A few more details have come out about Michael Crichton’s new novel Micro.
As I posted Sunday, science writer Richard Preston completed the novel Crichton had begun. Reuters reported:
“Besides the unfinished manuscript, Preston also had access to the outline, a bibliography of nearly 100 books and DVDs, as well as notes and research.”
I’m looking forward to seeing that bibliography. The last four novels Crichton published while he was still living—Next, State of Fear, Prey, and Timeline—all had bibliographies. I missed seeing one in Pirate Latitudes.
But the real treat comes from a Harper Collins press release:
The subject of the tension between modern man and the natural world was one to which Crichton repeatedly returned throughout his career. In an unfinished introduction to MICRO, he wrote, "Perhaps the single most important lesson to be learned by direct experience is that the natural world, with all its elements and interconnections, represents a complex system and therefore we cannot understand it and we cannot predict its behavior...Interacting with the natural world, we are denied certainty. And always will be."
Reading the first new words from Crichton since Pirate Latitudes put a lump in my throat. I hope the introduction will be published with Micro, even if it is unfinished.