NEXT BY MICHAEL CRICHTON: I’m still trying to figure out how this manuscript landed in the hands of an editor and actually got the go ahead to be published in time for Christmas. I can’t help but think about all those dads that are going to be so disappointed on December 26th when they crack open the book and find a collection of plot lines with confusing characters and stories that seem to go nowhere.In Prey and State of Fear, Crichton did what he does best in providing a well researched book with a riveting and thrilling plot, thought I felt the latter a little heavy handed with a viewpoint I didn’t necessarily agree with. Compared with Next, I seriously wonder what happened? The book seems barely half finished, even though if runs on for four hundred pages. There are around five to seven plot lines each with their own vague characters that the reader has to struggle to keep straight going on in their own seemingly inane direction. Near the end of the book a few of these plot lines cross over forcefully at the author’s hand, and then the book ends and the reader is left wondering where the rest of the book is. What happened to the basic rule of a story? Instead of a beginning, middle and an end, the reader gets a weak infrastructure of a beginning, with part of a middle which suddenly ends!Combined with this is the overarching philosophy of this novel (which I hope Crichton doesn’t subscribe to himself) where every person is one who sees life only for personal gain, to be rich, and feel constant pleasure. The women are always bombshells to be used and discarded, while the characters in general will stop at nothing to satisfy their pathetic personal whims.As for the learning portion of the novel – with Prey it was the risk of nanotechnology, with State of Fear global warming – Crichton is very heavy handed in the risks of gene therapy and engineering, running the gamut from talking (and by this I mean with extensive vocabularies) parrots and orangutans, to the risks of human cloning, to bounty hunters trying to kidnap and steal tissues from innocent people who simply happen to possess the same DNA as a family member who had his cells declared property of UCLA in a court of law. While Crichton is trying to make the blatant point of “Watch out, this is what can happen,” it comes off as over-the-top farce and tomfoolery. And if it wasn’t made clear for you, he ends the novel with his note about how patenting genes is bad, as well as a list of other matters involving gene therapy, followed by a bibliography, just to show he did the work, supposedlyIt is sad really, for I’d hoped Next would be the return to the great author who gave us truly brilliant novels like Jurassic Park, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain, but Next can’t really be considered an actual book now, because of its failure in the rules of a novel on so many levels. If you liked this review, and would like to read more, go to BookBanter.
The later few Crichton novels seem to have a higher vision and intent than to only entertain; they also seek to educate and encourage debate. To that end, Next throws light on areas such as the government's policies on intellectual property rights for genetic discoveries, the absurd practice of patenting entire genes (and all uses and interactions that genome may carry out with anything else - in all of mankind) and diseases, what exactly constitutes cell ownership, and the moral grey areas such as the ethics of genetic engineering, stem cell research and genetic therapy. For example, I never thought about the impact that publishing a deceased's genetic information would have on their relatives and descendants with respect to insurance companies using the said info.The one irksome aspect is the high number of characters that keep getting introduced with plot lines of their own, with some of them made to cross over forcefully at Crichton's hand, who sacrifices pace in the narrative head so that he may bring to light the many different facets of the subject. In one of the interviews included in the ebook version (note: the two interviews and an essay by Crichton are all excellent), Crichton weighs-in: I think there were two considerations. One was that I was unable to overlook the structure of the genome as we are now starting to understand it, and how individual genes interact with other genes, or may seem to be silent, or we don’t really know what they do, or sometimes there are repetitions that are not clear to us, and it struck me as an interesting idea to try to organize the novel in that way, even though it’s not what one ordinarily does. The second thing that was driving me was the notion that there are a great many stories of interest in this area, and they’re all quite different in terms of the legal and ethical problems that are raised in the field, so I wanted to do a number of different stories.The story, though it moves along quite nicely, doesn't really have a meaty enough middle to it (well, except for Gerard, the talking African grey parrot, who's a riot), and is more a device for the larger intent and theme that Crichton has in mind.So, as a novel, I wouldn't rate this one too high. But as a book, it's quite a good read.
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I haven't read many good reviews of this book so I went into it with pretty low expectations, which I think helped. The biggest problem with this book is that it has no plot. Most chapters are only a few pages long and in most chapters new characters are introduced. There are a few recurring characters, but mostly we just get snippets. What we're looking at is what the world would be like if genetic engineering was successful and commonplace. What would happen if we could really put human genes into animals--could we create a cross between a human and a chimpanzee? Should we? What if we could modify the genes of wild animals so they would display logos for big companies--then those companies could "sponsor" animals and they'd be less likely to go extinct. If we could find the gene for drug addiction, could we fix it? Could we sue our parents for passing on to us defective genes? If your husband had a gene that predisposes him to infidelity, could he really be blamed for sleeping around? What if companies could patent genes? Would they then own the genes that we all carry in all of our cells? Would they have the right to retrieve those genes any time they want? This is just a book of what-ifs, no real plot, but I still found it to be somewhat entertaining. At the end I was annoyed by the author's note that repeats back the author's main points, in case you didn't get them in the story. If these sort of questions interest you, I'd recommend reading this, but if they don't, feel free to skip this.
—Kim
Some context: this is my second time reading this book, while on a binge-reread of all of M.C.'s works.The first time I read this, a few years ago, I felt I was missing something. Maybe I wasn't picking up on the nuance, or not smart enough to follow along, but the narrative was very confusing to me. A few highlights stood out (mostly having to do with the animals) but there weren't any truly memorable moments. On my second read-through I realized I was pretty much spot on the first time, and sh
—Der-shing
A really great scientific/slightly futuristic thriller-style novel that gives you an insight into the dog eat dog world of genetics and biotechnology. The way all the stories intertwined was entertaining, and the book was obviously well researched, although the scientific language was easily understood. My only negative criticism is that the abundance of characters, chronologies and narrators was occasionally difficult to keep track of. The book has a great moral (well, several) that are littered throughout the story and in the author's notes at the end of the book, and it definitely opened up my eyes to the power of science in our modern world.
—Janelle Dazzlepants
