Sphere

I'm really torn about “Sphere”. I've read books that I instantly loved and ones that I disliked and stopped reading. “Sphere” somehow managed to keep me in the middle ground all the way to the end. I disliked many things, but the story and pace was interesting enough to keep me going.

“Sphere” got me really hooked in the first half. Throw in some mystery from outer space, some future science and black holes with time travel and I'm instantly hooked on your book. But at the same time I already didn't like the cliche characters and the dialogue. But the action had a good enough pace to keep me going and I hoped for the best that the characters wouldn't get in the way too much. But oh boy did they get in the way.

Michael Crichton had a firm idea how his story needed to advance and play out and disregarded logic and character actions. Illogical actions and implausible reactions to nearly all situations are really a common theme throughout the whole book.

Although this really damped the story for me, I didn't stopped reading because I wanted to know how this all plays out. In the end my time with “Sphere” was worth it, but this story could've been so much more.

This is a serious study in how to keep a reader on edge. Maybe I'm just easily scared, but I find surprising that such a simple concept can generate such a strong reaction from me.

Four scientists are called to a crash site. It turns out to be the site of a spaceship that has been there for more than three hundred years. As they explore, mysterious events and messages begin to appear around the site of their habitat. The mission becomes a race to discover who or what is causing these attacks and why, before it kills them all.

For me, Sphere derives a great deal of its power from the veneer of science that it layers over the entire experience. We're placed among a group of intellectuals who knife away at the problems using the tools they are normally accustomed to. The origin of the ship, the nature of the codes, their mutual behaviours - I could spot no obvious, immersion breaking discrepancies and I was consequently quite vulnerable to the feelings that the book generates. Crichton uses Sphere as a way to indicate the issues surrounding alien contact, caricatured somewhat but still a real indicator to someone who is not aware of the situation. I think it would be best not take his novels too seriously, though. Not everything is quite as clear cut as he makes it out.

The other issue I would mention is the relative lack of feelings that the characters have. The main character is a psychologist, but I don't think that you can explain the weird reactions of the scientists to deaths and inexplicable events as just hiding from the reality. I think most people would have some kind of more extreme reaction than that. It makes Beth and Harry, in particular, feel like constructions more than people.

The “message” of the book then, if there is one, would probably go something like this. We're looking at a clash between the soft and the hard sciences, and their ways of interpreting problems. Norman ends up proving that the hard scientists that ignore psychology and their own psychological problems are a danger to themselves and others (although the sequence of deductions that he generates is enough to make any reader feel inadequate). The other topic is the power of the human imagination. Norman decides that the ability to control our thoughts and maintain self-control is the factor being tested by the sphere. As a species, we have to learn this kind of restraint if we are going to explore the stars.

Highly recommended if you have a little time on your hands. No literary masterpiece, but thoroughly enjoyable and it will get you thinking hard about a great deal of increasingly relevant issues.

Executive Summary: A strong start and a pretty strong finish, but I found a lot of the last quarter or so on the slow side. This is a pretty solid 3.5 stars that could be rounded up or down depending on my mood at the time.Audiobook: Apparently this book had been released in audio before, but for some reason Brilliance Audio seems to be (re)releasing a bunch of his books recently. Scott Brick does his usual quality job. Whenever you see Mr. Brick's name on an audiobook, you know you're going to get a good reading. Full ReviewI came into this book thinking it was a reread. I did a handful of books by Mr. Crichton when I was in high school, and I thought this was among them. As I got further into the book, I became convinced otherwise.I found the beginning very interesting. A psychologist is brought in to help with a crash that turns out to be a spaceship on the bottom of the ocean. I liked the mystery and investigation aspect of the story, more than the viewpoint of the main character itself though.As the plot develops and we learn more about not only the ship, but the sphere it contains, I found my mind starting to wander. I didn't get attached to any of the characters. I found myself annoyed by most of the scientists. Several of them seemed to be more concerned about being published and/or their place in history than the actual investigation itself. I've always been more of an engineer than a scientist, but I don't know why anyone would want to deal with that.As with the other Michael Crichton books I've read, this one takes science and posits some plausible seeming possibilities. He always seemed to have a knack for the techno-thriller in a way that doesn't feel cheesy and over the top.I'm not sure if I was disappointed with the truth of the Sphere, or if my detatchment from the characters just got to me, but by about the 50% mark, I found my mind starting to wander a bit. The ending was pretty strong though, and probably saved it from me rounding down to a three.I've been wanting to take a break from SFF this year, and while this is definitely still in the Sci-Fi wheelhouse, it's more of a thriller with a sci-fi premise than a pure science fiction book. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as [b:Timeline 7669 Timeline Michael Crichton https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1405420745s/7669.jpg 1525987] or [b:Jurassic Park 6424171 Jurassic Park Michael Crichton https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344371661s/6424171.jpg 3376836], but I'm glad I finally read it.

I first read this back in the 90s, and while it was a fun and exciting re-read, it didn't quite hold up to my memory of it.

In true Michael Crichton form, the concepts and imagination was incredibly compelling, and the action was thrilling, but it didn't quite feel complete and properly fleshed out. The middle section of the book flies by and some ideas or plot points are touched on and glossed past far too quickly for my liking. Other elements felt important when introduced but then aren't explored at all.

There are also some gender and race politics that just didn't quite sit well with me, and might have been true to the time it was written but felt kind of awkward in 2020.

Still, it's a real page turner and the almost-400 pages go very quickly. Good for a bit of light sci-fi adventure.

La differenza sostanziale nel genere avventura o fantascienza ed anche thriller che differenzia molti autori di questo genere da Crichton è che finito di leggere un suo libro, rispetto agli altri, oltre ad esserti immensamente divertito sarai anche un tantino più colto. Perchè lui era uno scrittore che ti aiutava a capire il mondo in cui viviamo e quello ancora più incredibile in cui potremmo trovarci a vivere domani.

La trama di “Sfera” (da cui peraltro è stato tratto un orribile film che come al solito c'entra poco con il libro in questione) è il ritrovamento di un relitto di un astronave nelle profondità marine; questo aprirà la strada della narrazione verso i viaggi nel tempo, gli alieni, computer senzienti, specie di animali sconosciute, i poteri della mente. Certo il tutto fa molto “fantascientifico”, ma troviamo sempre nozioni scientifiche molto interessanti.

Il mix divertente è garantito perchè qui ritroviamo gli elementi del thriller, della fantascienza, della psicologia umana, dell'horror subacqueo, il tutto condito dall'immensa creatività di Crichton che dosa il tutto molto sapientemente, per accattivare il lettore e non farlo mai annoiare.

In più troviamo l'ambientazione subacquea che rende claustrofobica tutta la narrazione e questo senso di disagio che arriva direttamente dalle pagine del libro al lettore, trasmettendo anche la paura ed il sospetto che serpeggiano tra i protagonisti del romanzo.

Credo a mio parere, che questo sia il più bel libro di Crichton che abbia letto, in quanto ritrovo molti degli elementi da me preferiti dei generi letterari a me cari; credo poi che tra i libri ambientati sott'acqua, questo sia il migliore in assoluto.

Impossibile non rimanerne affascinati e conquistati.

If you're like me, you appreciate modern techno-thrillers such as Project Hail Mary because they're cleverly designed theoretical science books that masquerade as taught action thrillers. In the case of Sphere by Michael Crichton (the master of the genre), it warms my heart that we can have a book with real human emotion in one chapter and spend the next chapter waxing poetic on astrophysics and oceanography. Sure, the book satisfies the inner thrill seeker, but to me, the most exciting bits have to do with tangents on psychology, space, medicine, and the nerdy first contact bits. If you enjoy mission-based, high-science thrillers, this might be for you.

// A team of scientists is summoned to investigate the remains of a ship in the murky depths of the ocean. Everything goes awry when they find a sphere. What is it, and more importantly, how do they communicate with it? //

You're probably thinking, “Oh no, another run-of-the-mill, deep sea exploration novel with corny dialogue and a ho-hum ending.” This is not that, by a long shot. What we do have is a team consisting of an astrophysicist, a marine biologist, a zoologist, a mathematician, and a psychologist. As you can imagine, the team is at odds with each other over how to proceed with the discoveries they make in the deep blue sea. It gets kind of hairy because the habitat that they reside in is only set up for them to survive for a few days, and when communication gets cut off to the surface, it becomes a fight for survival.

** In my eyes, Sphere does three things especially well. **

1. It creates a setting that is on the cusp of reality and stages it with a believable cast of characters. They may not be right for the job, but they use their unique skills and training to make the best of the situation.

2. The team often makes decisions based on logic rather than emotion. It is not at all robotic, though; some people might not be themselves, while others might act a certain way because they have skin in the game.

3. The impact of their decisions is not inherently clear. As far as you know, nobody is trying to save the world or prevent some sort of disaster. This is a fact-finding mission where the stakes are subtle, giving the story a chance to breathe.

// You always have an option. There is always something you can do. You are never without choice. //

I will not delve into spoilers, but I had a grand time trying to figure out what was going on in the murky depths. Once the sphere is brought to the forefront and you have an understanding of what is going on, other strange occurrences start to happen. The habitat is seemingly changing its layout, others seem to be losing their wits, and some crew are even becoming much more beautiful as time rolls on. Weird!

// “Myths had once represented the common knowledge of humanity, and they served as a kind of map of consciousness.” //

I thoroughly enjoyed the ending. It has one of those winks to the reader that makes you smirk at its cleverness. It's definitely a 5-star rating for me, and like I said before, if you like Blake Crouch and Andy Weir books, this will definitely be up your alley. Just like Jurassic Park and Congo, this is sci-fi at its best.

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