- Michael Crichton Sphere Jerry
- Michael Crichton Sphere Audiobook
- Michael Crichton Sphere Review
- Michael Crichton Sphere Book Review
Michael Crichton. Published by Ballantine Books 1988 (1988) Seller: Discover Books, Toledo, OH, U.S.A. Contact seller Seller Rating: Ballantine Books 1988, 1988. Condition: VERY GOOD. Light rubbing wear to cover, spine and page edges. Very minimal writing or notations in margins not affecting the text. Michael Crichton’s legacy—as the man, the author, the filmmaker, the doctor, the teacher, the visionary, and more—is very much alive and important today. This website is an entrance into that world. As the Official Site for Michael Crichton, we invite you to explore the many facets of the man behind the genius.
In the middle of the South Pacific, a thousand feet below the surface of the water, a huge vessel is discovered resting on the ocean floor.
Rushed to the scene is a group of American scientists who descend together into the depths of the sea to investigate this astonishing discovery.
What they find defies their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at least three hundred years old…
Publication Date: 1987
Category: science fiction; science thriller novel
ScienceThrillers technical content rating:
ScienceThrillers.com book review of Sphere :
Nobody—and I mean nobody—writes like Michael Crichton.
There are authors whose books are as good as Crichton’s, but MC has a gifted style all his own that no one has been able to replicate.
Sphere is a first-rate white-knuckle story set deep underwater, with strong sci-fi themes in the form of potential contact with alien life. As I read it, I swear I had trouble breathing because of the stale, compressed, helium-rich air! We read the story from the point of view of middle-aged psychology professor Norman Johnson, who clearly has no business enduring the physical rigors of deep ocean life. Johnson’s psychological insights and understanding of group dynamics under pressure play a key role as the situation turns sour.
Unsurprisingly, the cast of characters is cut off from the surface by a storm, and their habitat comes under attack. The real reasons behind the attack unfold as the pages turn. The mental states of the characters are a major source of tension and plot development.
It wouldn’t be Crichton without a lot of intellectual fireworks. Details about U.S. Navy operations in deep water are meticulously researched and well-utilized in the plot. Numerous discourses on the hunt for alien life, astrophysics, psychology of stress, Jungian psychology, evolution, and more are scattered across the pages. Miraculously they inform and entertain without ever feeling pushy or preachy.
All the usual Crichton strengths are on display here: a claustrophobic setting (deep underwater habitat), isolation (storm has forced surface support vessels to depart), a cast of characters working together and against one another with different motivations, goals, and styles. The tension begins on page one, and relentlessly ratchets up until the very last page. Unanswered questions compel you to keep reading: what’s the deal with the ship? The sphere? The squid? In most thrillers, the reader has a pretty good idea of where the plot is going and what the characters will do. Crichton manages to keep you on your toes, never divulging excess information and keeping you guessing at every turn. He uses a lot of foreshadowing to crank up the tension; often, but not always, these hints come true.
One weak plot point: the characters begin communicating with an unknown entity who is using some kind of code. This sequence is clever and engaging but ultimately illogical. If the entity knows English, why must it use a code?
Interesting character: Mathematician Harry Adams has a lot in common with Crichton’s more famous math genius, Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park.
Like most of Crichton’s works, Sphere is an excellent choice for teens/pre-teens who are strong readers. No profanity or sex, plenty of action and imagination.
Key words: spacecraft; black hole; deep ocean; decompression sickness; bioluminescence; manifestations; sea snakes; thought control
If you like deep-ocean settings, read:
Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler, Meg by Steve Alten, or Chromosome 8 by Peter Holt
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What a difference 27 years makes, huh? I’m referring to the gap between the 1971 film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain and the 1998… whatever that was… of Sphere. I mean, we’re mostly going to be talking about Michael Crichton’s novels, but to prattle on happily for several paragraphs about Sphere without acknowledging what Barry Levinson did to it would be like not picturing a blue Billy Crudup in your head while re-reading Watchmen. We need to breathe through it, come to acceptance, and move on.
That was a shitty movie. And, to my earlier point about the gap between The Andromeda Strain and Sphere, here is what a team of scientists and hangers-on looked like on-camera in 1971:
And here is what they looked like in 1998:
Which, whatever, there are plenty of sexy scientists in the world (I mean, have you seen Lisa Randall? Rowr!) and Dustin Hoffman is not necessarily having panties thrown at him in recent years, but it legitimately was a time in which sci-fi movies tried to be about sci-fi. And you can say “it’s what the people want,” but Sphere made back less than half its budget and The Andromeda Strain made… I mean, it was 1971, so enough to pay for Sharon Stone’s wet suits on Sphere, probably, but no one was sitting on a $45 million dollar loss. The big ticket item? They spent $300K to build the scientific lab set. PRIORITIES, you know? And it made sense. Literally no human being who watched Sphere without reading the book understood what the hell was going on. Not one. You can tell me you did, but unless it happened in a controlled environment where you were raised in captivity away from Michael Crichton novels and then watched Sphere and answered a series of plot questions of my choosing, I’m going to think you’re snowing me. And that scenario would make for a fascinating Michael Crichton novel, would it not?
Speaking of! Let’s talk about Michael Crichton. Biography of Michael Crichton: he is now dead, he was super tall (6’9), he wrote well over 12,000 books, he was very smart, he got a little weird in later years, and we should all be worshipping his golden statue for having given us so much pleasure. Do you even know what you owe to Michael Crichton? How many flights he made bearable? How many rainy weekends at your aunt and uncle’s cottage where you weren’t allowed to flush pee? You may not really understand, let me go on: he gave you George Clooney. Did you know that? Did you know that he created “ER,” which gave you George Clooney? Westworld? JURASSIC PARK? CONGO?
(I may be the only one who really liked Congo, but I really really really hate and fear non-human primates other than Koko, and it was nice to have that reinforced a little bit. I know, I know, the humans made them that way to guard the whatever they were guarding. Still.)
Sphere is pretty great. I think, like most Crichton novels, you can see that tension between the Michael Crichton who, like Roman on “Party Down,” dreamed of writing hard sci-fi (no dragons!), but also knew that his bread-and-butter was cinematically-appropriate tales of the natural human reactions to an initial sci-fi concept. Which is what Robert J. Sawyer, the superb Canadian sci-fi writer, does as well. You’ve got the alien sphere, or the spreading contagion, or the rogue androids in Western wear, and what makes it a Crichton novel is making you care about the little band of people who has to deal with it.
To return to the fundamental question of Classic Trash, that we only reference when it seems convenient to the discussion: “is it any good?”
Well, yes. Crichton is not Alice Munro (though we can all fantasize about the end result of their collaboration, in which a young woman grows to adulthood in a small Western Canadian town and then encounters an alien sphere that gives her unconscious mind the power to create any manifestations she chooses) but he has that great talent the snobs lament: making you care what comes next. And then and then and then and then. You can be the purest of the pure sci-fi. You can understand cybernetics. You can create fake but super-plausible looking computer code and warning symbols that look scary and come up with something that makes it seem not-insane that we might reanimate cloned dinosaurs out of New Age jewelry-looking stones, but unless you have the intangible and rare ability to make someone miss their subway stop to figure out how the scientists can manage not to bring the threat back from the ocean in their own minds, you are never going to be able to afford to build a life-size replica of the Parthenon in your back forty. That’s just how it is. You think you’re better than JK Rowling? Maybe you are! It doesn’t mean shit. Give the people what they want, y’know?
We haven’t said much about Sphere, really, because who knows if you’ve read it? This is more about Michael Crichton. But it’s also a little bit about the failings of Michael Crichton, such as they are, because he’s never quite willing to go scorched-earth. Which is what happens at the end of Sphere. Our heroes need to kill themselves. Anyone could tell you that. And, instead, they use their newfound supernatural powers to choose to forget that they have those powers, rendering everyone safe and happy and innocent and bounding off, like the end of The Langoliers, to live the rest of their lives. And that’s why it’s a really fun book, and not, maybe, a more artistic book that ends with three dead bodies in a decompression chamber, or an explosion taking out the three survivors and the sphere itself, or a Russian woman woman being run over by a train.
The Plot Questions You Would Be Asked After Seeing Sphere (1998)
Who was Jerry?
What happened to Liev Schreiber?
Were there any aliens?
What year did the ship arrive under the ocean?
What was the sphere?
What does the sphere do?
When they’re in their decompression bunker, how exactly do they solve their problem?
What is the mechanism by which that even works?
Why did the sphere shoot into space at the end of the movie?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Michael Crichton Sphere Jerry
No, really, though, aren’t you terrified of non-human primates?
Aren’t they hideous-looking and scary?
You know that a grown chimpanzee, for example, will eat your eyes and nose and genitals and rip off your arm and then penetrate you with it as soon as look at you?
You don’t on some level think they look exactly like your id?
That non-human primates are a physical representation of your most instrinsic and unpleasant primal nature?
I mean, it’s not like you don’t think they should have some kind of rights.
Like, in Spain, the great apes have legal protection.
That seems about right.
You know who seems like a real asshole?
That Mike Rice guy that Rutgers just fired.
Is there a great work of sci-fi that ends with the annihilation of our heroes?
Should you write one?
What is the absolute best sci-fi?
Michael Crichton Sphere Audiobook
Discussion Answer: The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. LeGuin.
Previously: ‘Mommie Dearest’: Once More With Wire Hangers
Michael Crichton Sphere Review
Nicole Cliffe is the books editor of The Hairpin and the proprietress of Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews.
Michael Crichton Sphere Book Review
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