Micro: A Novel [Hardcover]

Michael Crichton (Author), Richard Preston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 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.

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

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (November 22, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060873027
• ISBN-13: 978-0060873028
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (196 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #37 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Medical
  • #50 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical

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

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

103 of 119 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 (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Micro: A Novel (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.

32 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed bug's-eye view of the world, November 23, 2011

By 

John F - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Micro: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you are hoping for a hard science premise you'll be disappointed. The technology which the plot revolves around has only a very flimsy connection to any real science, and it requires a considerable suspension of disbelief. As a long-time Crichton fan, this part was a bit of a let-down.

But once you get past that, the descriptions of life on a bug's scale were fantastic and well-researched. Some scenes were so real and so graphic that you may find them disturbing. These aren't the cartoon bugs of animated movies, these are the real deal, in all their ruthlessness and magnificent construction. These are the parts of the book that kept me turning the pages. I just wish we could have entered that miniature world in a way that wasn't quite so "honey I shrunk the kids" silly.

Overall a good read, and still worthy of bearing Crichton's name.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A disappointment, December 5, 2011

By 

steve (DeKalb, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Micro: A Novel (Hardcover)

Micro is a mildly entertaining book, but it's ultimately a disappointment, and it is a sad coda to a distinguished literary career. I can understand why Richard Preston was selected to complete Crichton's unfinished manuscript; he has a talent for explaining scientific topics clearly and vividly. However, his fiction-writing abilities are simply nowhere near Crichton's. Preston's prose is clunky and awkward and his character-development skills are almost nonexistent.

The idea of shrinking people is basically absurd. Are the micro-people made of fewer atoms, or smaller atoms? If they're made of smaller atoms, how do they breathe air made of normal-size atoms and drink water made of normal-size molecules? Micro mentions these questions but doesn't answer them. As in Crichton's Timeline, an implausible technology is used as a device to launch the characters into an exciting adventure. Crichton could spin a thrilling, engaging story that made you forget the unlikely premise; Preston's storytelling skills are so feeble that you just can't accept the reality of the situation or care about the characters.

The publisher is marketing this as a new Michael Crichton novel. It isn't. It's essentially a piece of hackwork that utilizes a Crichton idea and incorporates some familiar Crichton story elements in a formulaic fashion. Micro has approximately the same literary quality as a movie novelization.