Crichton

Did I say I love Crichton? Well, I take my word back. I don't love him. Nor do I ever intend to love. Well, if you write a book like Next full of Moral preaching. Don't do this, if you do this, this will happen, you should not write fiction. Chricton has done a good job of taking news articles and working a story around it but there seems to be many loose ends or did I miss something. So who was the guy in the first few pages stealing embryos for? Crichton in this book talks about the perils of patenting genes and how genetic research have gone out of academics to Pharmacetical companies who want to cash in on their research. Chrichton also talks about how academic research is closely realted to pharmacetical companies and how they frequently publish new articles on insignificant misleading ideas to get mileage and how media plays a great role in this charade. While an interesting read on these areas the novel was somehow unsatisfactory. If it was just a story without such moral preaching and if the morality and thinking about these issues had left to the reader the book would be definetly a great read. But yes it wasn't bad.

Next by Crichton

I love Crichton. "This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't" A nice disclaimer. You hardly know what is fact and what is fiction. Crichton uses his unique style of using facts to generate ficition. The novel is about genetics and raises as usual many many questions. Crichton has used many articles and news items to keep the story forward. Some of these news appear real. I will have to check if they have actually appeared in a paper or whatever journal. But most of it look like news you have heard somewhere. This book is all about genetic enginnering, talking apes, genetic cures, academic research, gene patenenting and ofcourse the ethics. I have not finished it and would post on it as soon as i finish.