16 September 2004

Ruminations on the Sphere

For some time now I have been working on rebuilding my book collection. Some of my books I’ve replaced with new copies, some I’ve acquired at used book stores and at flee markets. The local outlet of the Wee Book Inn has become one of my more frequent haunts. It’s amazing what people will sell off when they decide that they don’t want to read it anymore.

On my last trip to the Wee Book Inn I picked up three books by Michael Crichton: Sphere, Timeline, and The Great Train Robbery. I thought about reading Timeline first, but in the end I decided to start with Sphere.

Now, before I talk about the book I want to talk a little bit about Michael Crichton. Mr. C graduated from Harvard with a degree in medicine. He is an educated man with a very logical mind. He is also a master story teller. It can be safely said that he is one of the Grand Masters of speculative fiction.

Almost everything that Michael Crichton writes has some kind of underlying scientific basis. I’ve seen works where he has dabbled in physics, chemistry, biology, genetics, medicine, psychology, sociology, and a variety of other scientific specialties. No matter what field he is dabbling in his science is dead on balls accurate, explained so that even a moderately educated but reasonably intelligent reader like me can grasp what he is describing. He has a talent for seeing potential in specialties which most people never think twice about.

Sphere is a perfect example of this.

The book begins with a team of scientists, accompanied by a team of specialists from the US Navy, being transported to habitats a thousand feet underwater so that they can undertake the examination of an artifact that was found buried beneath a three hundred year old accumulation of coral. Their investigation of the object reveals that it’s a space vehicle from fifty years in the future. The ship is extremely well built with a very thick hull designed to withstand enormous amounts of hard radiation.

The team discovers the flight recorder and begin reviewing the logs. The records clearly show that the ship was designed to fly through a black hole and then return, which is exactly what it did. However, somewhere along the way the crew of the ship picked up a strange artifact, a massive metallic sphere. The team sets about the task of trying to open the sphere to determine what it is. Eventually one of the team members succeeds and that’s when all hell starts to break loose.

As a story, Sphere is extremely well crafted. The characters are true to form and behave in a consistent manner from beginning to end. We even get to see some of the character’s personal histories and delve into their psyches, see the reasons behind why they behave the way that they do. The plot is both plausible and fantastic, the action and pacing such that even at the slowest points of the book we are left wondering what’s going to happen to the team next.

The revelation of the contents of the sphere is best described as interesting. The notion that any society could create such a device that could so thoroughly bring someone face to face with the deepest, darkest, most harshly repressed parts of their personality is frightening, but fascinating at the same time. The ways in which each of the individual characters respond to the challenge posed by the contents of the sphere are equally frightening, and just as equally fascinating.

What really stands out in my mind, though, is how easily the base natures of the central characters became corrupted by the secrets of the Sphere, the knowledge that they really did have the power to change the universe around them. It is a truism that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. History has proven this to be true time and again. As a Medical Doctor with a knowledge of human psychology Crichton understands this fact very well, and he makes good use of it. His characters, when faced with the temptation of absolute power, react in ways that ring true, despite the fact that they are atypical to the characters traditional personality.

There is no doubt in my mind that Crichton is a master of the art of story telling. Though some may argue the point I feel sure that they would heartily concede that he is certainly skilled at what he does. As a relative newcomer to the art of story telling for entertainment I can only hope that one day I will be as good at my chosen craft as Crichton is at his.