Micro by Michael Crichton

After completing Prodigal daughter, a book which always gives a sense of fulfillment and happiness, i thought of posting about it. But if there is one book that has found numerous reference in this space, that would be it. In fact, i was reminded of how i had a thought of becoming President myself, when i read the book for the first time and how it invited ridicule and embarrassing comments when i shared the same with couple of collleagues from my first company. The fact that i am not even qualified to become president of an apartment association leave alone a country is an altogether different matter. But whenever i read that book, it invokes a sense that if you are determined you can become one. Of course, Archer doesn't dwell into the details of every single day of the life of the characters and obviously the novel deals with key things from their lives. But whenever i read the section where she is first nominated for Senate and the quote that "Kennedy said he had the best of both worlds, while, with Radcliff education and degree, i have the best of all worlds" and how it gets received by the audience, it makes me feel as if i was part of that crowd and the moment being so real, every time i read it.

Coming back to the main purpose of the post - Micro. Apparantly this book happens to be the last one written by Michael Crichton and it was completed by another author. I always thought Pirate latitudes was the last published one by Crichton and this was a pleasant surprise. While reading the book i felt, it is quite similar to "Timeline" by the same author, where also the premise is more or less similar. It involves a group of people traveling to the past to save their professor and bring him back with the inventor of the time machine, using which they travel, have sinister intentions. Similarly in Micro, the machine makes people tiny without disturbing their bodily funcitons and structures and not just humans and living things, even non-living things can be shrunk to the minimal possible and still retaining their functions. More like "Honey, i shrunk the kid" movie inspired may be?! But still the challenges which the group undergo when they are reduced to atomic size and how the nature is alive with traps and dangers that as regular size humans we never realize, how insects, spiders, earthworms, wasps, bees, bats play a major role and how they rule the world, without us really ever understanding them forms major chunks of the story once they are reduced to "micro" size and hence the title. The reason for all this is because the inventor, Drake, has evil intentions behind the setup, having planned to sell the same to private/villainic groups for more money as against to US government, who are a society of saints. It is found by the guy who is suspected to be killed. His brother and fellow scientist mates are invited by Drake to his center in Hawaii, for them to help him with his setup, only for them to turn against him. One by one those scientist group gets killed. Each die a gruesome death highlighting how insects reign over their territories. Eventually there are 2 survivors who manage to bring themselves back to their original size and destroy the whole setup along with the villain.

Since there are many movies already made in similar and same setup guess it is safe to say that this one will never be made into a movie, if not already! Shrinking in size, enlarging in size are something that has caught the fancy of many authors from the time of gulliver to gullible. Crichton is no fate-light (vidhi vilakku)!!