literary. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles -- micro-robots -- has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed. And we are the prey. As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence -- in a story of breathtaking suspense. Prey is a novel you can't put down. Because time is running out. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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