Book Review: NEXT By Michael Crichton. 3 and a 1\2 out of 5.

Next (2006), the last novel to be published by Michael Crichton during his lifetime, is kind of a greatest hits collection. Yet, in a way, it’s also unlike anything he’d written before. It combines many of his favorite themes and obsessions, to produce a book that is bitingly satirical, surprisingly cynical, and, paradoxically, one of his most humane.

Crichton goes for broke here, creating a multi-layered and sprawling novel with a multitude of characters and plotlines, some of which, by the end of the book, will converge. It’s useless to go into details about the story itself. The plot is just too complex to summarize. Suffice it to say that Crichton tackles the issue of gene patenting, and how playing God leads to complicated and, sometimes, disastrous consequences.

He’s dealt with these issues before in many of his books, but never in such an assured and humorous manner.

Next is the work of a writer at the peak of his powers, using every technique at his disposal, every lesson learned from a lifetime of writing. With Next, Crichton creates the sort of novel 2003's State of Fear should have been. With State of Fear, Crichton courageously took on the global warming/climate change hysteria, and tried to expose those he called “catastrophists”, scientists, politicians, and media personalities who use genuine environmental concerns, and blow them all out of proportion to induce fear and gain control of public opinion for their own benefit. But the novel came across as half-cooked and meandering, and didn't really make its point that clear.

Next, on the other hand, fires on almost all cylinders, with Crichton in complete control of his narrative. He takes on politicians, tech moguls, corrupt scientists, ego-maniacal businessmen, evangelists, and many more, with gleeful, dark humor.

Sometimes he lays it on a bit too thick, and his vitriol isn't always evenly meted out, but he succeeds in producing a piece of work that is literally unputdownable, and a joy to read; one of the few Crichton books I felt I could re-read almost instantly.

While not as propulsive and action-packed as some of his best techno-thrillers, Next is a terrific, intelligent novel, filled to the brim with ideas, many of which are thought-provoking and more timely than ever.

A must for fans. For newcomers to Crichton's work, I'd recommend The Andromeda Strain or Airframe.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2023.

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Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. He is also the host of The Dark Fantastic Podcast. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @DFantasticPodcast

Book Review: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF F.B.I. SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER: MY LIFE, MY TAPES. By Scott Frost *** out of *****

Out of the three Twin Peaks books published at the height of the iconic series' fame (The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and The Access Guide to Twin Peaks being the other two), The Autobiography of Special Agent Dale Cooper is the least rewarding and most problematic of the lot.

Written by Scott Frost (Mark Frost's brother) - who also wrote the superior short audiobook Diane: The Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper - the book attempts to be a revealing look into Cooper's psyche, from childhood onto adolescence, and up to his receiving the case of Laura Palmer as an FBI agent. From the get-go it is obvious that something is off with the book's tone. Veering from broad comedy, to forays into mysticism, to graphic sexual encounters, this is Cooper like we've never seen before. It is also a less interesting, less appealing version of Cooper. Portraying Cooper as some sort of oversexed young adult who hobnobs with hippies, and is sympathetic to anti-establishment sentiments, is jarring to say the least. As more than half of the book is spent on Cooper wrangling with the politics of the 1960s and 1970s and dealing with a father who is growing more radical by the year, this takes the story into overtly political and less interesting areas for Twin Peaks fans, as Scott Frost - like Mark Frost in his The Secret History of Twin Peaks - seems to get a kick from using the Twin Peaks mythos as a vehicle for delving into socio-political/historical tangents that just don't gel with the ethereal, timeless tone of the show.

In the book Conversations with Mark Frost by David Bushman, Frost admits that The Autobiography of Dale Cooper book was "jokey", and that David Lynch had almost zero input into the writing of it. Well, it shows. This version of Cooper feels like someone from an alternate universe. Only in the last third of the book, when Cooper starts to realize the true nature of his mentor Windom Earle, and gets assigned to the case of Teresa Banks, does the book feel like the Twin Peaks we know and love. But even the Windom Earle subplot is not that well-handled, with Earle coming off as some sort of super-villain, with no reason or rhyme behind his evil actions. And considering how the second season of Twin Peaks botched the Cooper/Earle storyline (mainly due to unsteady writing and an uneven, often over the top performance by Kenneth Welsh), it seems that that plot thread was doomed from the start, since the book was written before the scripts for the episodes were finalized.

That's not to say that The Autobiography has no merit. It has its moments, for sure. But, overall, it's a disappointing, jarring read, that doesn't really add anything substantial to our understanding of Cooper, or to the show's story. But fans, like myself, won't be able to resist hunting down a copy and giving it a read. Now, though, having read it, I understand why the book has never been back in print since its original publication.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2021.

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Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

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