Catching Up: Part Three - NEXT

I've previously read Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and picked up NEXT very cheaply on a whim. I really really enjoyed it. There were a few things I noticed about Crichton's style while I was reading NEXT:

• Multiple styles of narrative. As well as 'straight-forward' narration, Crichton uses both newspaper and academic journal syles of writing to communicate information to the reader. A short note near the end of a book informs us that a character is dead, nothing more is said in the text. This can give a rather understated feel to the writing at times, at others, it lends credibilty and weight to the story. Visually, it had a very interesting effect, one I would like to consider in my portfolio/


• Depth of research. Crichton clearly spends a lot of time researching the topics that his books revolve around, and it shows. The evidence of this is visible in the extensive bibliography at the end of book. The result of all this research is that the whole book is logically and scientifically credible - to the average person. It is of course possible that an expert in the field of transgenics would fid mistakes, but the average reader is not such an expert. A mixture of the quantity of research and the clear understanding of the subject that he demonstrates, as well as the knowledge that he has had some education and/or training in scientific and medical background, makes the reader comfortable in believing the more complicated concepts being proposed.

The book is well grounded in the 'real' world, the fictional elements being so well worked in and backed up that they are entirely plausible. We may not yet have created an ape-human hybrid (to the best of my knowledge) but it is posed in a way that makes the possibility believable - it could happen if events progress in this direction.