Ambasing: Micro: The new Gulliver’s travel adventure

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

I WAS surprised to see the name Michael Crichton emblazoned on the cover of a large softbound book with a black beetle and the title “Micro” on it a month ago while going through a bookstore in Mandaluyong. It also had the name of “Hot Zone” and “The Cobra Event” author Richard Preston, an author I also admire. I immediately purchased a copy of the book because I knew this was a new book that Crichton was probably working on before his death in 2008. I had some doubt as to whether it would be a good read since I didn’t exactly give a thrilling commentary on his other posthumous work a year ago when I wrote about “Pirate Latitudes” (November 2010 issue of Sun Star Baguio). But the fact that Preston was a co-author piqued my interest. Preston’s two books above were on the Ebola virus and bio-terrorism, both published in the 1990s. Knowing this, I asked myself if this was a book that extended the boundaries of “Jurassic Park”, which still happens to be my favorite. Could it be that this book sees nature with us as smaller than nature in the same way that Jurassic Park and the Lost World showcased large dinosaurs? I thought that probably, this new journey would use a similar plot as Isaac Asimov’s (my favorite science fiction writer) “Fantastic Journey” where people are shrunk to size. So all in all, I thought it would be a mix of Asimov’s miniaturization of humans with these humans’ adventure taking place in the wilds of nature, similar to Jurassic Park, with a hint of something medical like the alien microbe in Crichton’s first novel “Andromeda Strain”, since Preston was a co-author. The idea of nanotechnology being part of the novel did not escape me as well.

Well, you have to read the book to find out.

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The book is dedicated to Jr., Crichton’s son who was born after he died.

The novel is an adventure that has out-distanced his last release of “Pirate Latitudes”. This novel brings us back to the thrill we felt when we read his dinosaur novels. But unlike “Jurassic Park” where I immediately thought of a movie for the novel while in the middle of reading it, this thought only kicked in towards the end of the manuscript. It would probably take 10 years for the movie version if it comes into fruition. What I would like to have in the movie version would be the parts of the novel where the miniaturized humans who happen to be young scientists from the east coast are attacked by normal sized wasps. I would also like to see how ants and spiders would devour humans, as well as how birds would eat one of the heroes who would end up in the bird’s crop. I guess the movie people would need the assistance of an ornithologist for this one. They would also need to portray the centipede and the millipede in the novel.

Have I piqued your interest for you to read the novel as well?

If you’re a naturalist, I think this would be a book for you as well. It discusses the numerous defenses nature has created. It also shares knowledge on strychnine and other poisons from both the botanical and zoological worlds. If you are a young scientist, this would probably be a hoot to read – to either be entertained or for you to criticize. It would also show how we, though larger than some of nature’s creations such as mosquitoes, remain afraid of them regardless our size – miniaturized or in normal size.

Here are some excerpts: “The harpoon caught the bird in the neck as the bird pecked down at Rick, with a barbed tip honed to greater fineness than a surgical needle, and drenched with poison, the weapon pierced the bird’s neck, breaking through the skin, and the barb stuck there.” Still on the bird, how about this: “Karen King curled up in a fetal position inside the crop of the mynah bird, holding her breath. The muscular walls of the crop pressed in on her, clamping her in place so that she couldn’t move.”

Or how about this on ants: “A soldier got its mandibles fastened under his chin and his screams ended with a guttural noise as blood spurted from his throat and drenched the ant’s head.”

Spiders anyone? “Lying on its back, it lifted the main into the air, sinking its fangs deeper.”

On the unicellular organisms, the novel has this: “Karen explored the pool...A torpedo-shaped creature swam up against her. It was a Paramecium...The Paramecium was covered with rippling hairs that propelled the creature through the water. It began bumping along Karen’s arm, tickling her skin. She cupper her hands and picked up the Paramecium, holding it in a handful of water. She could feel the hairs beating on her palms...”

There are other adventures the characters get into like collecting this and that to create their own chemical weapons to defend against the larger insects, as well as their encounter with bats. But the novel goes beyond these, which may be fascinating, as a different take or perspective to mother earth – we are all bound by nature, regardless of size.

The detachment that the writers have conveyed in certain scenes is quite honestly, realistic. The novel shows that the heroes also perish with the villains. In the natural world of predator and prey, we are all protein. To quote one character that survived, “Why is it so intolerable? Because nature is fundamentally indifferent. It’s unforgiving, uninterested. If you live or die, succeed or fail, feels pleasure or pain, it doesn’t care.” It is full frontal realism.

Juxtaposed to the novel’s adventure with nature is also the technology of shrinking matter (think Walt Disney’s “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids” starring Rick Moranis). Such technology, if invented, would really be a boon for medicine, as it would greatly help in the treatment of diseases, which is what was also proposed in Asimov’s “Fantastic Journey”. It may be a rehash of an old idea but the novel also touches on the other side of the technology if used incorrectly. Watch out, you might just die of a small weapon and have a heart attack, a stroke, or even bleed to death once these small weapons enter your body. Think of them as mechanical microbes out to destroy you.

Micro is a book just too big to ignore. Get a copy now. If you finish reading it this holiday season, then you would have been one of those who would have read a novel just a month old but with a promising future.