From: Emlyn O'regan (oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au)
Date: Mon Apr 21 2003 - 21:27:02 MDT
The book is bloody awful. It's the horrid Chrichton combination of hideously
bad plot that only seems plausible/non-contrived to people who know SFA
about the subject matter (ie: practically everyone), combined with an
incredibly readable style that makes it impossible to stop reading once you
begin (like watching daytime soaps).
It's the worst of intellectual junk food masquerading as a banquet.
No, it's much worse than that. Chrichton is an arch-luddite. I've read Prey
and Timeline recently (yes I'm an idiot), and his standard plot seems to
go...
- Startup technology company has a big idea. They develop it in secret
- Enough detail is laid out about the technology, and the background, to
convince the lay reader that Chrichton knows his stuff. So the reader may
feel free to accept that he/she is reading Truth.
- We get to see the detail of the secret labs in which the technology is
even now being operated.
- All technology is fundamentally bad, and corrupting. Tech company top
execs are corrupted and turn out to be the bad guys, this is hinted at from
the start (although is it really necessary... after all, it's obvious, isn't
it?)
- So the technology, which had some excellent promise, ends up having the
potential to Destroy Everything
- The story unfolds, and we find the true evil in the tech company's
approach - a combination of hubris, greed, and lack of due care.
- The hero, who has known all along that this technology is too dangerous to
tinker with, and been marginalised by all and sundry as a naysayer, now
takes control. "We must stop it before it is too late"
- At this point, the superficial attempt at a consistent plot based on
actual science goes directly out the window.
- Cue killer monsters, showdowns with evil tech execs, smaller explosions,
bits of roof falling in, and the heroes saving everyone just in time.
- Evil tech exec's base/headquarters explode, likely with them inside. Or,
they get their come-uppance in some other horrible but ultimately
just-desserts implying way.
- Epilogue - whew, we did it just in time. See, technology X is really bad,
well, all technology is really bad, really.
- End of screenplay (I mean book).
"Prey" is a novel of monumental stupidity. Chrichton absolutely twists
himself in knots, combining really interesting stuff - nanotech replicators,
distributed agent software, evolutionary algorithms - and melodramatically
evil tech execs to come up with... Raptors. His take on nanotech gone wrong
are nanotech swarms that behave like killer dinosaurs: they replicate, they
hunt in packs, they even behave exactly like predatory killers (because
that's how they were programmed, but gosh, they are evolving even smarter
tactics!). And, wow, was I ever surprised when it turned out that the
nanotech macro-critters were reproducing by consuming mammalian flesh! Oh
dear!
You will note that Chrichton sold the rights to the movie of Prey before the
book was published (indeed, before it was written I'll wager). The book (and
Timeline) read like they were written to a cynical formula (technology gone
bad, symptomatic of the evils of the modern world), designed solely to
appeal to the uninformed as a movie.
Timeline annoyed me in a different way; it's just so boneheaded that it's
unbelievable. Granted, the timetravel in the novel is just an excuse to put
modern characters in the 14th century and play knights (I wonder why no one
ever thought of that before), but really. This is a novel where the tense
climax plays out as the people in the present day rush to fix their time
machine apparatus in time, before the people in the past run out of time and
can't come back. We get to see lots of parallel stuff - This is what's
happening Now, in the past; this is what's happening Now, in the future.
It's a race against time, across time. If only they had a f*cking time
machine! Cretinous. The guy is not a sci-fi writer's scrotum.
You may have noticed that I'm pretty pissed off with Chrichton and his
novels. The reason is that he is a thriller writer, masquarading as a sci-fi
writer, masquerading as a serious science writer. The implication at all
times is that Chrichton has researched his material, and that his
novel/movie is a serious warning to the people about the dangers of these
hidden new technologies. We must stop them all before it's too late! And
people believe this bastard, who I am betting couldn't actually give two
shits about technologies like cloning, genetic manipulation, nanotech, or
(saints preserve us) pseudo time travelling through the quantum foam. He's
hit on a formula that will continue to make him an extremely rich man, and
all it requires is to publish dangerously, often deliberately misinformed
novels one after the other.
Maybe I'm overreacting. It's just that, when I see mention of cloning the
Thylocine, or stem cell research, or Dolly the sheep, I can usually count on
a reference to Jurassic Park. People believe this crap. Our lives are
affected by it.
Next time you hear of someone who could benefit from stem-cell technologies,
except that progress hasn't been what it should, what with banning of part
or all of it across the western world, think of Jurrassic Park, and
Chrichton. And ponder what effect Prey, the movie, will have on this world
of ours.
Personally, I think I'll boycott it, and rent an old copy of Superman,
instead.
Emlyn
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gts [mailto:gts_2000@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, 22 April 2003 11:44 AM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: RE: Fiction Books
>
>
> My girlfriend just last night finished the fiction book
> _Prey_ by Michael
> Crichton. While reading it over the last week or two she
> spoke to me in
> general about the suspenseful "white knuckle" situations in
> the plot. She's
> raving about it now. She says that given her knowledge of my
> interests I
> must read it immediately.
>
> The book is about some sort of nanotech experiment gone wrong.
>
> -gts
>
>
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