Sphere

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I liked how this was narrated in the pov of a psychologist with psychoanalysis being a major part of the narration. I loved all the speculations and the science/psychology in the book. Beth Halpern is a 36-year-old zoologist/ biochemist at the University of Chicago. She's a serious weightlifter and runner. Her recent work has been studying cephalopods. Her thesis is that if not for their three year life span, octopi might be the dominant intelligence on earth. Beth reveals to Norman that Barnes is ex-Navy and as a member of the Defense Science Board, advises the Joint Chiefs of Staff on weapons acquisitions. But something was keeping me from investing in the characters. I just couldn't relate to any of them on a personal level, and I didn't much care who survived to the end of the book. Sphere is, in my opinion, Michael Crichton's most interesting book on two levels. First, the plot: a truly great parable on the endgame of technology, and the long-sought-after dream of Alladin's magic lamp. I don't want to go too deep, but I'll say that it is, in my humble hypothesis, the uncredited inspiration for the excellent show Lost. While the plot is a highlight, I personally keep this book high on my list of favorites, after all these years, because of the Essay, which breaks with/plays off Crichton's typical form: instead of a broken monologue with a human genius, it takes the form of an italicized, nearly stream of consciousness Socratic dialogue with... something. Again, the writing is problematic (Crichton manages to use the word "foam" 23 times or so in two paragraphs) but, even after all these years, the content still stirs me: the subject is consciousness and the power and meaning of the question mark... again I'll let him do the rest. You can (and should) disagree with his analysis, you can shrug aside his monosyllables, but if something in his notion of What Makes Humanity? doesn't stir you, then you are missing out. You have finally and irrevocably left the seventh grade, that painful age of wondering, in favor of a well-fortified adulthood... and as nice as that sounds, you probably left something essential behind. One of the main selling points of Sphere is its atmosphere. The reader feels trapped at the bottom of the ocean with the characters and Crichton sets up the environment perfectly. It's tense, claustrophobic and you literally feel like you're struggling for air down there as Crichton gives you all the facts without info dumping on your ass. He's certainly one of the best authors at doing this. Or was one of the best :(

Guthrie, Richard (2011). Publishing: Principles and Practice. SAGE. ISBN 9781446249994 . Retrieved 19 June 2017. Crichton began writing the novel in 1967 as a companion piece to The Andromeda Strain. His initial storyline began with American scientists discovering a 300-year-old spaceship underwater with stenciled markings in English. However, Crichton later realized that he "didn't know where to go with it" and put off completing the book until a later date.I like women villains. I know real women can be any one of sex-obsessed, power hungry, manipulative, hysterical (Crichton literally uses this word), incompetent, and bitter. But why is Beth all of these things? And she never misses a chance to mention she's a woman? Although it was sizable cast, each character had such a distinctive and memorable personality. The book to some extent was about how these different personalities would react in a crisis situation, and overall, I think Crichton did a good job fleshing that out. Lots of intrigue at the front. Crichton introduces an anomaly and compelled me keep reading until his whatsit was explained. What is the alien spacecraft? Who's inside it? Where did it come from? What does it want? All in all, the resolution of these questions were not what I expected, but satisfying. His brainstorm to position the spacecraft on the ocean floor was a very good one. If the situation wasn't terrifying enough, putting the craft in the deep brings another level of unease and dread, as well as opportunity to write about physiology, oceanography and marine biology. Myths had once represented the common knowledge of humanity, and they served as a kind of map of consciousness." //

I'm going to say something that I don't normally say with Crichton and that is the characters in this one are really good and enjoyable. He focuses on Norman Johnson as the protagonist in this one, who's a psychologist and is able to provide a real psychological insight into each character. There's a lot of development for the three main characters and its a very engaging journey. Their inner psyche has an important impact on the story and Crichton fully explores each. a b Williams, Kevin (2009). Read All About It!: A History of the British Newspaper. Routledge. ISBN 978-1134280520 . Retrieved 19 June 2017. Some seem to see some kind of deeper philosophical meaning in this one, especially towards the end with something one could call a subtle plot twist, but to me, it was a too constructed, not well designed novel. It tried to be mindfu**ing, but the realization was poor. I will not delve into spoilers, but I had a grand time trying to figure out what was going on in the murky depths. Once the sphere is brought to the forefront and you have an understanding of what is going on, other strange occurrences start to happen. The habitat is seemingly changing its layout, others seem to be losing their wits, and some crew are even becoming much more beautiful as time rolls on. Weird!

I thoroughly enjoyed the ending. It has one of those winks to the reader that makes you smirk at its cleverness. It’s definitely a 5-star rating for me, and like I said before, if you like Blake Crouch and Andy Weir books, this will definitely be up your alley. Just like Jurassic Park and Congo, this is sci-fi at its best.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: Sphere (1987), a science fiction novel by bestselling author Michael Crichton, tells the story of a group of scientists, led by psychologist Norman Johnson, as they explore the ruins of a spacecraft discovered at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Though the novel falls firmly within the science fiction genre, it contains—like many of Crichton's novels—a number of different plot elements, ranging from psychological thriller to philosophical inquiry. The group reaches the surface, where they are put in a decompression chamber. They discuss what to tell the Navy about their experiences with the sphere. They each recognize that the sphere has given them significant knowledge and insight—but it's simply too much for the rest of the world to understand and would even be dangerous to reveal. So, as a sacrifice to preserve human life as we know it, the group agrees to use the power the sphere has given them to remove all memory of it from their minds. In the place of those memories, they create a story about a routine technical issue that kept them stranded on DH-8. However, in his final words to Halpern, Johnson hints that maybe—just maybe—he did not entirely remove all of the power he gained from the sphere.

After the success of Star Wars, author Alan Dean Foster wrote a second stand-alone novel, titled Splinter of the Mind’s Eye– a tale of Luke, Leia and the droids, marooned on a remote jungle planet and pursued by Darth Vader. The book was intended as a potential low-budget sequel had the original Star Wars movie been a flop, but instead was launched to feed the insatiable appetite of fans for new content between movies. This was very fast paced and I never really got bored as it always kept me on edge with new revelations throughout. I gotta say, this novel was written way ahead of its time- 35 years ahead of time to be exact. I’d probably believe it if someone said this was released in the last five years because it still felt super modern. and along for the ride are various lovable technical experts from the Navy who run the huge underwater habitat of connected cylinders built next to the fin over a thousand feet below the ocean's surface. I don't know if happens to you, that sometimes if you are reading a novel that it hasn't being made into a film yet (I read the novel like 5 years before to be poorly adapted to a movie) sometimes I imagined some actor or actress to "play" the role of the character in my mind, an amusing thing was by then, in 1993, Sharon Stone was in hype due films like "Basic Instinct" and "Sliver", so when I imagined some actress to fill my image of Dr. Beth Halperin, I thought in Sharon Stone that she eventually got the role!