Kevin's Watch

Oh yeah, new Michael Crichton!

For the record, up until Prey, I thought his books were well-written fluff with some interesting science to them. After the success of Jurrasic Park, his books began to read more and more like screenplays, especially Disclosure.

But, starting with Prey (a cautionary tale about nanotechnology), moving to State of Fear (a cautionary tale about how the ecological movement has been bought), and on through Next (a cautionary tale about how genetic research is controlled by litigation), he's proven himself to be one helluva writer.

Without giving away the story, Next is about a huge cast of characters (sort of like Syriana) that all intertwine under the umbrella of genetic research. There's two talking monkeys (one who swears in Dutch), and a parrot that does impressions.

Anyway, big thumbs up!

As I think you might remember, I earlier argued about the ideas presented by State of Fear. I didn't enjoy it at the time, but I'll conscend that that's possibly because I was opposed to the ideas.

I thought the Andromeda Strain, the only other book I've read by him, kinda sucked when I read it. I think of that as a positive recommendation, though, because that was about 7 or 8 years ago when I liked Terry Brooks. But one of my friends, who reccomended another author worth reading (alastair reynolds) to me has been raving about Next, so I'm thinking I'll pick that up.

Just not in the immediate future, because I have a lot of things which I'm very eager to read. But I've placed it on the "records" of "things I should get to" and I'm thinking spring will be the time.

I think, and I could be wrong, that people got polarized by the implied attack on global warming. The book's not about global warming.

Regardless, I enjoyed it.