Journal Entry 1 by glade1 from McLeansville, North Carolina USA on Friday, August 27, 2010

Picked up some time ago from the free shelf at the used book store. I usually enjoy Crichton's books. From Amazon:

Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction--is it worse than the disease?

We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies.

We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes...

Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn.

Next challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, Next shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect.

I read this one a week or so ago and enjoyed it. Crichton has a knack for making his science fiction sound so factual it's hard to know what to believe. This book certainly provides some food for thought, and with stem-cell testing in the news again this week, it is still a timely novel.

Passing along to a coworker...