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Michael Crichton becomes Ayn Rand This book is the next logical step in Michael Crichton's descent from a talented writer of fiction to an opinionated hack. This is a sad fate for the writer who brought us "The Andromeda Strain", "The Terminal Man", "Westworld" and "Jurassic Park", which combined light scientific knowledge with an interesting plot and enough action to get them made into movies. His digression started with "Rising Sun", his misdirected attack on Japanese industrial success, which left me wondering if he really felt that the Yakusa controlled Japanese business. Next in line was "Disclosure", where he took a stab at the issue of sexual harassment, with the villain being the female accuser. And can we forget "Airframe", which was essentially an argument about how media attacks can destroy even the most conscientious corporation? Interspersed between these works of rhetoric were the kid-pleasing "Jurassic Park", the unchallenging time-travel epic "Timeline", and the almost unreadable "Prey". As uninteresting as some of his recent books have been, at least they were designed to entertain first, and proselytize second. But now the kid gloves are off! Get ready for a ridiculous plot, forgettable action scenes, and a lot of speeches. As in many, many preachy speeches...with footnote references to the large bibliography at the end of the book. And just when you think he's done, there as an "author's message" and also another essay about "Why Politicizing Science is Wrong" at the end of the book. Crichton does make his points, and some are valid. He is strongly in the Libertarian camp...so much so that he confuses skepticism with contrarianism. My advice to him would be to stick with fiction, and leave the political persuasion to writers of non-fiction.