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Wordplay – Next
Genetic branding and ecological marketing mark Next
By Geof Wollerman
gwollerm@mscd.edu

Next By Michael Crichton $27.95

Welcome to the 21st century, where talking monkeys are commonplace, companies can brand schools of fish and everyone blames their problems on bad genes.

At least, that’s Michael Crichton’s vision of the near future.

“This novel is fiction,” he warns readers, “except for the parts that aren’t.”

Thus begins Next, Crichton’s newest novel, which delves into the brave new world of DNA and all its dark possibilities.

Scientists have come a long way since mapping the human genome, and Crichton is convinced that genetics is going to be the explosive über-issue of Generation Y. Forget abortion and immigration: Thanks to genetics, parrots can do arithmetic.

If there’s one thing Crichton has mastered over the years, it is how to make science sexy. Only in Crichton’s world do laboratory geeks become conniving, immoral criminals driven by self-interest and profit. Not to say those folks weren’t already out there, but in the parallel universe that spawned Jurassic Park, shallow goals and manipulation are ubiquitous, and all the nerds are sexual deviants.

In Next, science has never been as cool – or as ethically complicated. Glowing leatherback turtles are copyrighted, primate hybrids have trouble fitting in at school and teenage girls are hooked on fertility drugs.

In one chapter, an advertising executive tries to convince a roomful of clients that genetically modified clouds that randomly form into corporate logos are the newest thing in marketing.

“He had expected spontaneous applause for this dramatic visual,” Crichton writes, “but there was only silence in the darkness. Yet surely they would be experiencing some sort of reaction by now. An infinitely repeated advert hanging in the sky? Surely it must arouse them.”

The clients are not aroused and are not interested in branding nature. In fact, it seems that most of the crazy scenarios that Crichton suggests are too far-out to ever be supported by the general public.

A dozen different stories, all vying for attention, play out in the book, and at times the novel reads more like a jumble of spiced up, reprinted news articles than a well-crafted, compelling narrative.

Still, Crichton does bring up some interesting issues. What are the implications of patenting specific genes, or even entire genetic structures? If a hospital saves your life, does it have the right to use your DNA to produce new wonder drugs?

If Crichton is right, the answers to these questions are right around the corner.

For those hooked on Crichton – it’s not your fault, blame your genes – Next provides another ultrareadable installment of sexed-up futuristic doom and gloom.

But for those hooked on great literature, it’s just brain candy: a quick read to tease the imagination, something to fill the gap between that last great novel you could not put down and the one you will invariably pick up next.