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by: Michael Crichton
List Price: $26.95Amazon.com's Price: $17.79 You Save: $9.16 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780066214122
ISBN: 0066214122
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: November 01, 2002
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: November 25, 2002
Sales Rank: 109707
Studio: HarperCollins
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles—micro-robots—has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.
It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour.
Every attempt to destroy it has failed.
And we are the prey.
As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it. Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, Prey takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence—in a story of breathtaking suspense. Prey is a novel you can't put down.
Because time is running out.
Amazon.com Review:
In Prey, bestselling author Michael Crichton introduces bad guys that are too small to be seen with the naked eye but no less deadly or intriguing than the runaway dinosaurs that made 1990's Jurassic Park such a blockbuster success.
High-tech whistle-blower Jack Forman used to specialize in programming computers to solve problems by mimicking the behavior of efficient wild animals--swarming bees or hunting hyena packs, for example. Now he's unemployed and is finally starting to enjoy his new role as stay-at-home dad. All would be domestic bliss if it were not for Jack's suspicions that his wife, who's been behaving strangely and working long hours at the top-secret research labs of Xymos Technology, is having an affair. When he's called in to help with her hush-hush project, it seems like the perfect opportunity to see what his wife's been doing, but Jack quickly finds there's a lot more going on in the lab than an illicit affair. Within hours of his arrival at the remote testing center, Jack discovers his wife's firm has created self-replicating nanotechnology--a literal swarm of microscopic machines. Originally meant to serve as a military eye in the sky, the swarm has now escaped into the environment and is seemingly intent on killing the scientists trapped in the facility. The reader realizes early, however, that Jack, his wife, and fellow scientists have more to fear from the hidden dangers within the lab than from the predators without.
The monsters may be smaller in this book, but Crichton's skill for suspense has grown, making Prey a scary read that's hard to set aside, though not without its minor flaws. The science in this novel requires more explanation than did the cloning of dinosaurs, leading to lengthy and sometimes dry academic lessons. And while the coincidence of Xymos's new technology running on the same program Jack created at his previous job keeps the plot moving, it may be more than some readers can swallow. But, thanks in part to a sobering foreword in which Crichton warns of the real dangers of technology that continues to evolve more quickly than common sense, Prey succeeds in gripping readers with a tense and frightening tale of scientific suspense. --Benjamin Reese
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Great Read, has something for everbody!
"Prey" by Michael Crichton is a wonderful book. Even I, one who is usually strongly opposed to the Science-Fiction genre, found many things about this book that made me think, and many more that were just good. Maybe it was the romance, perhaps the incredibly performed suspense, or another element. The author definitely created a successful balance of technical terms and understandability, so even the least tech-savvy people can still understand the general "big picture" Michael is trying to communicate, ... Read More
Rating:  - Better than Next,
worse than Jurassic Park. Stuck square in anonymity, this book would never have had more than a handful of reviews if not for the author. Attach a big enough name to anything that isn't awful and some people will love it.
Others have summarized it, you can read those reviews as well as you can this one, so I will save time and point out what is right and what is wrong.
First, the good. The characterization is better here than it is in most Michael Crichton novels. This is refreshing, ... Read More
Rating: - Intriguing and suspenseful plot
Crichton mixes science fact with science fiction to create an irresistible book that keeps you up at night to finish reading the entire book. Character development is somewhat weak but the science facts woven into the fiction will pull you in and not let go until you have reached the end. It's one thrilling read!
Rating:  - The worst possible book i've ever read in 50 years!
Well here it is 2008 and I bought this to read while on a flight to Cancun to work. The plot is basically terrible, the first part of the book reads like a General Hospital episode. The part of super manager fails unbelievably. Worse, I already had a better way to destroy the supposed villain at half the book's length than the ending. AVOID THIS BOOK! Anyone that has seen the movie, (yeah, I know I'm using a movie reference here) The Matrix knows that EMP will kill any computer type device unless it is hardened ... Read More
Rating: - Okay
This book is pretty good. Since anything "nano" is all the rage these days in science, this book was pretty much inevitable. A good read.
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