Next (Crichton novel)

Last updated
Next
Next book cover.png
First edition cover
Author Michael Crichton
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
Techno-thriller
Satire
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date
November 28, 2006
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Pages528 (plus author pages)
ISBN 0-06-087298-5
Preceded by State of Fear  
Followed by Pirate Latitudes  

Next is a 2006 satirical techno-thriller by American writer Michael Crichton. It was the fifteenth novel under his own name and his twenty-fifth overall, and the last to be published during his lifetime. It follows a number of characters, including transgenic animals, as they try to survive in a world dominated by genetic research, corporate greed, and legal interventions.

Contents

Plot summary

Frank Burnet has contracted an aggressive form of leukemia, and undergoes intensive treatment and four years of semiannual checkups. He later learned the checkups were a pretext for researching the genetic basis of his unusually successful response to treatment, and the physician's university had sold the rights to Frank's cells to BioGen, a biotechnology startup company. Frank sues the university for unauthorized misuse of his cells, but the trial judge rules that the cells were "waste" and that the university could dispose of them as it wished. Frank's lawyers advise that the university, as a tax-funded organization, can still claim the rights to the cells under the doctrine of eminent domain.

Venture capitalist "Jack" Watson conspires to steal or sabotage BioGen's cultures of Frank's cells. As part of his terms for financing BioGen, Watson forced the company to accept his nephew Brad Gordon as its security chief. After Brad's carelessness nearly allows one of Watson's sabotage attempts to succeed, the company takes advantage of Brad's attraction to teenage girls, and engineers his being accused and convicted of raping a minor. Watson's price for providing a defense lawyer is that Brad must contaminate BioGen's cultures. Brad's lawyer plans to claim in defense that Brad has a gene for recklessness and instructs him to engage in various high-risk activities. As a result, Brad gets into a fight with two martial arts experts and is shot by the police.

After Brad's sabotage, BioGen consults lawyers, who advise that under United States law they have the rights to all of Frank's cell line and thus the right to extract replacement cells, by force if necessary, from Frank or any of his descendants. When Frank goes on the run, BioGen hires bounty hunter Vasco Borden to obtain such cells, regardless of whether the donors consent. Vasco plans to snatch Frank's grandson Jamie from his school but is foiled by Jamie's mother Alex, whom he tries to seize instead. After escaping, Alex and Jamie also go on the run.

Henry Kendall, a researcher at another biotech company, finds that his illegal introduction of human genes into a chimpanzee years before while working at the NIH primate research facility unexpectedly produced a transgenic chimpanzee, who can talk and whose behavior is generally childlike but reverts to chimpanzee patterns under stress. The agency intends to destroy the chimp-boy, Dave, in order to cover up the unauthorized experiment, but Henry sneaks him out of the lab. Henry's wife Lynn opposes bringing Dave into their home, but their son, also named Jamie, becomes close friends with him. Lynn becomes Dave's most determined defender and, to explain Dave's odd appearance, publishes online reports of a fictitious genetic disease. She grooms him as a senior female would groom a young chimpanzee in the wild. Dave is sent to the same school as Jamie and gets into trouble after biting the leader of a gang of bullies who attack Jamie. The chimp-boy becomes increasingly isolated at school; academically, he is backward in some areas such as writing, while in sports, his classmates regard him as unfair competition.

Paris-based animal behavior researcher Gail Bond finds that her two-year-old grey parrot, Gerard, into which human genes were injected while he was a chick, has been helping her son produce near-perfect homework. While she is testing Gerard's abilities, the bird becomes bored and mimics the voices and other sounds of her husband having sex in their home with another woman. After a quarrel, Gail's husband, an investment banker, gives Gerard as a "money can't buy this" present to an influential and lecherous client. The client finds Gerard an embarrassment and passes him on to another owner, and so on. Eventually, Gerard ends up in the hands of Stan Milgram, who loses patience with Gerard's loquacity while delivering the parrot to yet another owner three days' drive away and leaves the bird by the roadside. Gerard flies off, in search of more pleasant surroundings.

After a few more narrow escapes, Alex and Jamie head for the home of Lynn, who happens to be a childhood friend. Vasco anticipates this move and tries to snatch Jamie – but abducts Lynn's son Jamie instead. Dave saves Lynn's Jamie, biting off Vasco's ear and damaging the ambulance in which Vasco planned to extract the tissue samples. However, Vasco's associate snatches Alex's son while everyone is celebrating the rescue of Lynn's. While the hunt is going on, Biogen's lawyers apply for a warrant to arrest Alex, on the grounds that she had stolen the company's property, namely her and her son's cells. She has to go straight from the fight to the courtroom, where her lawyer outplays Biogen's, and the judge adjourns to check details of the relevant laws and precedents overnight. Alex and Henry discover that Alex's son is being moved to a private clinic where the tissue samples are to be taken. As they move in to retrieve him, Gerard, now a resident of the clinic's gardens, reminds Jamie to shout for his mother, who rescues him. Vasco gives up after Dave attacks him, and Alex threatens him with a shotgun. The next day the judge rules in Alex's favor and rejects the precedents as attempts to abolish normal human feelings by decree, a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids slavery. The ruling will likely hamper research in the long run, and prevent patients from selling their tissues rather than donating them for research.

Gerard is welcomed into Lynn's home. After he mimics telephone dial tones Lynn contacts Gail, and he is reunited with her. Press commentators praise the household as a trend-setting inter-species transgenic family, and Henry is honored by some scientific organizations.

In other plot threads:

The book also features news reports, many about the genetics of blondes and of Neanderthals. These two themes combine into reports that Neanderthals were the first blondes, were more intelligent than Cro-Magnon humans and interbred with Cro-Magnons out of pity, and that "cavemen preferred blondes". At one point three successive reports feature a scientist's press release that Neanderthals had a gene that made them both behaviorally conservative and ecologically conservationist, an environmentalist's interpretation of that press release that modern humans need to learn from the Neanderthals lest they too become extinct, and a business columnist's interpretation that over-caution caused the Neanderthals' extinction.

Reception

Book reviews

The review aggregator web site Metacritic gives Next a score of 48%, meaning "mixed or average reviews". [1] USA Today said Crichton was "in top form". [2] The Independent said that "Next is middling Crichton, perhaps because it lacks the simple suspense situation around which most of his books are constructed." [3] The London Review of Books called it "an unintentionally hilarious emulsion of bombast and bathos", [4] The Washington Post described it as "part lecture, part satire and mostly freak show", [5] and Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times ′s Sunday Book Review called it "a barrage of truths, half-truths and untruths". [6]

Award-winning science journalist Matt Ridley, writing in The Wall Street Journal , often could not spot the boundary between fact and fiction in the scientific aspects, although he found the almost immediate effects of the "maturity" gene implausible. He also thought that Crichton's "uncanny prescience in choosing subjects where fact will soon catch up with his fiction" was on target again, as the early hype over biotechnology has subsided and recent advances offer credible benefits. [7]

In The Sunday Times Joby Williams called the book "more a satiric polemic than the thriller we have come to expect from Crichton", and notes that there is no central character and the story is told as a collection of distinct episodes. [8] Ridley described the plot as "a collection of short horror stories from the biotechnology industry," [7] and The Independent ′s view was similar. [3] The Washington Post and The A.V. Club concluded that Crichton tried to cram too much into the book and would have preferred a storyline that focussed on Dave the chimp-boy and Gerard the talkative parrot. [5] [9] Entertainment Weekly complained that it was hard to track over 30 named characters through intersecting sub-plots. [10] However USA Today ′s reviewer liked the story's brisk pace and thought the interleaved plot threads came together well at the end. [2]

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Karen Carlin enjoyed the novel highly and said "You realize what he's fictionalizing could be happening now, not 'Next.' And that's what makes it all so terrifying." [11]

Opinions about the characters ranged from "dislikable and indistinguishable" [4] to "deliciously vivid". [7] The Onion A.V. Club thought the characters were barely developed enough to support the dialog and plot, [9] and Ridley commented that in real life "most biotech executives are stressed and insecure people with mortgages" rather than sybaritic super-villains. [7] However reviewers liked Gerard and Dave. [12] [5]

Some reviewers welcomed the injection of humor into the book, [2] [3] noting the parodies of stereotypes, [12] [7] and Ridley regarded much of the story as a farce. [7] However others thought most of the humor was unintentional. [4] [10]

The novel has also attracted (mostly negative) commentary from legal reviewers. [13]

Sales

Next placed fourth in Publishers Weekly 's hardback fiction bestseller list for the year 2006, [14] and in December 2007 it reached third place in Publishers Weekly's weekly paperback fiction bestseller list. [15] In mid-December 2006 Next reached ninth place in a United Kingdom hardback fiction bestseller list. [16]

Political impact

The biotechnology industry magazine Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News complained about the array of stereotyped corporate villains, and described Crichton's arguments against gene patents and commercial ownership of genes as "the usual suspects". Although it hoped poor reviews would reduce the book's impact, it noted that two Congressmen introduced a bill to ban future gene patents and abolish existing ones. [17] Writers on technology-related law suggested Next and Crichton's opinion article in The New York Times may have been partly responsible for this bill. [18] [19] Public interest in gene patents had previously been declining, and gene-only patent applications were becoming less frequent as the industry realized how much work is needed to turn a gene into a salable product. [20]

Character name controversy

Michael Crowley of The New Republic alleged that, in retaliation for his having written a negative review of Crichton's previous novel State of Fear , Crichton named a character with a small penis who rapes a baby after him. From page 227: "Alex Burnet was in the middle of the most difficult trial of her career, a rape case involving the sexual assault of a two-year-old boy in Malibu. The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers." Both the real and the fictional Crowley are Washington-based political columnists who had graduated from Yale. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cloning</span> Process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes

Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction; this reproduction of an organism by itself without a mate is known as parthenogenesis. In the field of biotechnology, cloning is the process of creating cloned organisms of cells and of DNA fragments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genetic engineering</span> Manipulation of an organisms genome

Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation, is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms.

Genentech, Inc. is an American biotechnology corporation headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It became an independent subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within Roche. Historically, the company is regarded as the world's first biotechnology company.

As with all utility patents in the United States, a biological patent provides the patent holder with the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the claimed invention or discovery in biology for a limited period of time - for patents filed after 1998, 20 years from the filing date.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recombinant DNA</span> DNA molecules formed by human agency at a molecular level generating novel DNA sequences

Recombinant DNA (rDNA) molecules are DNA molecules formed by laboratory methods of genetic recombination that bring together genetic material from multiple sources, creating sequences that would not otherwise be found in the genome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Norman Cohen</span> American geneticist (born 1935)

Stanley Norman Cohen is an American geneticist and the Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in the Stanford University School of Medicine. Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to transplant genes from one living organism to another, a fundamental discovery for genetical engineering. Thousands of products have been developed on the basis of their work, including human growth hormone and hepatitis B vaccine. According to immunologist Hugh McDevitt, "Cohen's DNA cloning technology has helped biologists in virtually every field". Without it, "the face of biomedicine and biotechnology would look totally different." Boyer cofounded Genentech in 1976 based on their work together, but Cohen was a consultant for Cetus Corporation and declined to join. In 2022, Cohen was found guilty of having committed fraud in misleading investors into a biotechnology company he founded in 2016, and paid $29 million in damages.

Pharming, a portmanteau of farming and pharmaceutical, refers to the use of genetic engineering to insert genes that code for useful pharmaceuticals into host animals or plants that would otherwise not express those genes, thus creating a genetically modified organism (GMO). Pharming is also known as molecular farming, molecular pharming, or biopharming.

<i>Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser</i> Supreme Court of Canada decision

Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser [2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada case on patent rights for biotechnology, between a Canadian canola farmer, Percy Schmeiser, and the agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto. The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did. The Supreme Court also ruled 9-0 that Schmeiser did not have to pay Monsanto their technology use fee, damages or costs, as Schmeiser did not receive any benefit from the technology. The case drew worldwide attention and is widely misunderstood to concern what happens when farmers' fields are accidentally contaminated with patented seed. However, by the time the case went to trial, all claims of accidental contamination had been dropped; the court only considered the GM canola in Schmeiser's fields, which Schmeiser had intentionally concentrated and planted. Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination.

A biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. Different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, they include vaccines, whole blood, blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapies, tissues, recombinant therapeutic protein, and living medicines used in cell therapy. Biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, nucleic acids, or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living cells or tissues. They are isolated from living sources—human, animal, plant, fungal, or microbial. They can be used in both human and animal medicine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genetic use restriction technology</span> Methods for controlling the use of GMOs

Genetic use restriction technology (GURT), also known as terminator technology or suicide seeds, is designed to restrict access to "genetic materials and their associated phenotypic traits." The technology works by activating specific genes using a controlled stimulus in order to cause second generation seeds to be either infertile or to not have one or more of the desired traits of the first generation plant. GURTs can be used by agricultural firms to enhance protection of their innovations in genetically modified organisms by making it impossible for farmers to reproduce the desired traits on their own. Another possible use is to prevent the escape of genes from genetically modified organisms into the surrounding environment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of biotechnology</span>

Biotechnology is the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents to provide goods and services. From its inception, biotechnology has maintained a close relationship with society. Although now most often associated with the development of drugs, historically biotechnology has been principally associated with food, addressing such issues as malnutrition and famine. The history of biotechnology begins with zymotechnology, which commenced with a focus on brewing techniques for beer. By World War I, however, zymotechnology would expand to tackle larger industrial issues, and the potential of industrial fermentation gave rise to biotechnology. However, both the single-cell protein and gasohol projects failed to progress due to varying issues including public resistance, a changing economic scene, and shifts in political power.

Human evolutionary genetics studies how one human genome differs from another human genome, the evolutionary past that gave rise to the human genome, and its current effects. Differences between genomes have anthropological, medical, historical and forensic implications and applications. Genetic data can provide important insights into human evolution.

The Neanderthal genome project is an effort of a group of scientists to sequence the Neanderthal genome, founded in July 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sartorius AG</span> German pharmaceutical company

Sartorius AG is an international pharmaceutical and laboratory equipment supplier, covering the segments of Bioprocess Solutions and Lab Products & Services. In September 2021, Sartorius has been admitted to the DAX, Germany's largest stock market index. As a leading partner to the biopharmaceutical research and industry, Sartorius supports its customers in the development and production of biotech drugs and vaccines - from the initial idea in the laboratory to commercial production. Sartorius conducts its operating business in the two divisions Bioprocess Solutions and Lab Products&Services. The divisions bundle their respective businesses according to the same application areas and customer groups. The divisions share some of the infrastructure and central services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Lens</span> Online patent and academic database

The Lens, formerly called Patent Lens, is a free searcheable online patent and scholarly literature database, provided by Cambia, an Australia-based non-profit organization. The Lens has been hailed as the “most comprehensive scholarly literature database, that exceeds in its width and depth two leading commercial databases combined”. The Lens is an agglomeration database, that takes bibliometric data from other databases and combines them into one, deduplicated and with a powerful unified search syntax.

Bruce Lahn is a Chinese-born American geneticist. Lahn came to the U.S. from China to continue his education in the late 1980s. He is the William B. Graham professor of Human Genetics at the University of Chicago. He is also the founder of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Tissue Engineering at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Lahn currently serves as the chief scientist of VectorBuilder, Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genetically modified mammal</span>

Genetically modified mammals are mammals that have been genetically engineered. They are an important category of genetically modified organisms. The majority of research involving genetically modified mammals involves mice with attempts to produce knockout animals in other mammalian species limited by the inability to derive and stably culture embryonic stem cells.

A biological patent is a patent on an invention in the field of biology that by law allows the patent holder to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the protected invention for a limited period of time. The scope and reach of biological patents vary among jurisdictions, and may include biological technology and products, genetically modified organisms and genetic material. The applicability of patents to substances and processes wholly or partially natural in origin is a subject of debate.

Genetic studies on Neanderthal ancient DNA became possible in the late 1990s. The Neanderthal genome project, established in 2006, presented the first fully sequenced Neanderthal genome in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CRISPR gene editing</span> Gene editing method

CRISPR gene editing (CRISPR, pronounced "crisper", refers to "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats") is a genetic engineering technique in molecular biology by which the genomes of living organisms may be modified. It is based on a simplified version of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 antiviral defense system. By delivering the Cas9 nuclease complexed with a synthetic guide RNA (gRNA) into a cell, the cell's genome can be cut at a desired location, allowing existing genes to be removed and/or new ones added in vivo.

References

  1. ↑ "Metacritic: "Next" by Michael Crichton". Metacritic . Archived from the original on February 5, 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  2. 1 2 3 Memmott, C. (November 27, 2006). "What's 'Next' for Crichton? Genetics running amok". USA Today . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  3. 1 2 3 Newman, K. (January 2, 2007). "Next, by Michael Crichton". The Independent . London. Archived from the original on April 11, 2010. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  4. 1 2 3 Jones, T. (January 4, 2007). "Short Cuts". The London Review of Books . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  5. 1 2 3 Anderson, P. (November 28, 2006). "Freaking Out Over Gene Tinkering". The Washington Post . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  6. ↑ Itzkoff, D. (January 7, 2007). "Genetic Park". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ridley, M. (December 2, 2006). "Trouble Helix". The Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  8. ↑ Williams, J. (August 26, 2007). "Paperbacks: "Next" by Michael Crichton". The Sunday Times . London. Retrieved 2009-04-23.[ dead link ]
  9. 1 2 Phipps, K. (December 28, 2006). "Next (review)". The A.V. Club . Archived from the original on February 10, 2009. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  10. 1 2 Kirschling, G. (December 1, 2006). "Next (2006), Michael Crichton". Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on January 22, 2013. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  11. ↑ Carlin, Karen (2006-12-17). "'Next' by Michael Crichton". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
  12. 1 2 Maslin, J. (November 28, 2006). "Geneticists Gone Wild. What's the World to Do?". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  13. ↑ Jorge L. Contreras (Spring 2008). "NEXT and Michael Crichton's Five-Step Program for Biotechnology Law Reform". Jurimetrics. 337. SSRN   1486709.
  14. ↑ "Bestselling Books of the Year, 1996-2007". Publishers Weekly . March 24, 2008. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  15. ↑ Maryles, D. (December 24, 2007). "Paperback Bestsellers/Mass Market: December 24, 2007". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  16. ↑ "The Sunday Times bestsellers". The Times . London. December 31, 2006. Retrieved 2009-04-23.[ dead link ]
  17. ↑ Karny, G.M. (Apr 1, 2007). "In Defense of Gene Patenting". Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News . Retrieved 2009-04-23.
  18. ↑ Laakmann, A.B. "Restoring the Genetic Commons: A "Common Sense" Approach to Biotechnology Patents in the Wake of KSR v. Teleflex" (PDF). Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review. 14: 43–76. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
  19. ↑ Crichton, M. (February 13, 2007). "Patenting Life". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-04-24.
  20. ↑ Dove, A. (April 13, 2007). "Stranger Than Fiction". IP Law & Business. Retrieved 2009-04-24.
  21. ↑ Lee, Felicia R. (December 14, 2006). "Columnist Accuses Crichton of 'Literary Hit-and-Run'". The New York Times . Archived from the original on February 5, 2012. Retrieved January 2, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.