Micro: A Novel [Kindle Edition]

Michael Crichton (Author), Richard Preston (Author)

Book Description

In the vein of Jurassic Park, this high-concept thriller follows a group of graduate students lured to Hawaii to work for a mysterious biotech company—only to find themselves cast out into the rain forest, with nothing but their scientific expertise and wits to protect them.

An instant classic, Micro pits nature against technology in vintage Michael 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.

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 966 KB
• Print Length: 563 pages
• Publisher: Harper; Reprint edition (November 22, 2011)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0053JJLLC
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,441 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #44 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical
  • #48 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Mystery & Thrillers > Thrillers > Technothrillers
  • #51 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical

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

By Susan Tunis TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

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.

63 of 80 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Not Michael Crichton! November 30, 2011

By Hollister Bulldawg

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."

65 of 83 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Micro is Macro bad December 4, 2011

By cagprinter

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

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.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#52 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#60 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#61 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#70 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

#52 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#60 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#61 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#70 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction