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Nano-villains
EVERYONE has a favourite airport-thriller writer. At the outset, this reviewer must declare his partiality for Michael Crichton, a bias that manifests itself in seemingly eccentric views. Example: the book versions of "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World" are immensely better than the hugely successful films on which they are based.
Crichton is up there with the best partly because he is simply unputdownable and partly because no other bestselling author presents cutting-edge developments in science or explores the debate between technology and humanism in the manner that he does.
Although it is a very different novel, there is a sense in which Prey is an extension of the basic themes explored in Jurassic Park and The Lost World. If the last two were about biotechnology (literally) running amok, Prey is about nanotechnology going haywire. Nanotechnology of course is the emerging field that holds out the possibility of manufacturing intelligent microparticles that, for example, are mobile and capable of computing. It is the tiny robots, much smaller than the diameter of a human hair, that drive Crichton's novel along. They learn, they adapt, they form swarms, they replicate and they come back to haunt the crooked scientists who decide to release them outside their high-tech plant in Nevada.
It is typical Crichton — good science going bad, reckless men creating something much too powerful for them to control. As the nano-swarms begin to acquire an existence and an identity of their own in the desert — hunting and killing — you can almost hear Dr. Ian Malcolm, the endearingly cynical mathematician in the two Dinosaur novels philosophically say: "Life will find a way".
An unemployed house-husband (Jack) who is flown into Nevada to rein in the monster machines is the anti-hero of Prey. Destroying these tiny villains of course requires more than brawn and Crichton uses a mix of computer programming, animal behaviour and evolutionary science to explain what makes they what they are and what can unmake them.
If Prey falls far short from being one of his better novels, it is largely because the end doesn't quite work. It starts well enough but the novel abandons its tense and mysterious ways to work up a climax that seems much too staged, loopy and extravagant — you might say, somewhat cinematic.
But then again, why not? Almost everything this man has written has been turned into cinema and Prey itself has already been snapped up by Hollywood for a very tidy sum.
For a reviewer with a bias, one thing is certain though. Whatever Prey's shortcomings, the book will still be better than the film.
MUKUND PADMANABHAN
Prey, Michael Crichton, HarperCollins
Publishers India, 2002, p. 367, Rs. 195.
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