But Will They Play Good Cricket?

You may sometimes not feel like asking what8217;s next in the plot while reading Michael Crichton8217;s new book on transgenic creatures, but you will want to ask what next from him after finishing it. Just blame it on Hollywood and Steven Spielberg

My very own, ridiculously unscientific take on the criticism-encomium balance turning against Michael Crichton 8212; Next has been more panned than praised, so was State of Fear, the book before it 8212; is that there8217;s a karmic link between a certain sogginess in his craftmanship of late and the fact that he was okay with Steven Spielberg turning his skillful exploration of reengineered dinosauria into dreadful Hollywood kitsch.

Jurassic Park the book was not just a good read or smartly rendered science-for-people. It was, as American teenagers 8212; representatives of this important social class figure among the somewhat bewildering caste of characters in Next 8212; might say, deep. Man as meat, how does it feel to be someone8217;s food, to be dominated as a matter of inevitable natural fact 8212; Crichton asked these questions while telling a story about business and scientific hubris. The more perceptive critics understood that.

But ever since Spielberg8217;s dino blockbusters, Crichton8217;s narrative structure has shown disconcerting evidence of having undergone genetic modification 8212; a Hollywood gene that seems to subvert in two ways. First, it makes Crichtonian fictional characters so one dimensional that it is no surprise that the most rounded personality in Next is Gerard8217;s. Gerard is a transgenic parrot who, among other things, can mimic the aural aspects of human sexual activity that fall outside the boundaries set by family values. Whatever you think of Next, if you don8217;t laugh out loud at Gerard8217;s lines, you may have the humour gene missing.

That Gerard does sex sounds is however a clue to the second recent problem in Crichton8217;s plots 8212; as in some Hollywood offerings, the sex sometimes threatens to leave the story behind. Lust looms large as Next starts. A morally challenged American bio-scientist proves he8217;s as bad in bed as in comprehending ethics after a paid-for encounter with a tall and beautiful 8212; what else? 8212; Russian whore. That8217;s by no means Next8217;s only plot device that suggests, rightly or wrongly, Crichton8217;s looking at the market when mixing basic biology with high science.

Hollywood, which likes to keep its stories really simple, however has nothing to do with another recent problem in Crichton8217;s narratives. Next, like State of Fear but unlike Airframe 8212; the best of Crichton8217;s post-dinosaur books 8212; has too many sub narratives. Stories within a story are of course as old as storytelling. But one usually knows when the tipping point is near.

Next8217;s story proper is about the question who owns our genes. Us? Or the universities/corporations that figure out why something in our body is useful and therefore valuable? Frank Burnet is a Californian 8212; yes, it all happens in California 8212; who finds out his cure from cancer was thanks to some genetic properties hosted by him but which, thanks to less-than-honest procedures, is the property of UCLA that8217;s the university and BioGen that8217;s the corporation. Burnet legally fights and then hides from the scientists and entrepreneurs, who then plan to illegally harvest the cells from Burnet8217;s daughter and grandson.

So far so science thrillerish. Couple more subplots would have been necessary. But Crichton gives us those and Gerard, mentioned above, and transgenic orangutans and chimpanzees the fist curses in Dutch and French, the second needs human-parental love, and scientifically illiterate divorce lawyers who reckon gene testing can earn them big bucks in fees, and unscrupulous public health scientists, and hospitals that condone and profit from illegal organ trade, and genetic science teasers will blondes vanish in 200 years?8230; read the book for the rest.

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But do read the book. First, the science, unlike in State of Fear, is good, brilliantly lucid in parts. Second, the issues 8212; Crichton helpfully poses them in his Author8217;s Note at the end of the story 8212; are genuinely important did you know one-fifth of all human genes are already patented by research outfits? and it would do the scientifically and informationally challenged no harm if their first encounter with this complex subject is via this book. Third, although in Next he comes close to losing the narrative gene among the strands of subplots, Crichton sort of rescues the story just in time.

You may sometimes not feel like asking what8217;s next in the plot while reading this book, but you will want to ask what next from Crichton after finishing it.