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Micro: A Novel [Hardcover]

Michael Crichton , Richard Preston
2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (435 customer reviews)

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Book Description

November 22, 2011

In Jurassic Park, he created a terrifying new world. Now, in Micro, Michael Crichton reveals a universe too small to see and too dangerous to ignore.

In a locked Honolulu office building, three men are found dead with no sign of struggle except for the ultrafine, razor-sharp cuts covering their bodies. The only clue left behind is a tiny bladed robot, nearly invisible to the human eye.

In the lush forests of Oahu, groundbreaking technology has ushered in a revolutionary era of biological prospecting. Trillions of microorganisms, tens of thousands of bacteria species, are being discovered; they are feeding a search for priceless drugs and applications on a scale beyond anything previously imagined.

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, seven graduate students at the forefront of their fields are recruited by a pioneering microbiology start-up. Nanigen MicroTechnologies dispatches the group to a mysterious lab in Hawaii, where they are promised access to tools that will open a whole new scientific frontier.

But once in the Oahu rain forest, the scientists are thrust into a hostile wilderness that reveals profound and surprising dangers at every turn. Armed only with their knowledge of the natural world, they find themselves prey to a technology of radical and unbridled power. To survive, they must harness the inherent forces of nature itself.

An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Crichton fashion. Completed by visionary science writer Richard Preston, this boundary-pushing thriller melds scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction to create yet another masterpiece of sophisticated, cutting-edge entertainment.


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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review


Amazon Exclusive: “Micro is Anything But Small” by James Rollins

An avid spelunker and scuba enthusiast, James Rollins holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine and is the author of the New York Times best-selling Sigma Force series, the most recent of which is The Devil Colony.

First I have to admit, Michael Crichton is why I write. In fact, if not for his books, I’d probably still be a practicing veterinarian in Northern California, dealing with flea allergies, ear infections, and all manner of medical maladies. It was Crichton’s stories of wild adventures, his explorations into the strange frontiers of science, and his truly ripped-from-the-headlines plotting that inspired me to set down my own scalpel and stethoscope and pick up pen and paper.

But his influence went beyond mere heady inspiration. His books also served as a tutorial into the practicalities of storytelling. When I tackled my first novel (a deep-earth adventure titled Subterranean), I continually kept a copy of Jurassic Park on the shelf above my desk. That book became my roadmap on how to build a story’s structure: who dies first and when, at what point do we see the first dinosaur, how do you fold science into a novel without stagnating the flow? That old copy of Jurassic Park remains dog-eared and heavily highlighted, and it still holds a cherished place on my bookshelf.

So I dove into Crichton’s latest novel, Micro, with some trepidation, fearing how a collaborative effort might tarnish his great body of work. Now, to be fair, I’d also read Richard Preston’s nonfiction masterpiece of scientific horror and intrigue, The Hot Zone. That book was as brilliant as it was terrifying. But still I wondered, could Preston take Crichton’s story and truly do it justice?

In a word: YES.

In two words, HELL YES.

Micro is pure Crichton. Dare I say, vintage Crichton, harkening back to the scientific intrigue of Andromeda Strain, to the exploration of the natural world covered in Congo, and to the adventure and thrills of The Lost World. As only Crichton can, he has taken a scientific concept as wild as the one he tackled in Timeline and exceeded in making it chillingly real. It took a clever quirk of genetics and cloning to give rise to the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Likewise, a twist of science in Micro calls forth a new horror out of the natural world—but not just one line of threat. In this book, the entire biosphere becomes a vast and deadly playground. Its depiction is both darkly beautiful and stunningly dreadful. It is a terrain as foreign as any hostile planet, yet as close as our own backyard. To tell more would ruin a great adventure that will have you looking out your window with new eyes.

Similarly, this lethal and toxic terrain must be traversed by a band of gutsy heroes. But in typical Crichton style, these are not elite commandos or a highly trained black ops team. They’re simply a group of graduate students—each uniquely talented and flawed—gathered from various scientific disciplines: entomology, toxicology, botany, biochemistry. They must learn to combine resources and ingenuities to survive and ultimately thwart a danger threatening to break free into the world at large, all the while pursued by a sociopath as cunning as he is sadistic.

In the end, Micro has everything you’d expect in a Crichton novel—and so much more. But the greatest achievement here is a simple and profound one: with this novel, the legacy of a true master continues to shine forth in all its multifaceted glory. And someone somewhere will read this novel, turn the last page, and in a great aura of awe and inspiration, come to a realization: I want to try to write stories like that.

And they will.

Review

Praise for Michael Crichton: 'One of the most ingenious, inventive thriller writers around ! Prey sees him doing what he does best -- taking the very latest scientific advances and showing us their potentially terrifying underbelly. Another high-concept treat ! written in consummate page-turning style' Observer 'This is Crichton on top form, preying on our fears about new technology and convincing us that we aren't half as afraid as we should be' The Times on Prey 'Mixing cutting-edge science with thrills and spills, this is classic Crichton' Daily Mirror on Prey 'A satirical black-comedy thriller! Crichton writes likes Tom Wolfe on speed! completely brilliant! Crichton's treatise on how breakthroughs in genetic science have been hijacked by science is anything but dull! top form' Daily Mail on Next 'The pages whip by. Does exactly what you want the prose in a thriller to do' Telegraph on State of Fear --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (November 22, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 9780060873028
  • ISBN-13: 978-0060873028
  • ASIN: 0060873027
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (435 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. His novels include Next, State of Fear, Prey, Timeline, Jurassic Park, and The Andromeda Strain. He was also the creator of the television series ER. One of the most popular writers in the world, his books have been made into thirteen films, and translated in thirty-six languages. He died in 2008.

Customer Reviews

I'm guessing that it was more of a Richard Preston book than a Michael Crichton book. dbleagle0  |  86 reviewers made a similar statement
The characters are pretty bad, too. W-R-Bookworm  |  112 reviewers made a similar statement
Halfway through you really want to stop reading, but I finish what I start. Josh B.  |  63 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
154 of 174 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars It's not a masterpiece, but it's fine airplane reading November 23, 2011
Format:Hardcover
I was, and am, a huge fan of Michael Crichton's work. I never had very high expectations for this final novel, but that's no reflection on the choice of Richard Preston to complete the work. In any case, for better or worse, Micro lived up to my tempered expectations.

Like several of Crichton's earlier novels, Micro has a high concept hook. Most nanotech companies fabricate on a nano scale, but Nanigen MicroTechnologies has developed revolutionary shrinking technology. Not only can they reduce machines and robots, they can reduce living beings and then return them to full size. I won't get into all the details of the novel's set-up, but seven graduate students learn about this technology the hard way once they become a threat to Nanigen's president. Seven against one is much easier to manage when the seven (and one unlucky Nanigen employee) are half an inch tall. Before they can be dispatched quickly, however, the students escape into Hawaii's verdant "micro world."

Crichton's strengths and weaknesses as a storyteller remain consistent. His primary characters are more archetypes than individuals. Rather than Rick, Erika, Amar, and Karen, these students quickly show themselves to be the Leader, the Warrior, the Know It All, the Weasel, and so forth. Each has an assigned role to fulfill. Some barely live long enough to become typecast, because the micro world is treacherous. When you're half an inch tall, a beetle is not unlike a rhinoceros. Luckily, these students are unusually well prepared to survive their hostile surroundings--or unusually well informed about the danger they're in--depending on how you look at it. Among them there are experts in insects and arachnids, poisons and venoms, and the chemical defenses of plants and animals.

Crichton is great about translating the wonder of science. His amazing shrinking technology won't send me running to the textbooks this time around, but there's still plenty of gee whiz science to be enjoyed in Micro's pages. More than that, he effectively shows the beauty as well as the horror of the situation his characters are in. As for the horror, I have to admit that I found it especially disturbing this time out. I have no special fear of dinosaurs, but I am absolutely phobic about spiders and insects. There are scenes that I definitely could have done without reading, and if this is an issue for you as well, be forewarned.

Much like Jurassic Park, Micro has a picaresque quality, with its protagonists leaping from one threat to another. I hate to say it, but the plotting was pretty by the book. There was a police procedural subplot that never really went anywhere, and true surprises were few and far between. Despite this, I read the novel easily in a day (instead of saving it for my Thanksgiving flight like I was supposed to). Once I started, I didn't want to stop reading, and the pages flew past swiftly.

Preston appears to have done a good job finishing what Crichton left behind. There is no feeling that this is the work of another author. Still, I do find myself wondering how the novel would have differed had Crichton written it all. Alas, we'll never know. If you're a hard-core Crichton fan like me, by all means read this novel. Just don't expect this final work to be the man's masterpiece. And even if you're not a hard-core fan, if the premise sounds fun to you, you could do a lot worse for airplane reading.
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63 of 80 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Not Michael Crichton! November 30, 2011
Format:Hardcover
This is not a book written by Michael Crichton. I have read every single one of his books and nothing in this one is representative of his previous writings. I have read only one book by Richard Preston, and it was one of the best non-fiction books I have read in years: "Demon in the Freezer" (5 stars). Unfortunately, "Micro" does not do him justice either.

Crichton always wrote in a believable manner. He developed his far out theses with lots of accurate details. His character development was such that you liked or disliked the players, but you were rarely ambivalent. None of that is in this novel. The detail errors just slap you in the face. Such as a botanist, herpetologist, plant chemist, entomologists all occupying the same lab space at Harvard! This will never happen in a million years. They would be on different floors, different buildings. Then when one brother finds a micro airplane and calls the other brother, the response is "this is an important application, bring it with you when you come to Hawaii." Yet the other brother was just down the road a mile at MIT. Must not have been that important. Oh, and the guy who can track cell phone calls and RECORDS their conversations! Gimme a break, even Big Brother cannot do that. And it goes on and on. The accurate details were not there to build a pseudofoundation for the plot. And the character development was non-existent. I had no empathy when key players fell by the way side. It was ho hum, who cares. Oh, and when did "gone missing" or "went missing" enter the lexicon of literate adults? What happened to "is missing" or "was missing?" Strange.

No, I felt I was reading the script for a Saturday morning cartoon. Or maybe the next release of Toy Story. I was extremely disappointed in this novel. I'll stick with another reread of "The Andromeda Strain."
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65 of 83 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars Micro is Macro bad December 4, 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Michael Crichton's contirbution to this book is the two and a half page introduction, and the central idea. This is a Richard Preston novel - and its not very good. Preston is a fine writer in his own right - it seems he was trying to write in Crichton's style and he couldn't pull it off. The book is really poorly written, almost embarassingly so, I found myself shaking my head at most of the passages. Chrichton's estate should request a new book cover listing Preston as the author, no way should Crichton be associated with this novel
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Not classic Crichton
This isn't a *bad* book, it's just not *great* in the way some of Michael Crichton's earlier works are. Read more
Published 17 hours ago by Mark Thompson
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal!
I loved this book! Although the story was fiction, it's portrayed in a way to make it seem totally plausible. I would love to see this become a movie!
Published 2 days ago by Jesse Dunn
4.0 out of 5 stars I think it was a good farewell to Crichton
It was full of science references, moralistic diatribes and a lot of action throughout. Could turn into a great movie too!
Published 7 days ago by Luiz G. Duarte
4.0 out of 5 stars good book, very interesting.
Very good, interesting, made me wish I could shrink and explore the micro world. Recommended reading. Crichton and Preston did good!
Published 8 days ago by Blow Rachel
5.0 out of 5 stars It's pure magic!
I think Crichton is the H.G. Wells or the Jules Verne of our times. He makes us dream awaken. He makes us feel as Bradbury describes in a short story as a young boy who puts on new... Read more
Published 18 days ago by antonio olivieri
5.0 out of 5 stars Micro: A Novel
This was excellent. I enjoyed entering into the micro world of this earth. It is a wonderful and beautiful place.
Published 21 days ago by Cynthia Winford
4.0 out of 5 stars Great novel in the Michael Crichton tradition
I've been a huge fan of Crichton's since high school, so it was with great excitement that I stumbled upon his last novel, completed, very similar to his style. Read more
Published 21 days ago by C. Tovar
5.0 out of 5 stars Micro
This is a good book. I know the author personally and he has done a great job in completing Michael Crichton's book.
Published 22 days ago by Robert J. Musel
3.0 out of 5 stars plusses and minuses
Here are the plusses:
--It is hard to put down.
--It is scientifically interesting, and, presumably, scientifically authentic. Read more
Published 25 days ago by Robertson Thomas
2.0 out of 5 stars Micro: A Novel (Kindle)
I've always been a fan of Michael Crichton and the plot/concept intrigued me. However I was really shocked and disappointed at how badly written, verbose, banal and boring this... Read more
Published 26 days ago by N. Joshi
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You should be extatic for this new book
There is a distressing trend to keep dead writers alive through all matters of means. It rarely works. If the ghost writers were that good, they would be writing - and publishing - their own books.
Oct 8, 2011 by Soferet |  See all 6 posts
Release Crichton's Notes From Past Novels! Be the first to reply
14.99 for kindle??
Check out http://www.freebookspot.es/
Nov 8, 2011 by Purple Wizard |  See all 2 posts
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