Big opening scene: in Las Vegas, at a biotech convention, a man with a container of stolen embryos is tracked by spies and seduced by a Russian hooker. He winds up dead on the floor of an elevator, smothered by the nitrogen that escapes from the container. Only this last chemistry-lab touch is worthy of the book's scientific aspirations.
Despite its seemingly controversial subject matter, Next is not one of Crichton's polarizing books (as was State of Fear, the one intent on discrediting the idea of global warming). Its emphasis is on excitement, and on the strange moral wilderness in which geneticists and biotech profiteers suddenly find themselves. Crichton pointedly defies cliches from time to time. For instance the evangelical in the story is not a fervent opponent of stem cell research. Instead he is an opportunist who exploits the claim that God intended mankind to improve upon nature.
Next does occasionally turn ham-handed: one of its resident idiots is a whiny environmentalist who reads Mother Jones and thinks genetic modification could make cool protest art. Another target is a Washington political columnist and spoiled heir who turns out to have raped a two-year-old.
Crichton uses his case to indict the press (for printing details of the rape), since that has become one of his favorite sidelines. He has a field day with fake news items that punctuate the book, particularly when the supposed bias of one newspaper (the New York Times) can be weighed against other versions of the same story. And when a talking orangutan turns up in Sumatra, the Times misidentifies the locale as Java and then prints a correction.
When it comes to talking animals, this book's most enjoyable invention is Gerard, a semi-human parrot with a Machiavellian streak. When not quoting a weird range of movie dialogue (one line comes from The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer), Gerard enjoys using sound to bait the people around him. He can regale a man's wife with the sounds of a man welcoming his mistress, for instance. But even at his most selfish, Gerard has more scruples than most of the gene-mongering scientists and entrepreneurs who lead Next toward a bizarre, frightening future.
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