When I came to know of a forthcoming book by MC and that too about the new revolutionary technology of Genetics and Biotech, I was salivating. But in NEXT, unfortunately, MC disappoints big time. In his earlier book "The State of Fear", MC had debunked the whole theory of Global Warming pretty convincingly, I thought. It had a good shock value as Global Warming was a given "fact" for many like me.
In NEXT, he does bring in some peculiar characters (the ape-human child, and the talking parrot) but they somehow don’t have the WOW factor. Maybe because there is so much news of genetic "miracles" in the daily newspapers (okay, we don’t have talking parrots yet, but we have green fluorescent fishes and rabbits) itself that the book doesn’t really surprise us. But perhaps, MC’s style used in this book is its greatest flaw.
The book starts with too many subplots and MC depends conjures coincidences like two kids having the same name to join and close the subplots. There are too many characters and none of the characters come in successive characters making it difficult to remember them. The chapters are of 2-3 pages and written more like a screenplay.
The best part about the book is MC’s essay against gene patenting which comes as an appendix to the book. But as this essay has been reproduced in NYT (and in many Indian papers), it is better to read this in the papers than buy the book for this.