Michael Crichton--Next
Next by Michael Crichton
I was a huge fan of Crichton's back in his heyday. I loved Sphere, Congo was decent, and his oldies The Great Train Robbery and The Andromeda Strain are classics. We all know of my rabid Jurassic Park love. Then came Airframe. It was the first Crichton book I did not finish--and I never have, not to this day. I found it tedious and boring. I still haven't read Prey, and although I did read State of Fear, I can't remember a single bit about the plot or any characters' names. That is a far cry from the excitement and drama of Harry, Norman, and Beth in Sphere, and of course Malcolm, Ellie, Grant, Lex, Tim, Hammond, Arnold, Muldoon, and all the gang from JP. I cared about these people. I was concerned when they were in peril. The plot was exciting enough and full of enough adventure and interesting sub-plots to keep my attention. JP was the first "adult" book I ever read, and I think that's why I like it so much. It's still one of my favorite books of all time; my copy is dog-eared and looks like it's been through a shredder. My Lost World has fared no better: it wasn't quite as good, but I still loved it.
And so I come to Next. This book was bizarre, to say the least. It's full of Crichton's usual techno-jargon and scientific explanations. Basically it's a cautionary tale. Your genes do not really belong to you--they belong to corporations, universities, places like that, who can go in and patent them. There's a maturity gene, an immaturity gene, a gene that cures cancer, etc. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, tons of illegal activity is taking place among geneticists. One of them places his own dna into a chimpanzee, resulting in a cloned "humanzee", eventually named Dave, who the man and his family try to pass off as a diseased child. Dave can talk. There is also an orangutan on a game preserve who swears, prodigiously and fluently, in Dutch and French. (seriously, I'm not making this up) Then there's Gerard, the grey parrot, who is as smart as a 10-year-old child. All of these animals have had their genes messed with. They are completely illegal and should not exist. Eventually their stories intersect with amusing results. The passages with Dave and Gerard in particular are highly amusing and entertaining, at least, but I wasn't sure how much they had to do with the plot.
The problem is there is no real plot. It's just a bunch of ideas grouped together into very short chapters. Nothing really exciting happens. The story unfolds as if it were a movie--and indeed, I bet Crichton has probably already sold the rights to it. There is no real main character, but a bunch of supporting players who come and go within a blink. There are even several characters with the same name. Why would he do that? Crichton is notorious for using the same names/last names from book to book-which is all right if it's a totally different story that has nothing to do with the other one (though if you're a geek about his books you sometimes go, "what the heck?" when somebody has the same name as someone else from another story, when they have nothing to do with that person)--but within the same story? It got annoying and very confusing to me.
One thing I did enjoy--while mentioning some of the fictitious gene corporations, BioSyn, the evil corp from the Jurassic Park books/movies, got a nod. That was cool.
So this book was weird, and definitely not up to par with Crichton's earlier works. He has really disappointed me in recent years, and I hope his next book is better--though this one was better than the last one.
Two Stars out of Five.
*Edit*
Speaking of Jurassic Park, the movie that is:
While not quite as fall-out-of your chair funny as OMFGITSADINOSAUR, (which is Not Safe For Work) this guy's one-man re-enactment of a famous scene from Jurassic Park is damned amusing. His Hammond voice is especially good. He needs to work on Ellie a bit though. (this one is language-free)