Bleeding Edge

Exclamations! 

We're still in the midst of Book Worm Week, just passing the halfway point. So where does that leave us? Which genre can we jump to next? In a convenient twist, Next is the book du jour, a startling and strange look ahead by the late, great Michael Crichton. 

It was a sad day in the literary world when he passed away - Crichton was fantastic. His books vacillated between science fiction thrillers to cutting edge techno-parables that fueled their pace with frantic and dire warnings of progress run amok. Like anyone alive during the 90s (except paleontologists) I loved Jurassic Park - even re-reading it on a plane ride during the first decade of the millennium I thought it aged pretty well. It's a great story. Crichton had this relentless energy and nerds-pushing-glasses-up-their-noses aggression that added a level of seriousness without pomp. In short, I really dug his work. So when my (eventual) mother-in-law happened to leave a copy of his last finished published work on their coffee table, I eagerly borrowed it and got down to business. What I read was an interesting if uneven tale that Crichton made accessible despite the jargon within. Since my last read of any of his works was about five years prior, I was pleasantly reminded of why I love his work. 

Next, published in 2006, is technically a novel about a loosely connected group of people in the genetic-research industry and the implications of their actions. In the same sense, though, the book functions more as a collection of interconnected vignettes about out-of-control and unchecked advances in the legal and ethical realm of scientists at the front of their field. Beginning with the tale of a man who loses the rights of ownership of his own cells (due to not understanding the language of a research waiver while being treated for a leukemia), Crichton begins spinning yarn after yarn about potential developments due to court-enabled precedents. The man loses the rights to his cells, which a university uses for research and eventually profit while barring him from any information, let alone profits. This ties in with a story of a geneticist who inadvertently creates transgenic specimens, one of which is a chimp that is blurring the lines of humanity in unnerving ways. Further concepts such as genetic predispositions to risk-taking and chimera genes are brought into the story as both plot points and parables. The collection of stories hold together well, but from my understanding Crichton wasn't aiming to do so - Next is intended as a single, cohesive novel and yet it comes across as segmented and uneven, some passages feeling too heavy handed to be legitimate fiction, while some fiction comes across as to much of a lecture to be engaging. Despite this uneven nature, I still enjoyed the book, if not for the diverse range of characters than for all of the startling and accurate developments in science and the legal system.

 One gets the sense, coming late to the Crichton party, that his books are not always read for their rich stories and characters but for the concepts and execution. I enjoyed reading Prey when it came out (Xmas of 2004) but I can't recall the characters. Similar story for The Lost World, save for Ian Malcolm. In fact, were it not for his science and adoration of boundary-pushing, would I have any inclination to read his books? Probably not. But that's neither here nor there. What really tickles my brain is that, having read this book just a few years after publishing, so much of it has come to pass that it becomes unnerving. We may not have full ownership of our bodies, given certain circumstances. Following a multitude of science and tech blogs (Hi Giz!) plus being obsessed with science fiction (Hellooooo io9!) I'm startled to read about the bizarre and incomprehensible discoveries and developments that occur on a daily basis. Just the other day I read about a lab that was creating a whole slew of transgenic animals and just wasn't telling anyone, just because they wanted to do it to see if it could be done (and supposedly what we can learn in the process). Or how we can cultivate bacteria to eat the oil in the Gulf or break down plastics in the Great Pacific Garbage Heap. Or everyone's favorite - the mouse with the ear grown on its back: 

Next is a bit of a hybrid itself - an imperfect development that spans multiple worlds. Crichton was a visionary, predicting both good and bad from this rapidly changing field - the main lesson to draw from it seems to be that we need to be judicious and cautious in our approach. It's not the most engaging story he's told (*coughcoughdinosaursrunningwildcoughcough*) but man, if it isn't crazy science. maybe I'm just a nerd who's suckered in by geeky subject matter and a pulpy story. Maybe I'm being to hard on a great author, now that he's gone. Tell you what - you read Next and weigh in. Am I a jerk or what? While we're doing homework, read these five summarizing conclusions Crichton made after writing this book:

Stop patenting genes.

Establish clear guidelines for the use of human tissues.

Pass laws to ensure that data about gene testing is made public.

Avoid bans on research.

Rescind the Bayh-Dole Act

...and read this critique on his reasoning, then weigh in. Test tomorrow. Okay, no test. It's Friday.