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Prey: A Novel Paperback – February 5, 2013
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#1 New York Times Bestseller
“Terrifying. . . irresistibly suspenseful.” — New York Times Book Review
“Holds your attention ruthlessly from start to finish.” — Time magazine
A terrifying page–turner in classic Crichton tradition, masterfully combining the elements of a heart–pounding thriller with cutting–edge technology. The result is a tale so realistic, so scary, you won’t be able to put it down.
Deep in the Nevada desert, the Xymos Corporation has built a state-of-the-art fabrication plant, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing but cactus and coyotes. Eight people are trapped. A self-replicating swarm of predatory molecules is rapidly evolving outside the plant. Massed together, the molecules form an intelligent organism that is anything but benign. More powerful by the hour, it has targeted the eight scientists as prey. They must stop the swarm before it is too late…
In Prey, Michael Crichton combines scientific brilliance with relentless pacing to create an electrifying, chilling techno-thriller
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateFebruary 5, 2013
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.86 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100062227203
- ISBN-13978-0062227201
- Lexile measureHL600L
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A terrifying page-turner in classic Crichton tradition, masterfully combining the elements of a heart-pounding thriller with cutting-edge technology.Popular highlight
If you compressed the history of life on earth into twenty-four hours, then multicellular organisms appeared in the last twelve hours, dinosaurs in the last hour, the earliest men in the last forty seconds, and modern men less than one second ago.465 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
So there’s an argument that the whole structure of consciousness, and the human sense of self-control and purposefulness, is a user illusion. We don’t have conscious control over ourselves at all. We just think we do.311 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
We looked at the world around us as a snapshot when it was really a movie, constantly changing.279 Kindle readers highlighted this
Editorial Reviews
Review
“TERRIFYING…IRRESISTIBLY SUSPENSEFUL.” — New York Times Book Review
“INTRICATE PLOTTING AND FLAWLESS PACING…you won’t be able to put it down.” — Time magazine
“CRACKLING…MYSTERIOUS….” — Entertainment Weekly
“Just what his fans expect: A WILD, SCARY RIDE…” — Detroit Free Press
“Another PAGE-TURNING TRIUMPH” — Charlotte Observer
“INCREDIBLY SCARY and relentless” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“PREY WILL KEEP YOU TURNING PAGES” — Chattanooga Times
“RELENTLESSLY ENTERTAINING” — Raleigh News & Observer
“… a harrowing tale of nanoparticles gone beserk.” — USA Today
“A TERRIFYING TALE…combining technological verisimilitude with heart-pounding suspense…” — The Oregonian (Portland)
“Serious and scary…” — Washington Post Book World
“This is how to write a thriller …Crichton’s latest page-turning triumph.” — Detroit Free Press
“Crichton has proved he knows how to ratchet up the fear factor.” — Denver Post
“…so god-awful scary and relentless, it’ll knock your head clear of whatever ails you.” — St. Petersburg Times
“Once again, Crichton has proved to be uncannily timely.” — St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Crichton is a master storyteller.” — Detroit News
“A cross between Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain….” — Columbus Dispatch
“PREY delivers that expected Crichton charge.” — Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“A terrific novelist…He could make most readers lose sleep all night and call in sick the next day.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Readers turn to Michael Crichton’s novels for entertainment with relentless drive.” — San Antonio Express
“Crichton is a doctor of suspense.” — Des Moines Sunday Register
“Crichton writes superbly…the excitment rises with each page.” — Chicago Tribune
“Crichton’s books [are]…hugely entertaining.” — New York Times Book Review
“Crichton delivers.” — USA Today
“He is without peer.” — Chattanooga Times
“One of the great storytellers of our age…What an amazing imagination.” — New York Newsday
“Michael Crichton has written some of America’s most fantastic novels.” — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
Michael Crichton (1942-2008) was the author of the bestselling novels The Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery, Jurassic Park, Sphere, Disclosure, Prey, State of Fear, Next and Dragon Teeth, among many others. His books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, have been translated into forty languages, and have provided the basis for fifteen feature films. He wrote and directed Westworld, The Great Train Robbery, Runaway, Looker, Coma and created the hit television series ER. Crichton remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year.
Daniel H. Wilson is a Cherokee citizen and author of the New York Times bestselling Robopocalypse and its sequel Robogenesis, as well as ten other books. He recently wrote the Earth 2: Society comic book series for DC Comics. Wilson earned a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as master’s degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. He has published over a dozen scientific papers and holds four patents. Wilson lives in Portland, Oregon.
Product details
- Publisher : Harper Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 5, 2013)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0062227203
- ISBN-13 : 978-0062227201
- Lexile measure : HL600L
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.86 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #358,748 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,197 in Technothrillers (Books)
- #9,100 in Science Fiction Adventures
- #22,758 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
MICHAEL CRICHTON the author of the groundbreaking novels Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Disclosure, Prey, State of Fear, Sphere, Congo, Next and Micro among many others. His books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and have provided the basis for fifteen feature films, most notably Jurassic Park. He directed Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery and Looker, and also created the hit television series ER. Crichton remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year.
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But the plot is a tad implausible. The technology itself, of course, is not -- nanotechnology does, as one character points out early in the book, have the potential to save millions of lives each year, and it does hold some dangers as well. The implausibility in the plot, though, can be summed up by one question: why don't gnats, termites, etc., in the real world behave as Crichton's "swarms" do? That is, why don't the real-world organisms the nano-machines' programming is based on evolve in the same way the nano-machines do in the book? Crichton's only answer, in one sentence buried in the middle, is that the nano-machines are man-made and therefore evolve faster, so they learn in a matter of days how to emulate human appearance, communicate, hunt, avoid danger, etc. But why should their being man-made make any difference?
It's worth noting that at least one of Crichton's implicit predictions (the one in Rising Sun) was totally, unquestionably wrong -- the Japanese system of trade and industrial policy led to a huge recession and a near-collapse of the Japanese economy, instead of the corporate domination Crichton foresaw. The problem with Rising Sun, too, was the fact that it didn't ask precisely why this problem hasn't already occurred. In the case of Rising Sun, Crichton predicted that an economy with more government planning and sufficient ruthlessness would out-compete one with less planning. He didn't wonder, even in the book, why, if that were the case, the Soviet Union hadn't already forced the collapse of the U.S. in the sixties. A similar dynamic is at work in Prey. That's not necessarily a killing flaw, but for a novelist with ambitions (pretensions?) of contributing to serious, real-world public debate about current issues, it is worth pointing out.
The book starts off well, at least after the introduction, which the author has felt the need to insert. The presence of the introduction is a distraction from the story line, at least for me personally, for I want to start the story without any biases or prejudices. The author's opinions in the introduction are somewhat negative about the future and character of humankind. A reader disagreeing with the author's opinions may be tempted to read the book with a hostile frame of mind. The author therefore should have kept his opinions to himself, and have spoken them through the characters in the book. He is clearly very worried about the developments in nanotechnology, and does not trust the scientific community to deal with it responsibly. The author though is bound by the constraint of making the story interesting, and that is hard to do without interjecting a large degree of malevolence in the technologies he is using in his story. Friendly, helpful nanobots are not going to hold anyone's attention for long.
The first 150 pages or so of the book were very exhilirating: the tension building in the mind of Jack, the main character, and his doubts regarding his wife's behavior kept my attention. The author does a fine job of capturing his introspection, and in the meantime the reader gets a kind of crash introduction to terminology of evolutionary algorithms and artificial intelligence. Indeed, the reader gets exposed to talk of distributed parallel processing, or "agent-based programs", artificial life, ant routing, genetic algorithms, and protein folding, to name a few.
As soon as Jack enters the desert though, the story gets less credible. Since this book has only been released for a few weeks, I could only say why I believe this by revealing the plot, which I don't want to do for the sake of new readers. I was surprised actually that the author took the move he did, as I was expecting the behavior of the nanobots to be much more subtle, as well as their detection. Instead though their behavior was very extreme, and this led me to think of how easy they would be to combat. The behavior of the nanobots would be much more believable if they would have acted in more mischevious ways, and such behavior would follow I think more naturally from the first part of the book.
As the story nears its end, the events become more and more unbelievable. In addition, the characters seem to be almost juvenile in their behavior, and the author has the annoying habit of having them constantly using the "F-word". This is supposed to (I guess) make them more realistic, but instead they come across like they are playing nothing more than a difficult video game. In addition, obvious countermeasures to the nano-swarms make the story less believable. One could for example program a collection of swarms to engage in battle with the malevolent ones.
Hence in general this is a disappointing book, which again is too bad considering the first part, which was written very well. I did not walk away with a feeling of foreboding that I did when reading the author's "Andromeda Strain" way back when. And if the book was meant to frighten the reader about the perils of nanotechnology, it missed its mark, considerably. But even if it did succeed in instilling fear about the possibility of nanotechnology, the research in this area will continue, and hopefully will be realized very soon.
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