MicroMichael Crichton and Richard Preston Harper Collins 2011/12

Hub Zwart

doi:10.1186/1746-5354-8-2-38

Abstract

MicroMichael Crichton and Richard Preston Harper Collins 2011/12

Highlights

MICRO – a title that almost reads like the acronym of the author’s name - has all the ingredients of the standard Michael Crichton formula: 1. A commercial high-tech firm set up on a faraway tropical island (Hawaii) by a visionary but criminal entrepreneurial scientist (Vincent Drake); 2
Vin Drake, owner of Nanigen, visits Harvard to recruit a team of PhD students working in areas such as entomology, pheromone and plant hormones research, ethnobotany, arachnology, and the like
He invites them to come and work with him in Hawaii, where research is far more exciting and ground-breaking than in the boring and meticulously monitored science laboratories at their university. They fall into his trap and end up in his tensor machine, an apparatus that dwarfs them into micro-humans, half an inch tall

Summary

Introduction

MICRO – a title that almost reads like the acronym of the author’s name - has all the ingredients of the standard Michael Crichton formula: 1. A commercial high-tech firm (called Nanigen Micro-technologies) set up on a faraway tropical island (Hawaii) by a visionary but criminal entrepreneurial scientist (Vincent Drake); 2. Vin Drake, owner of Nanigen, visits Harvard to recruit a team of PhD students working in areas such as entomology, pheromone and plant hormones research, ethnobotany, arachnology (spider science), and the like. They are, sometimes literally, swallowed by the micro-world, struggling to survive among unknown hazards and terrors, strolling around as edible and unprotected packages of protein, facing a dangerous biological environment in which they no longer represent the top of the food chain.

Results

Conclusion