Next BY Michael Crichton

©Inchoatus Group

January 1, 2007

A critical review...

Title: Next

Author: Michael Crichton

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers

Length: 415 pages in hardcover

Cover Art: (Design: Will Staehle)—it’s nice to see a white cover with this insidious little bar code. It augurs well… but it lies. The cover is the best thing about this horrid little book.

Rating

… this might be dimly eligible for adolescents looking for some kind of action novel featuring genetically altered animals.

Michael Crichton Fans                                   PASS (2/7)

Speculative Fiction Audience                        PASS (1/7)

General Literature Readership                      PASS (1/7)

We didn’t even look at other critics. We didn’t want to get even more angry about this book or get upset at other critics for saying anything vaguely nice about it.

What We Say                                                        

As we’ve stated elsewhere, we try pretty hard to stay away from books we have reason to think will be bad. But one of our stated goals is also to look out for bestsellers and market movers. This dual purpose leads us on a wandering track through publications. We end up with an odd mix of famous and obscure authors. But as we wander along, occasionally—because we seek the best—we sometimes worry that we rate books too charitably.

Then, reality always sets in. In this case, reality sets in with this preposterous book by Michael Crichton. We should note, this is our first Crichton book. We’re aware of him as an author—particularly as his novels become screenplays (Jurassic Park, Timeline, The Lost World and The Thirteenth Warrior for example). He’s famous, people like him, and this book was published to great fanfare and seemed to be about near-future genetic upheaval. This all looked good and we decided: time to investigate Crichton!

What a colossal mistake that turned out to be.

There are a lot of novels out there we don’t like or think could be better. We’re hard on these books. We get mad at books that aren’t accessible (Appleseed). We are crestfallen at books that don’t live up to their potential (Darwin’s Children). We are often insulted at publishers that exploit series (The Wheel of Time). Then there are books that we wish had never been published; books that actively harm the genre and literature in general. The occasions when we come upon these books—books that make us wish the printing press had never been invented—we finish them and write reviews with the sole purpose to try and bring infamy upon the author and steal readers from the publisher. This is one of those books.

The first few lousy things about this book of Crichton’s are pretty basic things: they are the plot and the dialogue. The plot is fractured in the currently fashionable form of several plot lines, chapters that are shorter than commercial breaks, and a whipcord, lurching kind of progression. The plot is inhabited with both a metaphorical and literal menagerie: we get the transgenic talking parrot and his “parents” (owners) who are in the process of divorcing; we get the “ripped-from-the-headlines” story of the cancer survivor sueing the university over the revenue from his gene line and their resulting legal battles; we get the transgenic talking chimpanzee and his abduction by a well-meaning scientist; we get the hapless ambition of the research assistant doing some off-the-record public research using friends and family as human lab rats; and we get the swearing gorilla in Africa and his potential abduction for profit by, well, evil profiteers.

The connecting theme between the divorcing couple, the chimpanzee kidnapping scientist, and the profiteering poacher/gorilla hunter is transgenic animals, viz., the chimp, the gorilla, and the parrot. This is balanced by the research/profiteers, viz., the cancer survivor suing a corporation trying to profit from gene therapy and the research assistant testing his gene therapy on the non-random sample of his family and friends. So, the recurring theme is: genes.

We take these shattered fragments that share nothing in common save a passing resemblance in genetics (in much the same way that the hippopotamus and the whale are similar in that they share common evolutionary ancestry), and try to put them in order of a plot. This plot lurches forward like the ADD college kid overdosing on methamphetamines. We get the idiotically (and insulting) chapters, oftentimes number in one or two pages that take Lara Croft style leaps in place and character. We don’t get to know the characters, we don’t know why we should care about any of these plot points (and having finished the novel, we’re still not sure), and if we wanted this kind of lurching, infantile sort of story we’d watch TV.

The problem is this: we’re talking about genes, we have mutant/transgenic animals and litigation (plus some illegal activity) over gene therapy but we have nothing that has anything to do with why we should take this seriously in the real world. We don’t know why we should care about the animals. We don’t know why we should care about the legal battles beyond some esoteric legal arguments. We get nothing regarding the ethics of genetic research, the demographic ramifications of radical longevity, no thought from anyone about how to change the world (no one thinks about anything beyond their wallet and their home)… in short, there is not the tiniest hint of a grand idea in the entire book. This is a subject that absolutely demands grand ideas and there is no pretense of one. Imagine plucking a ripe apple from a tree, taking a deep bite, and having vile, pustulous mass of fetid grubs squirt all over the inside of your mouth; you were expecting delicious apple, got vile grubs. The experience of eating the apple was far, far worse than having no apple at all. You are now poisoned against all apples just as we are poisoned from other Crichton books.

Examining this scraped residue of a plot we find something that, under examination, becomes absolutely laughable. The talking parrot is the smartest character in the book—at least he behaves the most rationally. We’re supposed to muster up some sympathy for the talking chimp when all we could think of was how stupid the researcher was for kidnapping him, how absurd it is to try to pass him off as a human child with a disease, and how foolish the “mom” was behaving. The miracle spray that cures addicts is supposed to fill us with hope for the future potential of gene therapy but all we can think of is the reckless disregard of the researcher. How does crap like this even get published? None of it is compelling… none of it is even mildly interesting. More importantly, the coincidence that brings these disparate plot points together is without any kind of relevance whatsoever. It just happens to turn out that the cancer survivor’s lawyer is good friends with the chimps adopted mother… and so the plots are tied together: just like that. Then, the climax of these two unimportant events take place in the spa where the talking parrot takes refuge: just like that. It’s like they all won the Crichton geographic lottery and ended up in the same place to end the book. (We still don’t know what ultimately happened to the swearing gorilla.) Really, when you get down to it, there is no plot.

Onward from plot to characters: the characters suffer miserably from stultifying dialogue and stereotyping. Each character is cliché to the hilt with every kind of wooden sort of tired line that crops up in every freshman writing class at every university across the country. Want proof? Open the book at random. We challenge you to find an original piece of dialogue on any page. We did this experiment for this review and landed on a (relatively epic-length) five page chapter (albeit with four section breaks) that portrays a brother confronting his younger sister about attending their father’s funeral and we get this sparkling repartee:

“Why should I go? He wasn’t my father…. You don’t think so, either.

“Yeah, I do.”

“You just say whatever Mom wants you to say.”

That’s just beautiful. “You just say what Mom wants you to say.” Maybe it’s unfair yanking out this one piece of text out of the book and calling it staid, boring, and tired. But you know, that sort of crappy dialogue is everywhere in the book. Everywhere! Open up a Neal Stephenson novel or a Gene Wolfe novel—a VanderMeer or Miéville work—and you don’t find this kind of boring, dusty, trite stuff. The prolific Stephen King is at least able to create characters out of archetypes that speak to us and do interesting things and speak dialogue we would attribute to them in a kind of idealized stereotype. Even in King’s lesser works, the character and/or plot is at least compelling enough to overlook otherwise pedestrian dialogue. Even if you’re going to have your characters say this kind of scorched-earth dialogue, better authors at least imbue their work with an inner dialogue that adds some depth and life to the lines. Nothing of that here… nothing.

So far, we just have a bad book… not the sort of thing that inspires us to pure hatred. But we hate this book. The part that really, truly pissed us off was how the book was presented. There is a line between fiction and non-fiction—a no-man’s land that shouldn’t be crossed. That gap is fraud. It is a place dwelled by trash like Fox’s “documentary” about the Moonshot being a Hoax or Fox’s other piece of idiocy: Alien Autopsy. It is the place where the author absconds with some facts, twists it into an entirely fictional and sensational work, and then gets all coy about whether or not it’s true. This is literary sin and Crichton commits it. If there was any doubt about Crichton wants us to treat his “fictional” work, we’re given this admonishment of his right off the top before the book even begins:

“This novel is fiction except for the parts that aren’t.”

Crichton is committing the Dan Brown atrocity of presenting a modicum of facts, twisting them, and presenting some kind of Important Work as if it had any real meaning in the world.

We are critics of speculative fiction. We live and breathe in a world where creative ideas are reified in metaphors—ideas that can be wrong, mystical, or far-fetched. But don’t give us urine and tell us it’s wine. Near-future works—as Next must be—rely on accuracy. The best at this is Michael Flynn (Firestar). Another great author at this kind of work is Kim Stanley Robinson (Forty Signs of Rain and Red Mars). Greg Bear can pull of some excellent work here as well (Darwin’s Radio). The crucial similarity in these is relevant work that uses the best stuff available and then launches us forward in some what-if scenarios. It is the paragon of the speculative fiction construct given X (where X is a single speculative element), then what happens if we Y (where Y is the outcome). X must be plausible in some sense—or at least reside in a comfortable suspension of willing disbelief—or else Y absolutely crumbles. These authors were able to do that.

But not Crichton. Michael Crichton is, instead, a slanderer. He takes real news stories, re-invents them, twists them, convolutes them, and exploits them, and then he passes it off in his book as fact. Yeah, this book is in the fiction shelves. But we get that opening line telling us that some of it isn’t fiction—that we should take it seriously. Then he gives us a big afterword which serves as his statement and opinion on the legality of patenting gene lines. He gives us a healthy bibliography of non-fiction work and articles. In between, he peppers his (idiotically and insultingly short) chapters with what appear to be re-printed news articles of reputable sources.

In short, he asks us to believe that his plot is plausible and could even be happening.

Well, we wasted several hours of our lives reading this work, so we looked up some of the references. We discovered—at virtually ever turn—real news articles as a source (inspiration?) but twisted in ways more redolent of The National Enquirer than literary work. Here are some of the highlights of what we discovered. Here is how one of his news articles reads in his book:

Humans and Chimps Interbred Until Recently

From this, researchers argue that ancestral humans continued to breed with chimps until 5.4 million years ago, when the split became permanent…. But according to Dr. David Reich of Harvard, the fact that hybridization has rarely been seen in other species “may simply be due to the fact that we have not been looking for it.”

The Harvard researchers caution that interbreeding of humans and chimpanzees is not possible in the present day. They point out that press reports of hybrid “humanzees” have invariably proven false.

Now, compare this with the real news story:

Did Ancestral Humans, Chimps Interbreed?

In addition to their implications for human evolution, Reich said the findings may cause scientists to re-examine beliefs about speciation and the role of hybridization. Current thinking is that although hybrids do occasionally occur in nature, they are sterile or less fit than the parent populations and so eventually die out. It may be the case, however, that the rare hybrid is fit enough to survive, which would make hybridization between species a creative process in evolution, rather than a negligible happenstance, as is now thought.

It may be the case, however, that the rare hybrid is fit enough to survive, which would make hybridization between species a creative process in evolution, rather than a negligible happenstance, as is now thought.

"Maybe hybrids that successfully adapt occur only once every million years," Reich said, adding that if hybridization between human and chimp ancestors did occur, "Either we're the hybrids or the chimpanzees are the hybrids, but we can't tell which.

Crichton is completely defrauding David Reich! Look at the difference in the titles: the question “did” becomes the sensationalist cry of “done!” Examine the differences in the text: the rare once-in-a-million-years evolutionary process that leaves gene traces becomes “humanzees” and implied as a common process in all animals. If we were David Reich, we would be furious… it would feel like slander. Stuff like this makes us very, very angry.

Another example is Crichton re-printing a press release from the WHO talking about how blondes were predicted to become extinct:

According to the BBC, “a study by experts in Germany suggests people with blonde hair are an endangered species and will become extinct by 2202.” Researches predicted that the last truly natural blonde would be born in Finland, a country that boasts the highest proportion of blondes. But the scientists say too few people now carry the gene for blondes to last much longer….

Not every scientist agrees with the prediction of impending extinction. But a study by the World Health Organization does indicate that natural blondes are likely to become extinct within the next two centuries.

This story is complete bullshit… but it is a kind of urban legend. Buried in the bibliography of citations and internet links, Crichton provides one to this story but the link itself indicates this story is false.

We found the real story:

Three recent unrelated cases highlight errors of judgment of the human kind. A study supposedly tagged to the World Health Organization showed that blondes would be extinct in another 200 years because of a recessive gene. The "report" was picked up by various British papers, then picked up by various U.S. outlets before someone finally called the WHO and found out the report never existed. The smoking gun was a German wire story, which was based on a magazine story quoting a WHO anthropologist no one had heard of.

Glad to see that Crichton is perpetrating a completely fraudulent story in a bestselling fictional work masquerading as containing some truth.

Not content with taking slanderous creative license with news stories, he also badly misrepresents the law—particularly of Missouri. In Next, we’re asked to believe that a twenty-eight year old woman born of a mother who inseminated herself with donated sperm, has tracked down her father, who is a reputable doctor. Then we’re given this sterling bit of dialogue when the doctor is confronted by his “daughter”:

“We were all anonymous donors. Untraceable. No one would ever know whether we had children or not. And back then, our anonymity was a given.”

“Yeah, well. Those days are over… And I want [my father] to fulfill his duties and obligations. Because of what he did to me…. The reason I’m an addict is because of your genes.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Your father was an alcoholic and you had drug troubles of your own. You carry the genes for addiction.

Yep, the daughter has tracked down the father and is trying to blackmail him for money based upon a gene that is described as causing addiction. This is absolutely absurd on its face, but when the doctor goes to his lawyer, he receives this bit of advice.

[the lawyer says]  “This happened in Missouri, and Missouri had no clear laws regarding paternity from artificial insemination back then. Cases like yours were never a problem until quite recently. But as a rule in paternity disputes, the court orders child support.”

“She’s twenty-eight.”

“Yes, and she has parents. Still, she can make an argument in court. Based on this gene thing, she can claim reckless endangerment, she can claim child abuse, and whatever else she can pull out of a hat.”

There is absolutely nothing ambivalent in any law that we can find regarding the iron-clad anonymity of donors. Instead, here is what Stanford says:

Sperm Donor Rights:
The identity of the donor shall remain anonymous.  The clients have no right to learn the identity of the donor or solicit donor identifying information from any other source.  The donor shall also be free from any responsibility to the biological offspring produced by his sperm.

What Crichton has done is taken the work of a growing movement (see this article) to identify the donors of sperm so that these children—grown to adults—can take advantage or understand their heritage for health reasons. But the notion of using that identity to coerce courts into enforcing obligatory and compensatory damages is totally preposterous. It badly misrepresents the work of these groups and also injects totally unnecessary and needless fear into the minds of people who might actually donate sperm. To people who care deeply about artificial insemination, it’s the equivalent of spuriously yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre.

But there is one moment in the book of such incalculable and breathtaking idiocy—implausibility so audacious and so beyond the pale of anything that might actually happen that it belongs in the comedic work of Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)—that it’s stupidity outshines the rest like the sun blinds us to the twinkling stars at high noon. The crux of the entire novel rests upon the notion that Frank Barnet’s (the aforementioned cancer survivor and litigant) genes carry cancer-curing elements and that a pharmaceutical research company has patented these genes and wants to market them for profit. Barnet sues claiming some residual ownership of these profits. So far, we’re right out of reality. Crichton has the impertinence to actually cite the case from which he plagiarized his story line. Here’s a link to Wikipedia regarding the Moore decision, which actual case mirrors that of the fictional Barnet’s. The truly sickening part of this is how Crichton takes the actual court rulings and completely turns them on their head for the purposes of his story. Here’s his complete bullshit take on this case:

“This judge held what California judges have held for the last twenty-five years, ever since the Moore decision in 1980. Just like your case, the court found that Moore’s tissues were waste materials to which he had no right. And they haven’t revisited that question in more than two decades….” [our emphasis]

This is total crap. The decision was actually revisited several times and resulted in a storm of response from many different parties. Rebecca Skloot, New York Times Magazine wrote a lengthy article on this subject. Not only does she accurately describe the ramifications of the case, she goes on to say:

[T]he Greenbergs volunteered tissue samples and money to help a researcher find the gene for their children's rare disorder, Canavan disease. When the researcher found the gene, according to court documents, he patented it without telling them. They sued for fraudulent concealment of the patent, lack of informed consent and unjust enrichment. As in the Moore case, which set the legal precedent for the Greenberg trial, the court found no grounds for a property claim. But it did find grounds for the Greenbergs' unjust enrichment claim (because they invested "time and significant resources"). They received an undisclosed settlement, and no one involved can discuss it.

This fits very, very well with the actual Moore decision:

However, the court concluded that the research physician did have an obligation to reveal his financial interest in the materials harvested from Mr. Moore, and that Mr. Moore would be allowed to bring a claim for any injury that he sustained as a result of the physician's failure to disclose those circumstances.

While there are no property rights there are compensatory rights and disclosure rights—which, even though decried by many, at least has some rational basis in legal fact. This is a fact that Crichton conveniently and completely ignores. That’s not even the worst… this is just another example of Crichton taking real facts and “adjusting” them to fit his sensationalist book. Here—here at long last!—is the completely stupid part that makes us fall over in laughter. As the Barnet’s are discussing the case, we are given this little bit of legal wisdom:

“Should the Supreme Court rule that your father’s cells are his [not the company’s] property—which we think unlikely—the state will take ownership of his property by eminent domain.”

Are you kidding? Nope. This wasn’t a misprint, because later on we get these legal instructions to the book’s villain:

“Three courts have ruled that Burnet’s cells are your [the company’s] property. You therefore have a right to take them.”

“You mean, take them again.”

“Correct.”

“Except the guy has gone into hiding.”

“That is inconvenient. But it does not change the material facts of the situation. You are the owner of the Burnet cell line,” Rodriguez said. “Wherever those cells may occur.”

“Meaning…”

“His children. His grandchildren. They probably have the same cells.”

“You mean, I can take cells from the kids?”

“The cells are your property,” Rodriguez said.

“What if the kids don’t agree to let me take them?”

“They may very well not agree. But since the cells are your property, the children don’t have any say in the matter.”

So it becomes clear (and the central conflict of the story) that the villain is within his legal right to kidnap children, perform procedures on them (biopsies no less), all against their will. Obviously, this is totally contrary to the actual Moore decision and all the legal decisions thereafter, which stipulated that ownership only regarded donated cells. Not content with one random lawyer postulating this position, this piece of idiocy is something actually taken seriously in Next by a California judge in the book’s dénouement. It seems Crichton is trying to make some reduction ad absurdum point about patenting gene lines but this, this is so absurd. It’s hard to even talk about. It certainly can’t be taken seriously.

Enough? Convinced? This book has precisely the same credibility (and literary talent) of any tabloid rag that you see at the convenient store… that’s what you’re buying with Next.

Place in the Genre                                               

This is a book that is harmful at every level. It cheapens speculative fiction as a genre, it allows people to treat serious subjects with flippant disregard (among the educated), and perpetrates total ignorance and foolishness (among the uneducated) who are prone to believe this stuff. Crichton’s book has all the credibility—but only half the readability—of The National Enquirer or some other offering of the yellow press. The book itself—in regards to plot, execution, character, and editing—all absolutely stink. It’s an embarrassment that this thing is on the bestseller list and it makes us sick to see it crowding the shelves in so many department stores. Crichton is a well-published and prolific author and this is our first foray into his corpus. It will absolutely be our last. We’re against burning books as an act of censorship… but publications like this make us want to burn books in the same fashion that one burns household trash to be rid of it.

Who Should Read and Who Should Avoid           

People who are curious about Michael Crichton should steer away with all speed. This book is a crime. People who want to investigate this kind of stuff in fiction would do far, far better with Greg Bear or even pick up an old copy of The Island of Doctor Moreau. Fans of Michael Crichton will probably pick it up and read it. We’re uncertain why Crichton has fans based upon this book… but if you are one, and are going to read this book, not only do we enjoin you to regard this as complete fiction but you should purge any notion of real-world relevance from your memory. Because he so insidiously twists and convolutes real stories, reading this book puts you at real peril in misremembering actual fact and confusing it with Crichton’s total made-up crap. This might make you look foolish when speaking on these subjects later. If you are picking up Crichton for the first time and are committed to doing so, then at all cost pick a different book.

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