Prey
Ratings122
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings122
Average rating3.8
Prey is a novel by Michael Crichton, his thirteenth under his own name and twenty-third overall, first published in November 2002, making his first novel of the twenty-first century. The novel serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology; in this case, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and distributed artificial intelligence.
The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing. Fields such as population dynamics and host-parasite coevolution are also at the heart of the novel.
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Also contained in:
[Reader's Digest Condensed Books](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL26430990W)
Reviews with the most likes.
Almost a little too scientisy for me, but overall a really good story and well written book!
I listened to this book and maybe that was a misstep. The narrator was not good but also the dialog was very clunky. So it's hard to pull those apart. The idea and plot point is fun but it's executed in a weird way. I love Jurassic park but I feel like I've read better nanomachine fiction.
I'm sure it made a lot of sense when Crichton first experienced this as a fever dream. Didn't translate on paper.
While I have been compared to Michael Crichton in a few big reviews, he is still the master of the science-based monster story. Jurassic Park should probably also be on this list (the movie had a profound influence on me...back when I wasn't reading novels), but for me, Prey is the most readable of his books, and the first of his I read that was in first person. That stuck with me, and over the years, I've shifted most of my writing from third person to first.
