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| View Larger Image | Next (Harper Fiction)
by Michael Crichton
| | List Price: | $9.99 |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 213093 | | Studio: | Harper | | | Binding: | Mass Market Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 560 | | Publication Date: | December 31, 1969 | | Publisher: | Harper |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Welcome to our genetic world. Fast, furious, and out of control. This is not the world of the future— its the world right now. |
Book Description
Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction--is it worse than the disease? 
What's coming Next? Get a hint of what Michael Crichton sees on the horizon in this short video clip: high bandwidth or low bandwidth | We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes... Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect. The future is closer than you think. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.0 based on 475 reviews)
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Worst book ever 
My wife and I both suffered through this book. I have to be honest, it is the first time in my life I returned a book for being just a bad book. Borders was nice enough to allow me to return it after 3 days. I feel like someone owes me at least 7 hours of my life back.
This shoddy bit of writing must have passed through without anyone at the publisher reading or editing it. There are at least 5 story lines in the book that just abruptly end, as if it was publishing deadline time, "so lets just stop and print what is here" and perhaps sell some books.
Some of it was fun to read for a few pages, then it quickly degenerated into a wandering mass of story fragments which seemed to just be adding pages to the book for no apparent reason.
"Next" is to books as "Dr T. and the Women" is to movies. Big names, no point.
September 02, 2008 | |
Educational, thought provoking, and entertaining, yet slightly disappointing 
Both entertaining and thought provoking, Next is a novel that will keep you enthralled all the way to its disappointing end. It's not that the ending is necessarily bad, but that it's hurriedly resolved not unlike a TV episode. You'd expect a Crichton page turner like this to have a more involved ending, though maybe that's just me.
Even if you're not turned on by biotechnology, you will be intrigued by the story's interweaving of fact and fiction. It is an extremely current piece of work that will put you smack in the center of the current debate of gene therapy, patents, transgenics, and tissue ownership. You will find yourself smack in the center of it, and will learn quite a bit from this extremely well researched novel (as are all Crichton's books). This is definitely an entertaining and educational read, though simply not Crichton's best in my opinion.
Crichton fans may in fact find themselves confused about whether they really love it or not, but will find that it's still worthy of their time.
August 26, 2008 | |
Enterntaining, Thought-Provoking Pageturner 
And scary. The first page says, "This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't." The really frightening thing is that the parts I thought were over-the-top fiction, weren't. I was shocked to read Crichton's final "Author's Note" and bibliography, which make it clear that some very weird things are going on these days in the name of science. In fact, Crichton could have titled the book, RIGHT NOW.
NEXT is a first-class thriller with multiple subplots that all cleverly come together on the final pages. It's also very funny. I don't want to be a spoiler, but I must say that this is the first thriller I've read in which the climactic fight scene is dominated by a chimp that looks like Curious George.
I found Crichton's depiction of the politics of scientific research to be exactly correct. The odd connections among university researchers, commercial researchers, university technology transfer administrators, venture capital, and government agencies are truly byzantine. Because of my academic background, I enjoyed this aspect of the book tremendously. I suspect that other readers might find this to be a bit off-putting. For those readers, I'd like to suggest that they read NEXT as if they were reading a science-fiction fantasy set on another planet--just go with the flow. Academia is a lot like being on another planet, and government agencies do tend to act as if they're from outer space, too.
This is one of Crichton's "themes" (to use an old high-school book report term). In his "Author's Note" he urges Congress to repeal the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which was intended to promote university research by giving researchers access to capital markets. Crichton feels that this legislation transformed medical research from an open to a closed system from which only big business benefits. If it helps readers to understand what is going on in the book, I'll try to explain: Universities not only teach, they also conduct advanced research. The faculty and non-faculty researchers conduct research studies and experiments and then write articles on their findings. They can also profit from any discoveries that result by patenting these discoveries. Most universities have an "office of technology transfer" to help them with these patent applications and with the sale of licenses to private companies. Many, if not most, of these patents are at least partly owned by the universities themselves. The private companies are often owned by faculty or former faculty, who seek funding for further research and for product development based on the patents from venture capital firms. The problem is that these venture capital firms are out to make a very quick buck. In fact, they're commonly referred to as "vulture capitalists." In NEXT, Crichton depicts one such VC's highly unethical, quasi-legal machinations.
NEXT is frightening because it's fundamentally true. Our ability to manipulate the human genome far outstrips our wisdom. No nation can prohibit inhumane research when scientific research is global. Even within our own borders, such legislation is futile and often leads to unintended consequences. In my opinion, our only hope is education: America's public schools must begin to provide our children with a firm grasp of math and science. Only if the average American understands what the science of genetics is all about will we be able to make intelligent, ethical decisions about the use of new knowledge.
August 25, 2008 | |
A Transgenic Novel 
Michael Crichton's NEXT is, from a narrative standpoint, a bit of a departure for the author. The novel is a grab-bag of stories, some of which are stand-alone, some of which are intertwined, and only some of which carry through to the end. This narrative approach, which might work well for a literary novel, serves as a bit of a distraction in what is essentially a science fiction/action story. It's a bit difficult to keep track of the bewildering number of characters and interrupted story lines, and this complexity deflates the suspense. That said, this is one of Crichton's better works. Stylistically, it is much better written than many novels of this genre.
A number of Crichton's novels focus on a problem engendered by science gone wild. His is a didactic fiction, one that usually bears a message or warning about some imminent if still future-sounding, science-related problem. NEXT is of this sort. This novel, like the enormously successful JURASSIC PARK, takes up the issue of genetics. (One might say it's kind of a transgenic novel, PLANET OF THE APES grafted on to JURASSIC PARK.) In this case, the problem that the author principally focuses on is the granting of patents to companies for genes and diseases. Genes and diseases are, of course, naturally occurring things, and so the idea of granting a company legal ownership seems, if you'll pardon the expression, patently ridiculous. But in fact, U.S. law does recognize patents for genes, which, aside from appearing to be a priori wrongheaded, arguably stunts research and so injures the public good: for instance, it limits who can work on therapies involving the patented gene. The author also notes that the law does not really protect individuals' rights over their own body parts outside of the body; a school or company may claim ownership of, for instance, blood cells and organs removed during medical procedures. This particular issue sets up a key storyline: a company's willingness to go to extreme lengths--bizarrely legal lengths--to recover cell lines it obtained and lost from a former patient.
The legal and ethical issues raised by the story are certainly engaging. The central plot, essentially consisting of a chase, is effectively written, with a slow build of suspense and tension and concluding with a nice payoff. There's humor, particular in the thread involving a talking African grey parrot, Gerard. NEXT, in short, is an enjoyable read. One can't help but wonder whether Crichton, had he been just a little more self-disciplined, might have written a tighter and ultimately more satisfying novel. As a side point, one might note the recurrence of the issue of child molestation; ultimately, I think, the author's point is to underscore either that there might be a genetic predisposition to such behavior or conversely, that ascribing such behavior to a gene might be something of a cop-out--it's not entirely clear what the author has in mind here, and as a result, this unsavory material seems gratuitous.
This audio version of the book is done particularly well. That the reader, Dylan Baker, chose to do voices in "performing" the characters was a risky move, but he carries it off well. The parrot, not to mention another polyglot animal, must have been a particular challenge, but Baker carries it off masterfully. I was less thrilled with his impersonation of older women (sounded like men in drag) and newspaper articles were read in a slightly British-sounding Eastern-establishment voice that quickly grated on the nerves. Overall, though, a fine reading performance of an enjoyable book.
August 16, 2008 | |
Not his best, but a decent read
The overall story was pretty interesting in my opinion. Raised alot of questions about genetic testing, gene patents, people's rights to their own cells beleive it or not and transgenic experiments.
My biggest issue with the book is how much it skips around. Towards the end a few of the subplots come together, but there are MANY chapters within the book dealing with characters that never appear again. I suppose this was to flesh out the pros vs. cons of genetic testing, gene patents and the like, but even as far as 300 or so pages in the book, new characters would be introduced that had nothing to do with the main characters in the story, which you'd probably be hard pressed to define who's a main character. Every person penned in this book seems to have an equal role, that is, the major players anyway. As you can see from that description, it can get a little bit confusing while reading!
It does read rather fast though and brings to light some very interesting true life articles dealing with genes, cloning, things of that nature as well as how much of a slippery slope the whole debate is.
August 13, 2008 | |
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