Ellis Orozco
Book Report/ Novel Summary
Crichton, Michael. Prey. New York. HarperCollins Publishers. 2002

Reason, type and setting: This book was recommended for me to read by my super mother. This book could be classified as a horror kind of a technological book. This book takes place in today’s modern world in California.

Plot: This book is about a computer programmer named Jack who gets fired from his job and turns into a stay at home father. He is having marital problems; he thinks his wife is having an affair at work due to the fact that she stays at work for long hours. Later he finds out that although she was having an affair it was much more than that. While she was at her work (a nanotechnology lab) she was trying to create a new way for the pentagon to take photos and spy on their enemies by means of nano-cameras that have just enough memory to hold the images. Unfortunately, something went horribly wrong while creating a batch of them and they escaped into the desert (the cameras) and developed a way to learn and evolve which made hard incredibly when it came to trying to “kill” them. The developed a way to kill and “eat” animals and humans. That is when Jack gets rehired to try to stop this killer swarm of nano-cameras. The rest of the book is filled with near death experiences for Jack as he tries to figure this swarm out and stop them. He ends up losing three of his friends and his wife due to the swarm taking over their bodies but, eventually, he kills the swarm.

Character; Jack Forman is a curious and caring father of two children (and wife). Jack is a very inspirational and daring person throughout the novel. When he was faced with death (which happened a lot) he completely ignored it and did the right thing by continuing on to try and stop a swarm that had the potential to kill populations of people. In the end, Jack ended up being more skeptical about advances in technology because there was no telling what we could end up. He was afraid of another thing closely resembling the swarm being created again.

Evaluation: This novel was incredibly interesting and scary. It has made me incredibly paranoid. Whenever I hear about new advances in technology I am always afraid that something like the swarm will happen. I know it’s silly but this book was incredibly insightful, interesting and scary all at the same time. If I were put in Jack’s place I probably wouldn’t have done half of the things he did. He had some serious guts and talent to do what he did.

Author, Context and trivia: This author has also written many other books namely; Rising Sun, Jurassic Park, Congo and The Andromeda Strain. I don’t really know much about the author just that he is an incredible writer. I have never read any books like this one but I would definitely like to read more like it.