0407.13
17:13:30
BBR: Prey
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Since I know I’m going to be reading, like, twelve boatloads (5 metric boatloaddes) of books this summer, I figured I might as well write some short, worthless, crappy literary reviews thereof as a service of iaatb.net (which is now one of my favorite phrases). Thus:
Benny’s Book Review
Prey by Michael Chrichton
Plot
A software-engineer-turned-stay-at-home-dad finds out what his wife’s nanotechnology firm is really up to. The hard way.
Weltanschauung
The book is written as first-person narrative in a pseudo-journal format. Written in 2002, it appears to have been set in the immediate future (I think a timestamp puts the date as 2009, IIRC). Chrichton is obviously familiar with the manner in which tenchology companies in Silicon Valley operate, as well as technology in general, and has an expectation that the reader does, too. No partonizing explications, thank goodness.
Grip
Although I admit I had already derived the first few plot points by their primier forshadowing sentences, the books was still interesting enough to keep me going. Chrichton has a command of the vernacular, but at the same time maintains a good narrative flow in this book.
Presentation
I’ve got the paperback (what do they call these things? Trade? Mass Market? whatever). Not the best material, but the paper isn’t particularly pathetic, and there are only two printing errors (a couple of the right-hand-side pages have been overinked). Nowehere near small-format, hard-back linotype, but nothing is these days, you know.
Final Comments
Everything seemed really plausible– no real suspension of disbelief, honestly. Chrichton has done his research, and a lot of it– the final few pages are an extensive bibliography of papers on relevant topics ranging from Distributed AI to tactics of large carnivores to molecular engineering.
This book merits the rank:
Benny’s Book Review
Prey by Michael Chrichton
Plot
A software-engineer-turned-stay-at-home-dad finds out what his wife’s nanotechnology firm is really up to. The hard way.
Weltanschauung
The book is written as first-person narrative in a pseudo-journal format. Written in 2002, it appears to have been set in the immediate future (I think a timestamp puts the date as 2009, IIRC). Chrichton is obviously familiar with the manner in which tenchology companies in Silicon Valley operate, as well as technology in general, and has an expectation that the reader does, too. No partonizing explications, thank goodness.
Grip
Although I admit I had already derived the first few plot points by their primier forshadowing sentences, the books was still interesting enough to keep me going. Chrichton has a command of the vernacular, but at the same time maintains a good narrative flow in this book.
Presentation
I’ve got the paperback (what do they call these things? Trade? Mass Market? whatever). Not the best material, but the paper isn’t particularly pathetic, and there are only two printing errors (a couple of the right-hand-side pages have been overinked). Nowehere near small-format, hard-back linotype, but nothing is these days, you know.
Final Comments
Everything seemed really plausible– no real suspension of disbelief, honestly. Chrichton has done his research, and a lot of it– the final few pages are an extensive bibliography of papers on relevant topics ranging from Distributed AI to tactics of large carnivores to molecular engineering.
This book merits the rank:
3 Comments
GMT-0500 14:14:56 0407.14 (Wed)
I agree that a lot of the stuff is very well done — Crichton doesn’t budge from my favorite author list — but the story itself just wasn’t as enthralling as his other stuff, and nanotech is something I’m genuinely interested in. I blame a lot of it on all the foreshadowing. So much of it was just cake to deduce along the way.
GMT-0500 09:05:30 0407.15 (Thu)
I’ve never read this book, but I was told a LOT about it in my nanotech class this past semester. I’ve been wanting to read it.
GMT-0500 09:06:14 0407.15 (Thu)
Also, what class did you have to read this for?
Lastly, you really should enable that “remember identity” thing on the comments, so I don’t have to keep typing in my name.