| Departments — Bookmark | Winter 2007 |
Next 
You can manage fairly well in life without reading Michael Crichton ’69, but at a certain point you become aware of your cultural illiteracy. Without reading his books, you are not a member of an international phenomenon. You may vaguely know he had something to do with Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain, and there was that movie about Japan. You might have meant to investigate. But life got busy—medical school, residency, marriage, mortgage, children—and somehow the years passed without your cracking the spine of one of his novels. You and Michael Crichton coexisted in busy, non-intersecting worlds. To tell the truth, you never gave him a thought. And without doubt, the reverse also was true. But things change. Recently I was sent the latest Crichton novel, Next. I read it straight through. It left me with thoughts on what it takes to be an international phenomenon. My thoughts on the book weren’t as clear. In this novel, protagonist and antagonist are one and the same: the human genome, removed from its role in the natural plan in order to be manipulated, patented, sold, and used without regard to ethical or scientific consequences. All the rest is elaboration. Transgenic parrots, polylingual orangutans, biogenetically created living works of art, advertisements implanted by PR firms into genetically altered fish—they are among dozens of minor actors who appear and disappear for our entertainment. Alongside them run several persistent storylines. One involves a transgenic chimp that is chimp-napped from a primate center by his human father. Another involves a cancer survivor whose resistant genes have been marketed to great profit without his knowledge. Next thing you know, there is a bounty hunter and an unmarked van chasing his innocent grandson, whom they believe has the same cancer-proof gene. Things get busy. The book is crammed with subplots, something for everyone— It may bother some readers that Crichton gives so much color and stamina to his what-if concepts while his human characters go without. But humans are merely vectors for ideas here. To make the point clearer, chapters are interrupted by news bulletins taken from real sources and mock articles from scientific presses and mainstream papers. They are clever transmissions from the genetic future as the author envisions it: “Scientists Grow Miniature Ear in Lab” (Massachusetts Office of University Technology Transfer); “Neanderthal Man: Too Cautious to Survive?” (purportedly Science magazine); “New Transgenic Pets on Horizon”; and my favorite, “Blondes Becoming Extinct” (BBC). A great deal of writing thought and effort has gone into them, and regular page-flipping is required to keep everything tidy. As a result, one feels in peak intellectual condition, keeping up with the brisk pace Crichton has set. (This may be one of the reasons for the international phenomenon he has become: We all want to feel as intelligent as the writer we are reading.) Next ends, rather oddly for a blockbuster, with a scholarly list of conclusions the author has drawn about gene patenting (he is against it), research bans (ditto), and for-profit university genetic research (thumbs down again). There is even a bibliography for those beach readers who want to delve into the technical points of genetic engineering, evolutionary psychology, eugenics, embryology, cloning, and intellectual property law. The book means to be rip-roaring entertainment, unsmiling prediction, and serious commentary all at once. In the world of international phenomena, grand ambitions—three books in one!—are probably commonplace. In the real world, it is a hard trick to pull off. Time and science will tell which book Next is. I have my humble suspicions. Elissa Ely ’88 is a psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Photo: Plush Studios/Digital Vision/Getty Images |
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