Micro by Michael Crichton & Richard Preston

"In 2008, the famous naturalist David Attenborough expressed concern that modern schoolchildren could not identify common plants and insects found in nature, although previous generations identified them without hesitation.

It was ironic that this should be happening at a time when there was in the West an ever greater concern for the environment, and ever more ambitious steps proposed to protect it.

Indoctrinating children in proper environmental thought was a hallmark of the green movement, and so children were being instructed to protect something about which they knew nothing at all."

I agree with Michael Crichton - we should know or strive to know about things we try to protect.

Though we go camping, and my children play outside quite often, we don't know the names of the plants and trees growing in the nearby park. I guess this is something I should work to change. 

When I read a book, especially fiction, I want it to do one thing for me. Just one. Take me to a place or time where I would learn something new. Michael Crichton's books have consistently done that for me, and it saddens me to know that he passed away few years back.

This book follows similar Michael Crichton patterns - where main characters' survival is at stake against a form of advanced technology, surprising ways the complex of nature responds to external stimuli, and the fact that technological advances can be seen as a double-edged sword without a hilt to wield it.

~Spoiler Alert~

The president of Nanigen is interested in hiring promising graduate students and invites seven promising Ph.D. students from the east coast to check out his facility in Hawaii. There one of the grad students learns that the president murdered his brother who had been working at Nanigen as a director. To cover up his crime more completely, he shrinks the grad students and abandons them in the middle of the rain forest in Hawaii. Now, the students must fight the elements, natural predators, and the advanced micro technology that is available in the Nanigen president's arsenal to survive.

The thing I enjoyed most about the book was the minute details of nature seen from the micro inhabitants, rather than larger human view. The surface tension on a raindrop or what the forest floor would feel like to microscopic creatures were awesome. You realize that laws of nature act differently at micro levels and that in itself presents a problem to micro-sized humans.

I have always enjoyed reading Michael Crichton's books, and I'm going to miss him in my reading life very much.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a good read.