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

From Publishers Weekly
The concept of nanotechnology can be traced back to a 1959 speech given by physicist Richard Feynman, in which he offered to pay $1,000 to "the first guy who makes an operating electric motor... which is only 1/64-inch cube." Today the quest is to make machines that would be about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Enter Jack Forman, a recently unemployed writer of predator/prey software, whose nearly absentee wife, Julia, is a bigwig at a tech firm called Xymos. When a car accident hospitalizes Julia, Xymos hires Jack to deal with problems at their desert nanotechnology plant. The techies at this plant have developed nanomachines, smaller than dust specks, which are programmed with Jack's predator/prey software. Not only is a swarm of those nanomachines loose and multiplying, but they appear to be carnivorous. The desert swarms are the least of Jack's worries, however, as the crew inside the plant are not entirely what they seem. Like Jurassic Park, this "it could happen" morality tale is gripping from the start, and Wilson's first-person reading as Jack sets the pace. His confident, flinty voice and his no-nonsense delivery makes this a solid presentation of a high-speed techno-thriller. Crichton gives the audio an air of sobering authenticity by reading its cautionary foreword himself.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-An absorbing cautionary tale of science fact and fiction. Jack Forman has been laid off from his Silicon Valley job as a senior software programmer and has become a househusband, while his wife continues her career with a biotech firm involved in defense contracting. Jack is called in as a consultant to debug one of their products, and finds himself confronting a full-blown emergency, about which his wife and others in the organization have been suspiciously deceptive. Crichton's sure hand sustains a tension-filled narrative as harrowing events unfold. Jack discovers that the "problem product" is a lethal, self-replicating swarm of bioengineered particles released into the desert that imperils the environment as well as the scientists who created it. He is pitted against an exponentially growing and increasingly sophisticated organism encoded with predator/prey behaviors, capable of mimicry as well as learning. Final scenes are dramatic, brutal, and jarring, with the outcome tantalizingly unresolved. Significant chunks of scientific information are packaged within the story line, and some segments are blended less smoothly than others. This scarcely matters, however, as most readers will speed past the rough spots and accept improbable leaps of imagination whenever necessary in hot pursuit of the gripping, fast-paced action. Overall, a compelling read for students intrigued by cutting-edge technologies, and rife with opportunities for discussion of ethics in scientific research.Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VACopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
A Michael Crichton novel is an education in itself. His monster stories are built on the potential threat of today's technology, and the technology is always cutting-edge. His science is always well researched and meticulous, and his books are always informative. For that reason alone the audiobook is a satisfactory vehicle for PREY, a distinctly nasty monster tale built upon a weird intersection between computer programming, genetic engineering, and nano-technology--swarms of tiny camera lenses bred upon the backs of bacteria. George Wilson has plenty to explain here, and he admirably carries a tale that is one endless exposition, driven by a series of cliff-hangers. This is not Crichton's best novel, but Wilson gives it his best, and until the movie comes along, this unabridged audio is the recommended medium for this book. D.W. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Crichton is the master of the sci-tech thriller, and nowhere is that more evident than in his latest page-turner, a scary, wild ride that is, without a doubt, his best in years. Jack Forman has been a stay-at-home dad since losing his job at an up-and-coming Silicon Valley technology company. Fired for discovering the company's illegal activities, Jack is taking care of his three children while his successful wife, Julia, is working at a similar company, Xymos Technology. Xymos has developed sophisticated nanoparticles for medical use, and Julia has been working long hours on the project. Jack suspects she is having an affair, but it turns out to be much more sinister than that. When Julia is injured in a car accident, Jack is called to the secretive Xymos lab in Nevada to help out with the project. It turns out the lab is in trouble; a swarm of nanoparticles escaped into the wild and has been evolving based on a program Jack designed called PREDPREY, which incorporated predator/prey interactions. The swarm is not only acting like a predator but also reproducing and killing desert animals. It is hunting the people in the Xymos compound, and it quickly becomes apparent that it can kill humans as well. As Jack uncovers the magnitude of the swarm's power, he realizes that the threat extends far beyond the isolated lab in the desert. As always, Crichton does an admirable job of explaining complex scientific ideas and integrating them with his gripping story. Like Jurassic Park (1990), Prey is a cautionary tale of the dangerous roads that carelessly used technology can take us down. This unpredictable, wild ride is not to be missed. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

About the Author:Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. His novels include The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, and Timeline. He is also the creator of the television series ER.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times Book Review

"Prey" is irresistibly suspenseful. You're entertained on one level and you learn something on another....

Book Magazine - Don McLeese

Concept is king for Michael Crichton. The bestselling novelist has parlayed a background in science and medicine and an uncommonly fertile imagination into a multimedia entertainment empire, building a readership numbering well into the millions through his knack for distilling complex issues into page-turning plots. Millions more know Crichton from the blockbuster movies inspired by his novels, such as Jurassic Park, and from ER, the smash television series he created. Though Crichton's novels typically show little concern for depth of character or believable dialogue, reading Prey can be as addictive as munching movie popcorn: You can't stop until you've finished the bucket even though you know there's minimal nourishment. As Prey stretches plausibility toward the outer limits—swarms of man-made particles threaten the survival of civilization as we know it—fans will suspend disbelief just to see how it all turns out. The hero of this tale is Jack Forman, a stay-at-home dad who was recently terminated as a supervisor of computer programmers at MediaTronics. A whistle-blowing episode left him branded as a troublemaker, rendering him all but unemployable. While Jack takes care of the baby, shops at Crate & Barrel and listens to his two older kids call each other "butt breath" and "weasel puke," his wife, Julia, works ever longer hours under increasingly mysterious circumstances at Xymos Technologies, "World Leader in Molecular Manufacturing." Eventually, Julia shares a secret with Jack: The company has developed a camera smaller than a red blood cell, a dramatic, lucrative breakthrough. It can circulate through the body and diagnose cardiovascular disease far more effectively and less expensively than any existing method. Yet even the excitement surrounding this success can hardly explain the changes Jack has been noticing in his wife: She's talking faster, and she's quicker to snap. She's even dressing differently. Is she overworked, exasperated with her unemployed husband or harboring a secret that threatens their marriage? "Everything about her was different," thinks Jack, "her manner, her appearance, her mood, everything—and in a flash of insight I knew why: my wife was having an affair." If only. As Jack ponders divorce (unbelievably blabbing his suspicions to a lawyer he encounters while out shopping), a series of convenient coincidences puts him back to work, sidelines his wife and brings his sister to town to watch the kids. (The Formans have a housekeeper, but she doesn't seem to do much of anything.) Abruptly returned to good graces as a MediaTronics consultant, Jack quickly departs for the desert "fab complex," where Xymos has been fabricating synthetic molecules under tight security and Julia's supervision. It's apparent that there are some crucial details she hasn't shared with him. Not only do these microscopic-scale cameras have potential uses beyond the medical, but the accelerated evolution of the particles threatens the ability of their manufacturers to control them. At the conceptual crux of Prey is the pervasive fear that man has no idea of the dangers inherent in the technology he's unleashing, that it is progressing beyond our ability to understand or contain it. Crichton frames his story with an introduction sounding the alarm that "sometime in the twenty-first century, our self-deluded recklessness will collide with our growing technological power" and includes a three-and-a-half page bibliography. Yet the bulk of this techno-thriller owes more to the cheesiest strains of sci-fi horror than to the scientific concept of "emergent behavior." As the plot devolves into an Invasion of the Body Snatchers scenario, the novel finds some of the dimmest characters ever to inhabit Silicon Valley engaging in some of the most stilted dialogue this side of Flash Gordon. The problem with the literary division of the Crichton brand is that novels have no special effects. Though Prey will inevitably make the leap from the printed page to the big screen—where the battle between the swarms and their human prey will undoubtedly look spectacular—here it makes for weird science and a shallow story. At the end of Forman's ordeal, the reader could easily apply Jack's verdict on the man-made mess he'd encountered to the novel as a whole: "It was so dumb, it was breathtaking." Popcorn, anyone?

Publishers Weekly

The concept of nanotechnology can be traced back to a 1959 speech given by physicist Richard Feynman, in which he offered to pay $1,000 to "the first guy who makes an operating electric motor... which is only 1/64-inch cube." Today the quest is to make machines that would be about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Enter Jack Forman, a recently unemployed writer of predator/prey software, whose nearly absentee wife, Julia, is a bigwig at a tech firm called Xymos. When a car accident hospitalizes Julia, Xymos hires Jack to deal with problems at their desert nanotechnology plant. The techies at this plant have developed nanomachines, smaller than dust specks, which are programmed with Jack's predator/prey software. Not only is a swarm of those nanomachines loose and multiplying, but they appear to be carnivorous. The desert swarms are the least of Jack's worries, however, as the crew inside the plant are not entirely what they seem. Like Jurassic Park, this "it could happen" morality tale is gripping from the start, and Wilson's first-person reading as Jack sets the pace. His confident, flinty voice and his no-nonsense delivery makes this a solid presentation of a high-speed techno-thriller. Crichton gives the audio an air of sobering authenticity by reading its cautionary foreword himself. Simultaneous release with the HarperCollins hardcover (Forecasts, Oct. 28, 2002). (Nov.)

Library Journal

Crichton's latest thriller combines the biotechnology of Jurassic Park with nanotechnology, creating a new menace for the human race. Julia Foreman and her team at Xymos Technologies have developed microscopic artificial organisms designed to function together as a group. However, they used a computer program, developed by Julia's at-home husband and programmer Jack, which employs a hunter and prey behavior model to allow the organisms to achieve stated goals through experimenting with different behaviors. However, the organisms escape the Nevada-based factory and begin to reproduce, evolve, and learn, and they are learning to hunt other life forms. This story is fast paced, with interesting characters and enough twists and turns to hold the listener's attention. Narrator George Wilson effectively tells this exciting tale in both productions; except for the price, the recordings are the same. Recommended for all audio collections.-Stephen L. Hupp, West Virginia Univ., Parkersburg Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal