Prey
A Novel
By Michael Crichton  

    Jack Forman is a specialist in programming computers to solve problems by mimicking the behavior of swarming bees or hunting hyena packs. He's currently unemployed, but enjoying his role as "Mr. Mom." Then his wife, who has been working long hours at a top-secret research lab, begins acting strangely. Jack is pretty sure that she's having an affair.

      When he has the opportunity to help out with some recently developed problems at the Xymos lab where his wife works, it seems like the answer to finding out what she's really up to. Jack discovers his that his wife has been involved in creating self-replicating microscopic machines. Originally, these tiny machines were meant to serve as a military eye in the sky, by means of a camera made up these nanotechnology particles in swarm formation. But the swarm has now escaped into the environment and seems to have developed the ability to think. The tiny, microscopic machines, moving in formation, are intent on killing the scientists trapped in the facility.

      How can you protect yourself against something that is not actually alive, but a machine that you can't see? Crichton's imagination-stretching boogers may be tiny in Prey, but they're no less frightening than the Jurassic Park monsters. His skill in building suspense into the plot is legendary, and he certainly takes you on a wild ride in this book that I lost a night's sleep to finish. I wasn't disappointed. Crichton just gets better.

     I may have learned more about the science of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence than I really wanted to know, but the explanations were necessary to make the story credible and the potential development of such scientific marvels in today's real world are nearly as frightening as Crichton's cautionary novel.