''Prey'' is the thirteenth novel by

Michael Crichton John Michael Crichton (; October 23, 1942 – November 4, 2008) was an American author and filmmaker. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and over a dozen have been adapted into films. His literary works heavily feature tech ...

under his own name and the twenty-third overall. It was first published in November 2002, making it his first novel of the twenty-first century. An excerpt was first published in the January–February 2003 issue of ''

Seed A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiosper ...

magazine.'' Prey brings together themes from two earlier Crichton best-selling novels, Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain and serves as a

cautionary tale A cautionary tale is a tale told in folklore to warn its listener of a danger. There are three essential parts to a cautionary tale, though they can be introduced in a large variety of ways. First, a taboo or prohibition is stated: some act, lo ...

about developments in science and

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scien ...

, in particular,

nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal ...

genetic engineering 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 ...

, and

distributed artificial intelligence Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) also called Decentralized Artificial Intelligence is a subfield of artificial intelligence research dedicated to the development of distributed solutions for problems. DAI is closely related to and a pred ...

. The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific community, such as

artificial life Artificial life (often abbreviated ALife or A-Life) is a field of study wherein researchers examine systems related to natural life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry ...

emergence In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. Emergenc ...

(and by extension,

complexity Complexity characterises the behaviour of a system or model whose components interact in multiple ways and follow local rules, leading to nonlinearity, randomness, collective dynamics, hierarchy, and emergence. The term is generally used to ch ...

genetic algorithms In computer science and operations research, a genetic algorithm (GA) is a metaheuristic inspired by the process of natural selection that belongs to the larger class of evolutionary algorithms (EA). Genetic algorithms are commonly used to gene ...

, and

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuranc ...

-based computing. Fields such as

population dynamics Population dynamics is the type of mathematics used to model and study the size and age composition of populations as dynamical systems. History Population dynamics has traditionally been the dominant branch of mathematical biology, which has a ...

and host-parasite coevolution are also at the heart of the novel. Film rights to the book were purchased by

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...

Plot summary

The novel is narrated by

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

Jack Forman, an unemployed software

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

taking the role of a house husband. His wife, Julia, serves as a high ranking executive for a

Nanorobotics Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to m ...

company called Xymos. Julia claims to be working on revolutionary

imaging technology Imaging is the representation or reproduction of an object's form; especially a visual representation (i.e., the formation of an image). Imaging technology is the application of materials and methods to create, preserve, or duplicate images. ...

, which takes up most of her time. Her intense focus on work creates distance between herself and her family, but Jack believes Julia may be having an affair. One night, Julia shows Jack a video of Xymos nanobots being injected into a human test subject. Jack is impressed, but grows more suspicious as he notices the video was not filmed on the day she claimed it to be. Later in the night their baby Amanda woke in agony, her body bright red. Jack took her to the hospital, but the doctors could not identify the cause of her pain. She was given an

MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to form pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes of the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and radio waves ...

when suddenly her pain stopped and her skin returned to a normal shade. A bewildered Jack returns home to a strangely indifferent Julia, who leaves in a hurry claiming to be off to an urgent business trip. A series of strange events lead Jack to suspect something bigger is occurring than what he can see. First, their son Eric claimed to have seen "silver men" cleaning the house in the middle of the night. Next, Jack finds a strange device located underneath Amanda's bed. Soon after, memory chips on Eric's MP3 player turned directly to dust. Julia began to display abusive behavior toward her family, and was seen driving with an unidentifiable passenger. In an unexpected twist, Julia is injured in a car crash leaving Jack to consult for Xymos, as project manager Ricky is struggling with the nanobots. Jack is taken to the Xymos research facility in Nevada's Basin Desert, where he is given a tour of the lab and introduced to the programming team (Mae, Charley, David, Rosie, Bobby, and Vince.) He is shown a machine used to make nanobot assemblers from bacteria, though Ricky refuses to share the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

for said nanobots. Ricky claims that contractors improperly installed filters in a vent, causing assemblers, bacteria, and nanobots to be blown into the desert, where they began forming into autonomous swarms. These "swarms" appear to be clouds of solar-powered self-sufficient nanobots, reproducing and

evolving Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation t ...

( necroevolution) at rapid speeds. The swarms exhibit

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill t ...

y behavior, killing wild animals through the use of a code that Jack himself had worked on. Most alarmingly, the swarm possess rudimentary intelligence, the ability to quickly learn and innovate. Jack learns Julia was helping to make the swarms more benign, but they regressed when she disappeared. The swarms wander around the plant during the day, but go elsewhere when strong winds blow or night falls. The nanoswarm kills a rabbit directly outside the complex, so Jack goes outside with Mae to inspect. They find the rabbit died of suffocation, meaning the nanobots blocked its

bronchial tubes A bronchus is a passage or airway in the lower respiratory tract that conducts air into the lungs. The first or primary bronchi pronounced (BRAN-KAI) to branch from the trachea at the carina are the right main bronchus and the left main bronchus. ...

. While investigating the rabbit, Jack is attacked by the swarms and barely manages to get back into the lab before falling unconscious from

anaphylactic shock Anaphylaxis is a serious, potentially fatal allergic reaction and medical emergency that is rapid in onset and requires immediate medical attention regardless of use of emergency medication on site. It typically causes more than one of the follow ...

. Persuaded by Jack, the team decides to destroy the swarm in fear of a

grey goo Gray goo (also spelled as grey goo) is a hypothetical global catastrophic scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating machines consume all biomass on Earth while building many more of themselves, a sce ...

plague endangering humanity. They believe the swarm must have nested in the desert, so they tagged the bots with radioactive

isotope Isotopes are two or more types of atoms that have the same atomic number (number of protons in their nuclei) and position in the periodic table (and hence belong to the same chemical element), and that differ in nucleon numbers ( mass num ...

s and followed them at night in hopes of finding said nest. Under the cover of a strong wind, the team goes to a storage shack to find the isotopes and begins building a spray device. As the wind dies down, four swarms attack the shack and kill two team members - David and Rosie. The rest of the team is forced to take shelter in nearby parked cars. Jack and Mae manage to escape to the lab unscathed, but Charley falls unconscious outside his car after being attacked. When the others refuse to help, Jack manages to get himself and a semi-conscious Charley to safety. As night falls, Jack, Mae, and Bobby set out to find the swarms. While searching, they discover that the swarms are dragging Rosie's corpse through the desert. The team is also shocked to discover that the swarms can replicate the physical features, perceptions, and motions of humans when they see the swarms form replicas of Ricky, David, and Rosie. The group follows Rosie's body and find the swarms nesting in a cave. A Xymos helicopter arrives and wards off the swarms using its draft. Mae and Jack then venture into the cave and succeed in destroying the swarms, their nest, and their organic assembly plant using explosive

thermite Thermite () is a pyrotechnic composition of metal powder and metal oxide. When ignited by heat or chemical reaction, thermite undergoes an exothermic reduction-oxidation (redox) reaction. Most varieties are not explosive, but can create brie ...

caps. Returning to the plant, Jack, Mae, and Bobby are greeted by Julia, who had discharged herself from the hospital and was brought in by the chopper. Julia's behavior is extremely aberrant; she seems to pay heed to nothing except enticing Jack and kissing him, even when Charley is found killed by a swarm in a sabotaged communications room. Jack cannot understand how the swarm got inside the airtight building, why Charley would have disabled the facility's communications, or why Julia and Ricky are acting very out-of-character. Mae discovers security footage of when they were in the desert. To Jack's horror, the video reveals that Julia and Ricky had an affair, and shows Charley engaging in a vicious fight with Ricky and Vince. All of them end up in the communications room where Julia kisses a subdued Charley, injecting a swarm into his mouth, while Ricky sabotages the communication systems. Eventually, Jack and Mae realize that Julia, Ricky, Vince and Bobby have all been infected by a

symbiotic Symbiosis (from Greek , , "living together", from , , "together", and , bíōsis, "living") is any type of a close and long-term biological interaction between two different biological organisms, be it mutualistic, commensalistic, or para ...

version of the nanobot swarms. These swarms do not show aggressive predatory behavior; instead, they take over human hosts, affecting their decision-making, and slowly devour them over time to produce more nanobots. This allows the swarms to remain hidden, while also allowing them to spread and contaminate other humans. Jack comes up with a plan to destroy this new strain. He and Mae drink vials containing a form of

phage A bacteriophage (), also known informally as a ''phage'' (), is a duplodnaviria virus that infects and replicates within bacteria and archaea. The term was derived from "bacteria" and the Greek φαγεῖν ('), meaning "to devour". Bacter ...

that kills the nanobot-producing '' E. coli'' bacteria, thereby protecting them from infection by the nanobots. Jack then takes a sample of the phage and plans to pour it into the sprinkler system and drench everyone in the facility with it. He has Mae alert Julia and the infected team, who set out to stop Jack. In the vicious struggle that ensues, Jack is captured and thrown into a magnetic chamber. Jack feigns surrender when Julia walks in to interrogate him, but reactivates the magnetic chamber, remembering the incident with Amanda in the MRI. Julia's swarm is pulled away by the magnetic field to temporarily reveal the real Julia, who is gradually being consumed by the parasitic swarm. Before the swarm can repossess her body, Julia begs Jack to forgive her, says she loves him, and tells him to stop the swarms and save their children, as they have been infected too. Motivated, Jack runs to the roof, fights off the infected team, and finally manages to place the sample into the sprinkler system. To prevent the sprinkler system from triggering, Ricky disables the plant's safety network. This plays in Jack's favor, as Mae has already inserted the phage into the assembly line, causing it to reproduce rapidly. The assembly line is rapidly overheating because of the deactivated safety system. If Ricky and Julia don't turn on the safety system, the assembly line will burst, filling the lab with the phage, but if they turn it on, the sprinklers will activate instead. The infected, now doomed either way, choose to re-activate the network and are drenched with the phage, killing them all. Jack and Mae escape the facility in a helicopter shortly before the facility explodes due to a

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane ...

gas leak combined with thermite that Mae had placed in the building. After returning home, Jack doses his children and sister with the phage, curing them as well. While Mae calls the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

and sends a sample of the phage to her lab, Jack puts together all the missing links. The corrosion of the memory chips in his home's electronics and Amanda's skin rash were caused by nanobot assemblers that were accidentally brought home by Julia. The MRI's strong magnetic field detached the assemblers from Amanda. Knowing this, Julia called in the Xymos special team to scan Amanda's room for any additional assemblers. The person whom Jack spotted in Julia's car was in fact the Ricky-swarm. Finally, Jack discovers that Xymos had intentionally released the swarm into the desert so that it would evolve to stay in a cohesive group in the wind, but called him in to destroy the wild strain once it became uncontrollable.

Characters

Major characters

* Jack Forman A former team lead/manager at MediaTronics working on distributed, multi-agent systems and advanced computer algorithms * Julia Forman Jack's wife, Vice president of the Xymos company. * Mae Chang A field biologist on Jack's consulting team * Ricky Morse A friend of Jack's, works for Xymos * Charley Davenport A member of Jack's team who specializes in

. * David Brooks An engineer on the team. * Rosie Castro A specialist in

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to proc ...

. * The "Swarm" Any of the many predatory clouds of nano-machines that "eat" animals serving as an antagonistic force in the novel. "Eating" means suffocating the animals and growing bacteria on them, thereby producing more nano-machine assemblers, and more nano-machines. A notable aspect of the swarm is its capacity for fully

Lamarckian evolution Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

, as each cloud's members can effectively choose exactly which aspects are to be transmitted or modified down into the next generation through manipulation of the ''E. coli'' bacteria used to produce the new robots. * Vince Reynolds the maintenance operator of the Xymos lab. * Amanda Jack and Julia's baby daughter. * Nicole Jack and Julia's preteen daughter. * Eric Jack and Julia's son.

Minor characters

* Ellen Jack's sister from out of town. She takes care of his kids while he is in Nevada and believes Julia is on stimulants. *Don Gross Jack's former boss, who fired Jack. * Gary Jack's lawyer. * Maria Jack and Julia's housekeeper. * Annie Jack's

headhunter Headhunter or head hunter may refer to: * Headhunting, hunting a human and collecting the severed head after killing them * Executive search, informally called headhunting, a specialized recruitment service Arts and entertainment Film and telev ...

. * Carol Julia's assistant. * Mary Ricky's wife. * Bobby Lembeck Computer programmer at Xymos * Tim Berman The man that took over Jack's job.

Reception

Jim Holt, writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', found the book "absurd" but exciting, and said that he "kept turning the pages feverishly". Peter Guttridge, writing for ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...

'', said that it finds Crichton "doing what he does best", in that he takes "the very latest scientific advances" and shows "their potentially terrifying underbelly". Even while pointing out the flaws in Crichton's science, in ''Prey'', multiple critics have praised the book's impact and overall message.

References