This is another of Crichton’s gripping novels. Much research and application with speculation has been done with a meticulous tinge to write this novel.
The story revolves in a span of a few days. Jack Forgman is a house husband, a life which he at first readily and later out of resignation accepts due to his current status of being unemployed. His wife Julia is a Vice President of a biotech(?) company called Xymos involved in research in nanotechnology for the Pentagon. Amidst marital troubles due to Julia’s stressful and erratic work hours and also due to Jack’s inability to secure a respectable job, the story unfolds to a sinster happening. Jack was an expert in Artificial programming involving distributed agents. His pioneering program called ’’PREDPREY’’ is being used by Xymos currently for their nanotechnogy unit. He is now asked by his boss who had earlier kicked him out from work to go consulting to Xymnos and help with the code that has currently gone haywire and thus he finds himself in Nevada. Over here he gets entangled in a fine mess created by his own wife and her colleagues. Jack is flabbergasted when he realises that the reason why his infant daughter Amanda was sick with an unknown malady was this research in Xymos!!!
Xymos researchers had created nano cameras which were sythesised by bacteria . They had been given intelligence which collectively helped them emulate the behaviour of insect swarms. A swarm had managed to get free from the confines of the highly secure Xymos centre in Nevada and this swarm had further multiplied and become predator swarms!!!! How Jack tackles this catastrophe is worth reading and hence not to be told.
Chrichton discusses evolution at a very futuristic level when he writes about these half biological and half electronic entities in nano sizes. Its a very exiting novel.
I for once read it through the night just in compliance with the byline of the book - Time is running out