March Book Report: Prey

Apparently if one is confronted with a massive black swarm of predatory nanoparticles the most advantageous thing that a person can do is begin country line dancing. This would be the only evolutionary explanation I can think of for the Achy Breaky heart. Actually, this described Reynold's rule , if your me and had a misspent youth of watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, you will have noticed zebras moving in a coordinated pattern, until one breaks out and gets eaten by a lion. Well that basically describes the plot line of Michael Cricton's book Prey.


Akin to most of his books, Crichton has done some good research and then pulls a Jeremy Rifkin by blowing the dangers of modern science out of proportion. This book describes the life of Jack, an out of work biotech computer programmer guru who due to some problems at his last job is now a stay at home dad. He has given up the high life of late nights of take-out chinese food and endless streams Mountain Dew for bottles and chaufering his kids around. He wife is a high powered exec who has been acting strange lately. Jack suspects she has having an affair and is sure of it but then gets a call for a consulting job. The job involves heading out to Nevada (never a good thing) and working on a top secret military project (strike two), headed by his former company (strike three) who are having a problem (unless your stupid, this is when most sane people go no thanks). However, Jack needs to get out of the house for a bit. It seems his group has built a nanobot that will make MRIs unnecessary in the near future. The only annoying thing is that the nanobot has escaped and evolved. I've never understood what Crichton has against evolution, or does he just thing we shouldn't mess with it. So after a little introduction and the fact the horde of nanobots have trapped them in some sort of abandoned Burning Man compound, Jack figures out that we have to fry the nest.

In most cases this is where the book stops but no, after frying up some nanobots he comes back to said compound and his wife is still acting strange. His wife is an exec for the company (this is like strike fifty five) and wants to celebrate. Of course the near death situation and the weirdness is still going on. After a little investigation, he finds that his wife is a nanobot that is highly evolved. So he decides to use viruses this time and blow the compound up. I'm sure he enjoyed a nice settlement afterwards and never had to work again.

Not the best book in the Crichton pantheon but a decent read, although I never really cared for Jack - seemed kind of whiny to me and the story line was overly believable. Of course neither was Jurassic Park but that was a better book.

Book Review - Coalescent by Stephen Baxter

I'll admit, I only picked up this book because of its title. Being a geneticist and at the public library, I was like "awesome a cyperpunk novel about genetic engineering or something". Talk about sorely disappointed - the only reference to genetics mentions the uptick of genealogy DNA services (considering this book was written in the early 2000s that was oddly prescient).

This novel starts out fairly strong - then shatters like a wine glass on the side of the boat. The basic plot is that George Poole is dealing with his father's death, finds out he has a twin sister who was given to an ancient convent when they were four (tough economic times in Manchester), so he sets out to find her. The book basically also tells the story of his distant ancestor Regina - who was born to Roman royalty as the empire declines. Through a series of ever depressing events - she find her way to Rome and creates a secret society of relatives in the catacombs of Rome, which surprise eventually becomes a convent.

George is accompanied by his childhood friend, who turns out to be somewhat of a nutcase and attempts to blow up the catacombs because the convent is actually a new species of social insect humans - or a eusocial species like ants, bees, or naked mole rats (talk about fugly). So these "eu_nuns" have intercourse once then store the sperm and pop out kids at an elevated rate (one every four months). The book ends with a very confusing future war between the colony living humans and currently modern humans.

The strength of this book and really the most fascinating part was the history of Roman Britain and the subsequent break down of the empire. Here Baxter did a ton of research, less interesing is the eusocial aspect. This really should have been the focus of the story but instead he cloaks the idea until the end. By the end of the story I was the "&*^A^&^A" is going on. After I was done I found the story the first part of a triology - but you would hope the story would make sense on its own.

Not highly recommended.

Day 128: Slant by Greg Bear (7/28/2008)

Continuing with the library theme, my latest literary conquest was Slant by Greg Bear. If you haven't notice this Bear is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Especially as he once signed a book to me Darwin's Children as "To Phil, definitely one of Darwin's Children". As far as this book is concerned I'm not sure if I liked it or not. Once I got half way the pace picked up but prior to that there were way too many characters to keep track of. Also, it was one of those books written at the onset of internet popularity and every one was predicting the future (remember there was actually hope and the economy was booming - oh the joy of a Democratic adminstration). In the end the book was readable but not memorable. I liked the idea of a freaky hyper-conservative Idaho full of crazed gun nuts that was ironically eco-friendly (very real) but there was too much going on and by the time it rapped up I was confused (kind of like this run-on sentence).

Day 99: Hominids (6/28/2008)

So number seven of my 8 resolutions for 08 was to read something non-anthropologically related. Well since the start of the summer I've been reading a lot of fiction and this week's book is Hominids by Robert Sawyer. This is fiction with a heavy anthropological quantum physics twist as there are two universes. The first is the one we currently reside and a parallel universe where modern humans went extinct and Neanderthals became the head hominid honcho.


With the new taxonomy I wonder if he will ever change the title to hominins instead of hominids. Sawyer has his own pre-conceived notions about how human evolution occurred he does a good job of interweaving the Neanderthal and Human worlds. From an evolutionary perspective he has basically taken what we see in the two types of Chimps and extrapolated that to a human version and a Neanderthal version. I also especially liked the Neanderthal time system because daylight savings time is so passe.

Day 81: Red Thunder (6/9/2008)

There are a few things you should know about John Varley before reading his books. One is he is a good writer and has excellent character development, by the end of the book you generally care about their welfare and have a vested interest in seeing them succeed. The second, he is a Sci-Fi author along the lines of Robert Heinlien. He has a very approachable writing style and is amazingly prescient. The third is that he really dislikes NASA. This is the general theme of this book. Once again NASA has failed in it's attempt to get to MARS and the Americans will be beat by China (this is actually fact, the Chinese are on pace to beat the USA to Mars by about 4 to 5 years with the latest estimates). The basic premise of this book is that good old fashioned American know how and a fantastic new technology will allow for cheap, efficient power and space travel. So a small group of kids and an alcholic ex-astronaut along with his idiot-savant cousin have sixty days to build a space ship out of train cars and make it to Mars ahead of the Chinese. Sounds improbable but the power of Varley and Sci-Fi in general is that they make the unobtainable goal seem plausible.

Day 73: Vitals (5/31/2008)

I finished another sci-fi book Vitals by Greg Bear. Greg Bear is another terrific author, he is so on top of new science findings and is able to blend it into great stories, which in the end will leave you somewhat fucked up but wanting more. Great examples of his work are Blood Music, Eon, and Darwin's Radio.

Vitals is about the human quest for immortality but mixes in some great socio-political issues at the same time regarding the former Soviet Union, gulags, and the breakdown of Cold War alliances. Really good read but you will think twice about eating anything afterwards.

Day 67: Spook Country (5/26/2008)

I finished reading Spook Country by William Gibson. He is one of my favorite Sci-Fi authors and I have actually read everything he has written. However, this book isn't really Sci-Fi and is more neo-noir as it takes place in the present. It was alright a little disjointed, but worth the read, The book would have been better with a little more character development.