Prey by Michael Crichton



A bit of smartly done, high-tech adventure

Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
Michael Crichton is re-visiting some old stomping grounds in Prey. The 1970s sci-fi movie classic Westworld was written and directed by Crichton and it features technology run amok and set loose on a killing spree. Jurassic Park features the dangers of tampering with the gene pool with an ensuing killing spree.

Prey, in many ways, is a combination of the two - the dangers of nanotechnology, specifically the dangers of using bacteria in combination with tiny, tiny bits of technology to create something new. The problem is, of course, the same problem that he pointed out in Westworld and Jurassic Park: Things never turn out the way you think they will.

Is this a Pulitzer Prize winner? Hardly. But, it is a creepy thriller with some good points about science, the dangers of unintended consequences and some good thrills and chills. I enjoyed this one thoroughly.

 I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.

 This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Prey

Reviewed on August 20, 2008.

Note: This book turned up on a "banned book" list in Texas. Ugh.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts over the last 30 days

JOHN WESLEY HARDIN: A LIFE from BEGINNING to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published by Hourly History in October of 2025. John Wesley Hardin (1853-1895) is the archetype of the Old West gunman in so many ways: a) He was most active in the immediate post-Civil War era; b) His violence was not really directed for any larger cause, mostly just family beefs or perceived personal insults; c) Eventually, his violent ways caused his death. Hardin was credited with more than 20 murders, although he claimed he killed 42 men. He wasn't fighting to prove a point, like Billy the Kid claimed to. He wasn't fighting as an extension of the Civil War, like Jesse James claimed to be doing. Instead, Hardin was literally running and gunning as he fled from one jurisdiction to another. He hid among an immense extended family network, eventually killed someone, and then fled to another location to hide among another set of cousins. I found this to be an interesting read. Hardin was clearly some sort of sociopath - anyone who kills 42 people in multiple settings in less th...
Read more

DRAGONS of AUTUMN TWILIGHT (Dragonlance Chronicles #1) (audiobook) by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

Image
Originally published in 1984. Audiobook published in 2013 by Audible Studios. Read by Paul Boehmer. Duration: 20 hours, 0 minutes. Unabridged. Way back when, I read every book in this series from cover to cover as quickly as they came out. I did the same with at least two other follow-up series from these authors and, if I remember correctly, I read other books that were connected to this series - but not by the original authors. I proudly had about a dozen related books on my book shelf. That was 40 years ago. I sold those books along the way and had largely forgotten about them. I was reminded of them and I decided to listen to the audiobook version of the first book just to see if they were as good as I remembered. Synopsis: Krynn is a mostly peaceful place years after a calamity caused the people to turn away from the old gods. Cynicism abounds and the people worship new gods that may not after much comfort, but at least they didn't turn away from the people at their time of gr...
Read more

THE PROVING GROUND (Lincoln Lawyer #8) (audiobook) by Michael Connelly

Image
Published in 2025 by Little, Brown and Company. Read by Peter Giles. Duration: 10 hours, 50 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis The Lincoln Lawyer returns for another case in The Proving Ground . Mickey Haller has moved away from defense work to civil litigation. In this case, an AI program designed to be a friend substitute to young adults and teens told a teenage boy to get rid of his girlfriend in a way that could easily be interpreted as killing her. So, he took his father's unsecured pistol and shot her in the high school parking lot. Haller is suing the company for marketing a faulty product towards teens. He is pretty sure he has the goods - bad programming and an unethical marketing team that is more concerned about demonstrating the potential of the AI so the company can be absorbed by a bigger company with deep pockets. They wanted the payoff rather than making it safe. But, as Haller and his team start to dig, they find they are out of their depth. Tech writer Jack McEvoy come...
Read more

CHURCH REFUGEES: SOCIOLOGISTS REVEAL WHY PEOPLE ARE DONE with CHURCH but NOT THEIR FAITH by Josh Packard, PhD and Ashleigh Hope

Image
Published in 2015. Packard and Hope set out to investigate why formerly active members of Christian churches (all denominations) leave and don't come back to any church at all. These are not members that leave and go to a new church - these are members that completely walk away from any church. He calls them "dechurched" or "dones", as in they are completely done with church. Every year, churches across the country lose active members. In this case, Packard and Hope are not talking about merely regularly attending members - they are talking about members who lead committees, music directors and even former clergy. These are part of the leadership of the church - the people that are committed enough to get things done. Packard and Hope assumed that these folks were simply "burnout" cases - people that just were tired and dropped out altogether.  "Instead, the dechurched are walking away from church work, but not the work of the church. They're ...
Read more

JAILBIRD by Kurt Vonnegut

Image
Originally published in 1979. Synopsis Jailbird is the fictional story of William F. Starbuck, the least important member of the Watergate conspiracy to go to prison.  The story begins with the day that Starbuck is released from a makeshift federal prison (and very cushy, for a prison) on a Georgia military base. He has no idea what he is going to do and he doesn't have a lot of money, but he figures that he will be okay - after all, he has a degree from Harvard and he learned how to be a bartender in a correspondence class while he was in prison. What follows is a wild tale of good and bad coincidences that take Starbuck to a broken-down residential motel in New York City. Like the hotel, Starbuck is a broken man in many ways - he is an ex-con, his wife of many years has passed away, he never speaks to his son, and he feels shame for accidentally ruining the career of one of his friends due to an offhand comment he made during a anti-Communist Congressional hearing lead by then-C...
Read more

WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON (audiobook) by John Green and David Levithan

Image
Audiobook published in 2010 by Listening Library. Performed by MacLeod Andrews and Nick Podehl. Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes. Unabridged. Synopsis Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two Chicago area teens named Will Grayson who attend different schools and do not know one another. One Will Grayson is determined not to risk hurt romantic feelings by not putting himself out there to make connections and possibly get hurt. Instead, he focuses on knowing all about obscure bands and lives vicariously through his over-the-top best friend, Tiny Cooper. Tiny Cooper is a massive mountain of young man who is also gay and is also the school's most talented athlete. Think of the biggest football lineman you have ever seen, make that lineman great at every sport, able to sing show tunes at the drop of a hat, and the biggest social butterfly in the school. The other Will Grayson is a closeted gay teen who has found an online boyfriend from Ohio. He muddles through high school life by g...
Read more

THE LONG HAUL: A TRUCKER'S TALES of LIFE on the ROAD by Finn Murphy

Image
Published in 2017 by HighBridge, a Division of Recorded Books. Read by Danny Campbell. Duration: 8 hours, 8 minutes. Unabridged. Finn Murphy is a long haul trucker, meaning he drives the trucks that you see on the interstate. Murphy doesn't just haul anything - he drives a moving truck. He packs, loads, hauls and unloads households - more than 3,000 of them by his estimation. Finn Murphy's transportation for a promotional book tour . Murphy tells about the generalities of driving a big truck, particularly a moving truck. He includes several entertaining stories about his life on the road.  The listener (I heard this as an audiobook) gets a feel for the comings and goings of the truckers in the moving industry.  His story of his first day as a mover is a classic "how can this get any worse" story. I first heard about this book in an interview on NPR with Terry Gross . This is ironic because the author discusses how so many truckers listen to NPR because i...
Read more

SING DOWN the MOON by Scott O'Dell

Image
Originally published in 1970. Named a Newberry Honor Book in 1971. Set in the New Mexico and Arizona territories in 1863-1865, Sing Down the Moon is the story of a teenaged Navajo girl named Bright Morning.  Despite the fact that the American Civil War is raging in the East, this is a tough time for the Navajo. There are pressures from the people they call Spaniards who raid the Navajo and other Native Americans in search of slaves (undoubtedly the "Spaniards" were Spanish-speaking Mexicans that were living in the territory before Mexico lost it to the United States at the end of the Mexican War in 1848.) But, that's not the worst of it. In 1864, the U.S. military under Kit Carson (called Long Knives in this book) rounded up all of the Navajo and put them in a concentration camp called Bosque Redondo. The Navajo in the book are unsure as to why they were forced to come to the camp, but the ongoing threat of Confederate raids into Arizona and New Mexico had a lot to do wi...
Read more

THE HIGHWAY (Cody Hoyt #2, Cassie Dewell #2) (audiobook) by C.J. Box

Image
Published by Macmillan Audio in 2013 Read by Holter Graham Duration: 9 hours, 53 minutes Unabridged If you are a big fan of the TV show Criminal Minds  or the movie The Silence of the Lambs  you will probably enjoy this book quite a bit. For me, the fascination of getting into the head of a serial killer has long since passed and I end up feeling soiled and abused after every excursion into this area. But, I read The Highway because I do enjoy C.J. Box's work quite a bit and I grudgingly like his Cody Hoyt character - he is exasperating and full of gigantic character flaws but just when you have had enough of him he pulls himself together and he gets the job done. In a bit of a reach (actually, in a real big reach) the young female characters from his book Back of Beyond  are caught up in another dangerous situation and Cody Hoyt is called out to rescue them once again. This time they have a run-in with a long haul trucker that kills himself the Lizard King. T...
Read more

THE ROARING TWENTIES: A HISTORY from BEGINNNG to END (kindle) by Hourly History

Image
Published by Hourly History in 2023. Hourly History specializes in producing little histories and biographies that can be read in about an hour.  If you are pretty well-versed in the basics of 1920's America, this short history offers nothing new. If you remember the basics from your U.S. history textbook or if you watched a documentary on the topic, this e-book ill offer nothing new. The e-book repeats some of its main themes multiple times, sometimes within a few paragraphs of each other. I kept wondering if they were trying to fill space, which seems kind of ridiculous in a book with literal space limits (able to be read in just an hour). It also made me wonder if this book were written by an AI. As an example of what I was talking about, the e-book mentioned that people grew more accepting of LBTQ+ people in the 1920's. That is undoubtedly true, but it was mentioned so many times that it might persuade some readers that the 1920's were a very accepting time. I think it ...
Read more