Next by Michael Crichton Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Next
Book Review: Can I give it negative stars?
Summary: 1 Stars
My problems with this book boil down into a few basic categories.
1. The characters are uninteresting and flat.
2. The characterization of biomedical researchers is inaccurate to the point of a drooling, random attack.
3. The naming of bit characters after prominent scientists.
4. The egregious assault on critics in the form of "Mick" Crowley.
5. The "plot" of the book is only loosely connected and coherent, and at times it takes authorial fiat to accomplish even that.
6. Technical inaccuracies that should never have been made.
I will break each of these down into finer points below.
The characters are flat and uninteresting.
There are a number of characters in this book, from bounty hunters to biomedical researchers. None of them are interesting. Except a parrot, named Gerrard, who is obviously based on Alex, Irene Pepperberg's avian research colleague. The others fall into two categories: The greedy (i.e., virtually everyone in the book) and the confused (i.e., anyone who isn't greedy, and some of the people who are). There are no actual characters here. The book consists of a string of lawyers, researchers, and a few parents and children, none of who have any background, any depth, or any definable characteristics. The ONE singular person in this novel (who isn't a bird) who has any character foibles is the bounty hunter's assistant. This is not even remotely literature. It is just awful.
The characterization of biomedical researchers, and their work, is inaccurate.
If Michael Crichton wants to assault scientists, that's his business. I'm fine with that, because I can assume without hesitation that he doesn't help provide the impetus for research anyway. If, on the other hand, he wants to make irresponsible, ludicrous claims about the greed and irresponsibility of a group doing their level best to help society, he should at least have the common decency to do a little research first. There are several ridiculous claims made in this book, and despite my careful searching through his annotated bibliography at the end, I cannot find where he comes up with the following, fanciful, claims:
A) Most biomedical researchers are desperately using the academic system to conduct preliminary research on the path to starting biomedical research companies (This would, in fact, be a complete misrepresentation of the biomedical research community, as well as a greivous misuse of government funding; such a thing could not really happen in this country, particularly as there are oversight committees in charge of determining how this money is spent.
B) Biomedical researchers, including those focusing on gene therapy, have killed hundreds of people in their experiments and have faced no repercussions. I find this claim personally reprehensible, particularly because the explosion of the numbers. The fact is that a FEW individuals, who were suffering from terminal illnesses, have died and perhaps have died more rapidly, as a result of their therapies. This is hardly the same as hundreds. When you make up claims like this, it can do irreparable harm to an industry. Imagine if people were told that artists killed hundreds of people in order to make their art. What would the likely repercussions from the public be, particularly if they were funded by the NEA? Furthermore, there HAVE been repercussions in the vast majority of cases where incidents have occurred, ranging from loss of funding (which is, essentially, a death knell for a researcher's work) to some cases of firing, loss of tenure, etc.
C) The utilization of spurious survey data in a reprehensible attempt to get others to condemn biomedical research. It is a well-known and observed phenomenon that the citation of a survey wtih a majority viewpoint about something will influence the opinions of a person hearing it. The larger the majority, the greater the influence, particularly if the person did not previously have an opinion. As such, making up a survey that finds that, for example, "87 percent of American adults believe that novelists work less than four hours per day", will tend to cause people to believe precisely that. This is called the bandwagon effect. Citing imaginary studies to try to persuade others of your own flawed point of view, should now be called the Crichton effect.
The naming of bit characters after prominent scientists.
This may be considered flattery, or it may be considered laziness. I tend to think the latter, considering how little effort Mssr. Crichton obviously put into this work (see the last point, below). I recall several prominent scientists named in this book, including Stanley Miller, who was the famous experimenter of the Miller-Urey experiments designed to synthesize organic chemicals from an inorganic base in the 1950's. I would consider this cute, except that the author spends so much time lambasting the biomedical research industry that it seems likely that these individuals fall into the same group, and may be the victims of character assaults by proxy.
The egregious assault on critics in the form of "Mick" Crowley.
When an author believes that they are too important, or that their message is too valuable, they begin to believe that they are above criticism. One way that you can tell that an author feels this way is when they start doing presentations about fields that they know nothing about (like aliens, in the case of a trained M.D. Another way that you can tell is that they take up arms against them in the form of caricatures in the books that they write. In this case, Michael Crichton appears to have lampooned Michael Crowley. Not only is he presented in an unfavorable light, which would be unfortunate, but not completely ludicrously irresponsible, but Michael Crichton portrays his critic as a child molester. This is an egregious misuse of authorial freedoms. It may not be quite as bad as what Michael Crichton accuses biomedical researchers of, but it is real close.
The "plot" of the book is only loosely connected and coherent, and at times it takes authorial fiat to accomplish even that.
The plot can be more accurately described as a vehicle for Michael Crichton's egregious assault on the biomedical research field. The people are never really characters, they are more like cardboard cutouts. All of the conflict in the story arises because of the greed (or stupidity) of these scientists. If these characterizations were true, then we would have no medicines, and we would have no computers, no medicines for your pets, we would have no idea how to treat any diseases (except prayer and folklore), etc. On the occasions where the author stretches his god-like arm and twists two separate plot lines into a gnarled mass of confusion and circumstance, the outcomes are clear from the beginning, they are meaningless to the greater story, and they are often clumsy as well.
My particular favorite is the fact that two different children of approximately the same age are both named, mysteriously and stupidly, Jaime. This caused me to spend a significant amount of time thinking that they were actually the same kid. Until the kid in question miraculously had two completely different sets of parents and lived in two different towns. By the time I realized that there were two different kids, it was just soon enough for the bounty hunters in the story to make the same mistake. Because, unsurprisingly, they look the same too. And why not? If you are going to be so ridiculously lazy as to make up one name for two different people, you may as well go a step further and have them look alike. The payoff for this? The bounty hunters grab the wrong kid. They don't kill him, or even detain him for any significant length of time. Just long enough for the child to kick him in the face, allowing the plot to move one more hurking, jerking, inconsequential and stupid step toward its final, awful, pointless conclusion.
Technical inaccuracies that should never have been made.
In addition to the egregious characterization of the biomedical industry, there are a number of glaring errors in this book. I will highlight only one, for brevity. At the beginning of the book a character suffocates. This is a common enough motif in literature of many kinds. The character suffers his oxygen deprivation in an environment rich in nitrogen. This is, at least theoretically, possible, although nitrogen comprises roughly 78 percent of the atmosphere. It is an incredibly inert gas (sometimes used for that very characteristic), so the author at least doesn't make it stupid enough to have the characters lungs burn out or something (although it wouldn't have surprised me). Now, knowing that it takes oxygen concentrations of less than 6% to cause a person to pass out and die in a short enough time frame to be relevant here (and this is generous), that means that he would have had to have enough nitrogen to overwhelm the oxygen already in the enclosed space. For the sake of our calculations, let us assume an enclosed space of 3 meters in height, and two meters per side. This gives us a rough volume of 12 cubic meters. In an airtight space, that translates to approximately 2.52 liters of oxygen, and 9.48 liters of nitrogen. Follow me so far? To drop the concentration of oxygen to less than 6 percent, you would have to introduce 3 liters of additional nitrogen gas. Three liters is approximately 3/4 of a gallon. This person is supposed to have been carrying a small quanitity of liquid nitrogen (although enough that it would not have completely evaporated in three day) and there should have been little enough left that he was, supposedly, worried about the rest evaporating very soon. Assuming that he has 1/3 of his original volume left (so a starting volume of 9 liters, or 2.25 gallons), he would have to have a container that weighs approximately 15 pounds, is approximately 1 foot in diameter, and has a height of about three feet (these numbers are approximations from my personal experience, and can be considered fairly valid). Somehow, he got this container onto an elevator, without it being noticable in the videocameras (he has no sizable bags, perhaps a container the size of a wine bottle, which will hold at maximum 1.75 liters).
Now, if this is not stupid enough, remember that he is on an elevator. As anyone stuck in a crowded elevator knows, they are not airtight. Not even remotely. Assuming that it were, for the sake of argument, the amount of nitrogen that he could conceivably have would be too small to have any effect. If he had the amount that I described, they would have noticed. If he had either amount, it would not evaporate completely in the ten minutes that he spends in the elevator, unless he upended the entire container on the floor, and even then it would likely not be enough. Even assuming that he A) had enough to kill himself and B) he could get it all to evaporate in time, and C) the elevator was airtight, upon the evaporation discussed, the nitrogen would mix evenly into the air, and have a bias toward being higher (nitrogen is less dense than oxygen) in the air. The man, we are told, dies because he passes out and falls into the nitrogen cloud, which is supposedly denser than the air. Even if this ridiculous situation happened ONCE, which it couldn't, it still doesn't excuse the fact that Mr. Crichton suggests that many fatalities happen each year because of this same situation, with person after person rushing into the nitrogen enriched atmosphere, passing out, and needing to be rescued by the one person cognizant to grab an oxygen supply. Which is ridiculous, because pure oxygen would be worse for you than the atmosphere that those people are breathing.
This is just one example.
Based on recent events, it seems most likely to me that this book is an indictment of the biomedical research community by Michael Crichton, likely for their inability to cure his cancer. This is an unfortunate way for an author's career to end, so I am fervently hoping that his final, posthumous novel, paints a better legacy for this once great author. There is no reason for anyone to read this though. This book made me, obviously, quite annoyed. And I think that there is perfect reason for it. Don't read this. If anyone tells me that this is their favorite book, their name goes on the list of people whose recommendations serve only to tell me what to avoid. Desperately.
F-
Harkius
Book Review: Crichton's scientific bridge towards danger and possible dystopia
Summary: 3 Stars
Michael Crichton's Next is a thought provoking exploration of biotechnology en masse. At times hard to follow because of the numerous subplots and semi-related characters, this is nonetheless a meticulously researched novel that digs as deep into morals and ethics of its topic as the actual researchers who have studied the human genome. Just as the two most interesting characters are forms of genetic crossbreeding - a transgenic, bilingual chimp named Dave and a self-aware parrot named Gerard (who is probably smarter than most who gave this book a 1-star review) - so too must a reader crossbreed an acceptance for preaching, political activism with undivided attention, or the message will be lost. Make no mistake; this is a message book, and the afterward by Crichton himself affirms the position. Reader involvement is absolutely necessary in what feels like Crichton's attempt to bridge the contemporary with dystopia science and law, his own personal 1984 manifesto.
The aforementioned over-reaching message is as difficult to digest as the subject matter. There are venture capitalists, biotechnologies, shady corporations, immoral bounty hunters, industrial saboteurs, talking animals, and the inadequate courtroom precedents concerning the patenting the human genome. It's all tied together, somehow, but it does feel a little overwhelming considering it takes an incredibly open mind to just tackle the science of it all. It helps tremendously if you can see the parallels between this and Jurassic Park, simply replace "biotechnology science details/jargon" with "dinosaur science details/jargon." Each produces a possible future danger, and each carry a horde of unscrupulous characters intent on exploiting, corrupting, and abusing science for personal gains.
If a reader can wade through the jungle, both figurative and literal, the result can be a very fun, albeit cumbersome novel. And despite the scientific and academic flaws that have been pointed out in numerous other reviews, there is still enough plausibility in the story and ridiculous legal proceedings to make the viewer pause, if even for a moment, in reflection. And that reflection is the frightening target at which Crichton is aiming.
Jason Elin
Book Review: Don't waste youir time.
Summary: 1 Stars
Profanity and crude sexual references litter this plot-less ramble. The best part of the entire book is the author's conclusion at the end.Book Review: Eh....
Summary: 3 Stars
It's a jumbled bag of stories that only later start to make sense as they come together. Meanwhile, you're trying to get through the first few chapters wondering...what the? I don't like this kind of splicing unless it's done well and this could have been handled better. There's got to be a better way to educate readers on today's fascinating true scientific breakthroughs/ horrors while entertaining them at the same time. The ending was also ridiculous, but given the amount of characters and angles that he had to juggle all this time, understandably so. You just have to snicker at that point, but give him props for making you smarter than when you first picked up the book.Book Review: Entertaining, Thought-Provoking Pageturner
Summary: 5 Stars
And scary. The first page says, "This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't." The really frightening thing is that the parts I thought were over-the-top fiction, weren't. I was shocked to read Crichton's final "Author's Note" and bibliography, which make it clear that some very weird things are going on these days in the name of science. In fact, Crichton could have titled the book, RIGHT NOW.
NEXT is a first-class thriller with multiple subplots that all cleverly come together on the final pages. It's also very funny. I don't want to be a spoiler, but I must say that this is the first thriller I've read in which the climactic fight scene is dominated by a chimp that looks like Curious George.
I found Crichton's depiction of the politics of scientific research to be exactly correct. The odd connections among university researchers, commercial researchers, university technology transfer administrators, venture capital, and government agencies are truly byzantine. Because of my academic background, I enjoyed this aspect of the book tremendously. I suspect that other readers might find this to be a bit off-putting. For those readers, I'd like to suggest that they read NEXT as if they were reading a science-fiction fantasy set on another planet--just go with the flow. Academia is a lot like being on another planet, and government agencies do tend to act as if they're from outer space, too.
This is one of Crichton's "themes" (to use an old high-school book report term). In his "Author's Note" he urges Congress to repeal the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which was intended to promote university research by giving researchers access to capital markets. Crichton feels that this legislation transformed medical research from an open to a closed system from which only big business benefits. If it helps readers to understand what is going on in the book, I'll try to explain: Universities not only teach, they also conduct advanced research. The faculty and non-faculty researchers conduct research studies and experiments and then write articles on their findings. They can also profit from any discoveries that result by patenting these discoveries. Most universities have an "office of technology transfer" to help them with these patent applications and with the sale of licenses to private companies. Many, if not most, of these patents are at least partly owned by the universities themselves. The private companies are often owned by faculty or former faculty, who seek funding for further research and for product development based on the patents from venture capital firms. The problem is that these venture capital firms are out to make a very quick buck. In fact, they're commonly referred to as "vulture capitalists." In NEXT, Crichton depicts one such VC's highly unethical, quasi-legal machinations.
NEXT is frightening because it's fundamentally true. Our ability to manipulate the human genome far outstrips our wisdom. No nation can prohibit inhumane research when scientific research is global. Even within our own borders, such legislation is futile and often leads to unintended consequences. In my opinion, our only hope is education: America's public schools must begin to provide our children with a firm grasp of math and science. Only if the average American understands what the science of genetics is all about will we be able to make intelligent, ethical decisions about the use of new knowledge.