Micro

Micro by Michael Crichton with Richard Preston

Although I’ve read just about every piece of fiction by Michael Crichton, I had my doubts going into this one.  First, I haven’t really thought he’d written anything that spectacular in about twenty years.  Then, there was the fact that this book was released posthumously and was actually unfinished at the time of Mr. Crichton’s passing.  It was so “unfinished” that another writer (Richard Preston) had to be brought in to actually add a significant chunk to the finished piece.  Usually, that’s never a good thing, and always has me wondering if the publisher is simply trying to cash in on the author’s reputation.  Of course, I also glanced at the reviews on amazon.com, and more people gave this book a 1 star rating (the lowest possible) than any other rating.  Not a good thing.

But press forward I did.  Before I go into detail, I must first point out that I can see why so many people disliked this book, but I have to confess that I actually enjoyed it!  To understand such an assessment, a plot setting is in order.

There’s a mysterious company in Honolulu that specializes in making “micro robots”.  One of the Vice-Presidents (a young, twenty-something guy) goes to Cambridge in Massachusetts along with some other executives to recruit some young, talented scientists including his kid brother.  As we meet these scientists, the first major problem of this book appears.  Crichton isn’t much (these days) into character development.  There’s a group of about seven kids, and each one has some one-dimensional stereotypical trait, along with a “speciality”.  So we have people here that you can you could describe as: “the leader”,”the whiner”, “the smart athletic female”, “the slutty female”, etc.  The fact that they each have their own speciality (which the author thrusts in our face rather uncouthly) tells us that our story will “need” such an individual at some point as our story progresses.

So these kids go to Hawaii, and the CEO gives them a “tour” of the facility.  Apparently, not only can robots be micro-sized, but (gasp) so can living things!  Do you see where this is going?  Well, it should be pointed out that the older brother vice-president has mysteriously disappeared very recently.  The kid-brother scientist apparently knows something sinister, so when he confronts the CEO, the CEO panics!  It just so happens that all of the students are in the chamber where people/things are shrunk, so the CEO presses the button!  

So, yes, things are a bit silly already, and I found myself laughing when the author probably was wanting me to scream instead.  These tiny organisms are  now about one millimeter in size, and they’re then dumped into the jungle (which for all we know, could only be a few yards away from a parking lot).  The bad guy knows they can’t survive.  The jungle will destroy them!

And this is where are story really begins.  Our miniaturized protagonists are now in a very unfamiliar environment with insects, birds and reptiles that are now huge and mostly very unfriendly.  If this sounds like one of those cheesy 1950 sci-fi movies, you would be correct in your assumption.  For this reason alone, it makes me think that this could never be made into a movie.  It’s been done too many times, and giant ants and mosquitoes on the big screen just don’t phase us like they did one-half a century ago.  You could also argue that this setting is a bit like Crichton’s most famous work, Jurassic Park.  The environment is very similar, and I must confess that I found giant wasps and grasshoppers a lot more frightening than velociraptors and a t-rex.

As corny as this story may sound, I kept turning the pages.  I found myself enraptured in a way I never thought possible about such a silly tale.  This is definitely Michael Crichton, and there’s just enough references to the things of the scientific world to keep your interest without burying you with too much detail.   Like George Lucas of the Star Wars movies, though, Crichton sometimes gets so involved in what he’s good at, that he loses his focus on the basics of a story - such as characters talking to each other.

When I finished reading this book, I felt a bit like I just watched a movie with an 8 year old child that was made for 8 year old children.  I thought it was very silly and very juvenile, but I had to admit that, for some strange reason, I really enjoyed the experience.