NPR
November 16, 2011
By, Alan Cheuse
It’s both a sad and celebratory moment when, if you’re as devoted a fan as I am of the novels of Michael Crichton, you pick up Micro. Three years ago this month, Crichton, the 6-foot-9-inch genius M.D. who never practiced medicine but instead went into the novel-writing and movie- and TV show-making business, died from cancer at the age of 66. He left behind an unfinished techno-thriller, which the superb science writer Richard Preston took on the job of completing. The book will be appearing in stores within just a few days, an event which other Crichton admirers should look forward to with great anticipation.
They won’t be disappointed.
Crichton set Micro on the island of Oahu, where a money- and power-mad science entrepreneur named Vin Drake has established a nanotechnology firm (nanotechnology being that branch of technology that manipulates microscopic molecules to construct tiny machines). A team of diverse and gifted young science graduate students from Boston travels to Hawaii to work for Drake’s company and almost immediately on arrival gets caught up in a plot that involves deception, murder, mad science and corporate greed. And as a result of an extraordinary nanotech invention that Drake turns against them, the young scientists get shrunk to a size smaller than ants. In this reduced state, off they go on the lam into the island, as the sociopathic Drake tries to find them and stamp them out.
