Crichton/Preston – Micro – Review

 

Purchased this novel in a second-hand bookshop some years ago for $3.50. Brought it home, and there it sat on the shelf accumulating dust for some time. My hesitancy was that Michael Crichton passed in 2008, and Micro was an unfinished project from the award-winning writer. This wouldn't be Crichton's work but the work of a different writer. Waiting for a newly purchased book to arrive on my doorstep last week, I pulled Micro off the shelf, dusted it off, and began reading on a Friday night. I completed the novel Sunday evening, and let me say, I wasn't disappointed.

 Crichton's style and subject matter are definitely combining real science with nature, prophesying possible future worlds. Indeed, like many of his novels, including the very early ones, written under the pseudonym John Lang, the reader not only is entertained but comes away from the text with a better understanding of technology and science in general.

In fact, many of Crichton's novels come with an extensive bibliography, that can be read by the layman or university level student focusing on the technology and science that concerns the tale. Micro is no different, giving us five pages of references about biology, nanotechnology, insect toxins, chemical warfare, and the influences of science on culture.

Beginning in dramatic and mysterious circumstances, a PI investigates a laboratory in a Honolulu office building. While perusing the building, the man starts to bleed from his neck and eyes. He scurries away for his car and travels back to his clients. Reporting his finding, all three men begin to bleed as well; one of the men appears to have had his throat cut by a razor. For law enforcement, the crime scene doesn't make sense.

We move along to seven grad students at Cambridge, Massachusetts. All of them have their own specialty, from Ethnobotany, Arachnology, (spiders) Biochemistry to “scientific linguistic codes and paradigm transformation.' This last “specialty” is a study in postmodernism concerning language and nature of power. This character is the least likable, and I believe this is intentional and a comic swipe at French political/literary theory. They are invited to Hawaii by a “venture capitalist” to review their companies' developments in these natural studies. An apparent accident occurs to one student's brother, kicking the story into high gear.

I've read Crichton for years, and most of his novels and non-fiction. The novel's beginning is certainly MC; however, the last half has a slightly different writing style. The ending, although exciting, makes one wonder if it could have moved in a different direction.

At any rate, Richard Preston was more than qualified to complete Micro. An accomplished novelist himself, and with in-depth scientific knowledge, the text didn't lose in narrative or technological believability.

Micro is the type of novel one reads while on vacation or on the beach.

Entertaining.