Overwhelming Cynicism Almost Ruins A Fun Story

"Next" is the first Michael Crichton book I have read since Timeline at Christmas 2000, and the fifth overall (when I was eight years old, "Andromeda Strain" became the first novel I ever read). "Next" shares several other things with "Timeline." Like nearly all of Crichton's writing they are both science fiction. They were both gifts from my father (who actually discovered Crichton rather later than I did). They both contain what I referred to in my review of "Timeline" as the "standard villainous corporate head," a character type also found in "Jurassic Park" but curiously absent from such early Crichton as "Andromeda Strain" or "Sphere," books about academics pressed into government service during an emergency the government ultimately succeeds in keeping secret.

"Sphere" is probably actually the best book I have read by Crichton in that 1) Crichton concealed what the characters were really up against until the last act, and 2) the academics actually manage to keep the real nature of the emergency secret from the government, too, by in effect erasing their own memories. "Next" is nowhere near so original. In what has since "Jurassic Park" become formula for Crichton, "Next" ends with an audience pleaser as the SVCH gets his comeuppance as a result of forces he helped create and thought he could control.

There are actually two candidates for the role of SVCH in "Next:" Jack Watson, a venture capitalist who has become a billionaire as a result of knowing which biotech companies to back, and Rick Diehl, a sort of baby brother to Watson who runs a company called BioGen. Diehl, however, is ultimately more pathetic that villainous. After his wife cheats on him, he files for divorce and tries to force a genetic test to determine if she carries the Huntington's gene which runs in her family and would probably doom her chances of getting custody of their kids if the court were informed. As recently as a few years ago, her lawyer might theoretically have succeeded in getting this evidence ruled irrelevant, but that is a major subtext of "Next" -- courts in the 21st century will find it increasingly difficult to pretend that genetics are not destiny.

Notwithstanding their spiritual kinship, Watson screws Diehl royally by manipulating Diehl's security chief, a thoroughly unsympathetic pre-pedophile by the name of Brad Gordon (who also happens to be Watson's nephew), into sabotaging BioGen's flagship product, a cell line extracted by fraud from a construction worker named Frank Burnett. He is already masterfully manipulating Diehl, for example into hiring a new security consulting company whom his own associates then impersonate, and Burnett himself, whom he persuades to flee to see if he can get the court system to set the most dangerous precedent since Roe v. Wade.

Most of the other human characters are only slightly more sympathetic than Diehl. With the exception of Burnett's daughter Alex, an attorney who discovers that more than legal skills are necessary to protect her genetic patrimony, and scientist Henry Kendall, who has taken his genetic patrimony literally where no man has gone before, all the 15 or so human characters important enough for part of the story to be told from their viewpoint are motivated exclusively by some combination of sex and money.

While these have been humans' primary motivations at least since the first time the average farmer had a surplus to sell, Crichton is certainly correct in observing that society has become infinitely more competitive just over the course of his adult life, so that the current generation has to risk not only their conscience but their health to get what most of his peers could take for granted when he was a young man. I do not think he is correct in his assumption that the vast majority of humans, even contemporary Americans, value money and sex more than they do self-respect. Perhaps a plurality (there are a few humans for whom money and sex are not even primary motivations -- I know at least four in the Central Time Zone alone).

By far the most sympathetic characters in the book are Dave and Gerard. They are both more than reasonably loyal to other characters who help them, which leads them to be fearless in battle (and yes, there is some mild violence in the book, but certainly less than in "Jurassic Park" or "Timeline"). Dave would have been a chimpanzee and Gerard an African grey parrot except that they are "transgenic," bred with some quantum of human genes. Neither of them cares about money; rather, they are content to depend upon sympathetic humans for food and shelter. Nor is either of them ever likely to find a suitable partner with whom to mate -- although Gerard is intelligent enough to understand the dynamics of sex between humans. In what is uncontestably the funniest sequence of the book, he actually serves as matchmaker for two who but for him never would have hooked up. He then goes on a road trip with the male, who throws him out of his car when he refuses to stop singing popular songs and quoting bad movies. (I strongly recommend that when this book is filmed, this part be altered so that the human can return Gerard's favor. But of course the gods of Hollywood will not listen to me -- I also suggested Steven Seagal for the lead in "Timeline.")

Through all-too-brief vignettes like a genetic test on a corpse which because it is the subject of a lawsuit ends up costing the dead man's son his health insurance, and the encounter of a successful physician with the recovering drug addict he fathered through an anonymous sperm donation in the 1970's (which leads to another lawsuit), Crichton creates an atmosphere reminiscent of Gattaca, in which there was almost no genetic spectrum between flawless and worthless. Of course, that movie was not as sophisticated as "Next." Its characters could not appeal to the legal system (which appeared to have been reduced to its criminal essence) if they got genetic results they didn't like. In contemporary America, we appeal to the legal system if we get weather we don't like. But just as in "Gattaca," the genes of the principal villain wind up betraying him in spite of an environment which has been specifically designed to enable him to thrive.

Reading that review again, I really wrestle with the last paragraph I wrote then -- but it is ultimately vindicated by "Next" (the jury is still out in reality). Crichton's sympathetic humans Alex and Henry are a little more ambitious than Vincent in "Gattaca." He only wanted to travel in space before he died. They want to see their children grow up (the motivation which underlies sex AT ITS BEST -- see updateghost's justification of his continuing virginity). But success, regardless of definition, is still determined more by psychological and moral factors than biological ones.