Micro

November 21, 2011
Does this sound at all familiar? A greedy capitalist exploits a technological breakthrough that could benefit humanity. His effort to show off his work to visitors on an island ends up with them fighting for their lives against savage creatures. Preston (The Hot Zone) has completed a partial manuscript by bestseller Crichton (1942â2008) that will remind many readers of Jurassic Park, though the action takes place on a rather different scale, as the title suggests. Peter Jansen, a 23-year-old Cambridge, Mass., grad student, and his colleagues accept an invitation from his older brother, Eric, and Ericâs boss to join NaniGen MicroTechnologies, a Hawaii-based concern with âtools that will define the limits of discovery for the first half of the twenty-first century.â Via a scientific innovation that comes across as less plausible than recovering dinosaur DNA, NaniGen can miniaturize people. Inevitably, Peter and his companions are shrunk to a size that makes them vulnerable to lower life forms. Most of the book relates their struggle for survival, including the requisite gory deaths of some members of the party. Crichton fans will miss any sense of a larger scientific moral in what amounts to a high-tech 21st-century version of The Incredible Shrinking Man. Agent: Lynn Nesbit.

February 27, 2012
Unfinished at the time of his death and later completed by Preston, Crichton’s last book receives serviceable narration from John Bedford Lloyd. Hawaii-based microtechnology company Nanigen has developed the ability to shrink objects—and people—and the megalomaniac head of the company, Vin Drake, sees the potential to make billions of dollars. But when one of Drake’s executives, Eric Jansen, threatens his boss’s plans, he suddenly goes missing and is presumed dead. When Eric’s brother, Peter, arrives—along with six fellow graduate students—and begins to ask questions, Drake shrinks them and leaves them to die in the Hawaiian rain forest. What follows is a nonstop fight for survival in the micro-world, where insects are as big as cars, bats the size of airplanes, and everything is hungry. Lloyd’s performance is uneven but enjoyable. With his deep, well-modulated voice, he certainly narrates clearly and with good vocal intonation. But at times, he sounds unprepared and his performance flat. A HarperLuxe paperback.