Pass on Michael Crichton's Next

Author Michael Crichton likes to research various topics and then present his findings in the form of a story. For example, Rising Sun was a murder mystery filled with information about the business practices Japanese automotive companies. His latest novel, Next, is about genetics. Crichton previously tackled the subject of genetics in Jurassic Park, but this story is more focused on government regulation and big business.

I’ve liked every book I’ve read by Michael Crichton. Even when his stories read too much like he adapted them from a screenplay, I think he still does a great job of building tension and describing action, plus his characters are easy to like. This book is unlike any of his previous novels in that it has very little action and reads more like a futuristic John Grisham story. It’s hard to believe that this is from the same guy who wrote a story about an amusement park filled with live dinosaurs that go wild.

This novel is set in the very near future and offers a chilling outlook on the future of genetics. It begins with a trial where a man files a major lawsuit after research companies profit many billions of dollars from selling his cells. The man loses the trial, and as a result it is determined that his cells are now owned by a research corporation. Later on, goons from this corporation try to kidnap his wife and son in order to extract tissue samples from them. After all, the son has his father’s cells.

There are also two subplots involving transgenic animals who are the result of mixing human genetic information with that of an animal. The result is a monkey boy named Dave and a talking parrot named Gerard. Dave is rescued by a worker after the company decides to terminate him, but he has a lot of trouble fitting in with other kids at his school. Gerard is mostly there for comic relief in how he speaks mostly using quotes from movies, but at least he knows when to use the right quotes to get out of a bad situation.

In yet another subplot, a pedophile works with a lawyer to build a genetic defense against his sexual deviancy by explaining that he has a genetic predisposition to risk taking. This pedophile is also related to a big wig with one of the research companies, and he ties into another subplot with a different character. In the end, the main story is about the trial and how the man tries to escape from being owned by the company. All the other subplots are tied together by many common threads.

From my description, I hope you can see the big problem with this book - It has more subplots than a daytime soap opera. This very long book should have been trimmed down to keep a much tighter story, especially since the subject matter was so interesting. I found the characters of Dave and Gerard to be lacking and quickly grew tired of them. Like many stories where you have a huge cast of characters and too many plot lines, it is hard to get a feel for any of the characters. In other words, I got to the point where I did not care what happened to them.

Despite some flaws in the storytelling, I think this book makes a strong case for caution in regard to genetics. It clearly points out the mistake of letting companies patent genetic information because the result could stifle drug research as well as tie up the courts with silly patent infringement and licensing lawsuits. I happen to share the same general opinion with Crichton that medicine has become too much of a big business to be helpful to people. I’m disturbed by all these commercials we see during primetime for various mystery drugs with their vague symptoms and side effects. Crichton also shows his concern for how major universities are now too focused on maximizing profits when they used to be non-profit.

I won’t say that I didn’t like Next, but I found it to be more interesting than entertaining. I still wouldn’t recommend it to someone unless they were a die-hard Michael Crichton fan. In short, I thought this book was too long and had too many subplots and characters. I think Crichton could have come up with something much more interesting given the wide open scope of the subject matter. I don’t think this would make a good movie, either.