Book 50

"Prey" by Michael Crichton

Another 'read it quick and enjoy the fast-paced lightness of it' novel. In this one, we have a computer programmer and house-dad helping to contain and defeat an intelligent, self-replicating, nano-swarm (or two) out in the desert. And that's pretty much it. There's some character stuff in there, but with the best will in the world it is clunky and really in need of a couple more drafts. My theory is that someone told Michael Crichton; "hey, dude, your stories are fun and fast-moving, but I don't get much depth to the characters" and so Snr Crichton just shoehorned in a bunch of 'depth' to silence his critics and it didnae work too well.

Don't get me wrong, the science behind the story is well-researched, if not perfectly accurate (but that's why it's fiction, not a documentary on nanotech). There is a fair amount of excitement to be had at a couple of points in the story, but when you've worked out the "twist" within the first couple of chapters, it just gets a bit laborious working your way up to it. In all, this was a pretty pedestrian work, which I sure paid a great many bills for Crichton, but it could've been so much better.

Two microscopic machine swarms out of five.

PS: I know this means I gave "Funnelweb" more than this book, but at least "Funnelweb" just took its crapness and had fun with it.