The Spark of American Culture: Review of Next, by Michael Crichton

As you all might have known, a good chunk of time ago (see the first post about it published Sunday, July 19, 2009) I obtained an audio-book of the Michael Crichton’s futuristic Sci–Fi Next. I finished it somewhere around mid-December. Here’s the review which I so duly owe:

Starting off from the beginning—the very first words the narrator (remember, it’s an audio-book; I can’t tell where things are positioned—only what comes before the next [as a side note, some of the chapters were damaged, too, so I couldn’t listen to them]) heard as follows:

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

The dryness, the simplicity, and the truth of this line—the realness, in other words—is the best way to summarize the entire mood of this novel.

Plot wise….

In this novel, gene-research company BioGen is involved in a variety of law suits—and its employees are extremely shady people. Like I said before, there are a number of minor plot threads in this novel—and most of them are here, within the company and the employees. (But these are so minor I’m not going to dive into them.)

The three biggest plot lines, however, aren’t within the company of BioGen.

First off, Henry Kendall realizes that his other company’s research with genes has produced a transgenic chimpanzee—with his own genes. Such transgenic experiments are outlawed, and, the talking chimp, named Dave, must be killed. However, Henry steals Dave away, and his wife, Lynn reluctantly allows him to stay. Their son, Jamie, becomes attached to Dave, even though Dave’s primal, animalistic instincts make the chimp hard to keep secret.

The second thread is the tale of fleeing Alex Brunet. Her husband’s (Frank’s) cells have been bought by BioGen—and they need more. Frank is gone. The company hires bounty hunters to find Alex’s son, Jamie (yes, there are two Jamie’s), but Alex is aware of their plan and runs away with her own son Jamie. Alex flees along to her long-time friend named….Lynn Kendall.

Yes. The two Jamie’s are now united—and most of the plot threads tie together.

Dave, Jamie, and Jamie all make friends quickly. So when the bounty hunters come, Dave (the violent chimp) tries to defend the kids from the bounty hunters (he bites off an ear!). However, the bounty hunters grab the wrong Jamie—they grab the Kendall Jamie instead of the Brunet Jamie.

Meanwhile, Alex and the Kendalls manage to track down the bounty hunters within a couple minutes. They find that the bounty hunters have taken refuge into a health clinic at a resort, where they plan to extract the cells from the boy. With the help of a genetically engineered parrot named Gerard and Alex’s gunmanship, they are able to recover the kidnapped boy.

Now, here’s what I think about the book:

The Good: The plot is excellent. The characters are well developed. Everything about this (expect what is below) is very, very nicely done.

The Bad: Goodness, all the swear words! Really! Throughout the novel, there are tons and tons of cuss words, both in narration, and many spoken. While they give credibility, I really think they weren’t needed.

The Ugly: The plot threads, in my opinion, are the worst part of this entire novel. They’re usually scattered (Plot Thread A, Plot B, Plot C, Plot D, Plot A, Plot D, Plot C, Plot A, Plot B) so you forget what’s happening and you lose track of the characters. Goodness, it gets a little annoying.

So all in all, this novel’s not that bad…One of the better ones I have read in a while by a contemporary writer…

Though not extraordinary, Next is at least, a tiny spark of what we used to call American culture.

Oranges

Today, I got an orange-- you know, because oranges have vitamin C, and since my throat feels like crud and I'm sick, I could use some vitamin C (in addition to the V-C pills I took this morning).

So this orange is huge-- way bigger than the size of my fist...It's like the size of two and a half fists (by my standards, 2 fists-- but I have big hands). So this huge this is barely sitting in the palm of my hand, and I get out my little pocket knife to peel away the orangey stuff. (It seems redundant to say that I peeled away the peel.)

Peeling, peeling, peeling-- it seems that I've been whittling away at this thing for at least 5 minutes now, and then...

I cut myself.

The knife hits my skin and it hurts-- but there's no blood drawn, and it didn't actually break the skin (so technically I didn't cut myself). I thought how cruddy it would be to get the citric acid into my blood-- that would hurt a bundle.

So now I'm done peeling the entire white pith away (of which there's at least a good pound or two). I split open the orange (you know, into sections) when some of the juice gets into my eye.

As a result, now my right eye hurts like crazy.

AND the keyboard and mouse and desk are all sticky.

But it was a good orange (and now my trash can is full).

Oh well. Hope I get better.

10 Reasons to be Happy

1. Nice weather (Rain and Sun, can't get much better than that)
2. Migraine went away
3. It's MLK Day!
4. Craisins :)
5. Helping Haiti
6. Warm Socks
7. Time to blog
8. Cookies
9. Good sleep
10. Jesus

Dream Journal (for the night of Monday, Jan 11)

Here's my dream I had last night/this morning:

I was in the back of a cart (a horse-drawn cart type thing, only I don't think there were horses). It's day time. There are three other people in the car- two girls (one tall and blond), and another white-faced Joker-type person (who is laugh-y, but not evil). I let him see my smiley-face pen. He plays with it and twists and untwists the springs and whatever. Somehow, he produces a wax type substance. We play with this, making it into different shapes. I make a dinosaur type shape when it's my turn-- a T-Rex.

Then suddenly, the Joker-guy goes on to talk about combining powers with another and making a new creature or whatever.

Here's a break in the dream.

I somehow find myself at a home (uptown, like on a hill). It's dark out, and looking out to the city, I can see that part of it's on fire, like a monster has been ravaging through it or something. I'm also, for whatever reason, in charge of a big (30ft high?) blue blobby type creature with legs and arms and hands, but no fingers. Out of his hands shoot a low-pressure beam of water (about the equivalent of a garden hose). Together, this blob and I, we walk down to help combat whatever monster is attacking the city. But, as we're walking down the hill (I'm riding on the blue blob), a green-clothed flying with a glider type guy who uses sonar to get around keeps trying to attack us by sweeping at us from the air. And so we try to hide in the shadows and creep around and to knock the guy out of the air with our garden-hose abilities.

No wait! It gets even weirder:

We stop at a bathroom. No, not to go to the bathroom-- to put on sunscreen.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I had-- in my dream-- heard my mother's voice telling me to put on sunscreen, and I stopped in the middle of a battle to put on sunscreen.

So I stop, I put on this sunscreen, and then the evil woman who's terrorizing the town comes! And so we're having this battle and I'm losing and then suddenly she has to go to the bathroom and change. So she goes in and she changes and comes out. (This is when I first realize that it's light outside.) And so I take a picture of the girl with my phone so that I can go report her to the authorities or whatever later. Then I quickly walk away. (The green-guy is nowhere to be found.)

I walk over to the dock (because I'm near an ocean or something), and some 16 year old looking guy is following me. Two Storm Troopers (yes, from Star Wars) are posing for pictures with people on the dock and are charging them. I realize that the guy following me was my cousin (I don't have a cousin that looks like that...). I ask him how old he is, and he says 23. "23!" I explode. I think of how to ask the next question- if he had gone to college or if he had dropped out-- and I wake up.

So that's my dream for last night.