Prey is a techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton first published in hardback edition in November 2002 and as a paperback edition in November 2003 by Harper Collins. Like Jurassic Park, the novel serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology; in this case, nanotechnology. Image File history File links The cover of the Novel Prey by Michael Crichton. ... Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942, pronounced [1]) is an American author, film producer, film director, and television producer. ... In political geography and international politics, a country is a political division of a geographical entity, a sovereign territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation and government. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Some notable science fiction novels, in alphabetical order by title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke 334 by Thomas M. Disch An Age by Brian Aldiss The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard... Techno-thrillers are a hybrid genre, drawing subject matter generally from spy thrillers, war novels, and science fiction. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Collins was a Scottish printing company founded by a schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... ISBN-13 represented as EAN-13 bar code (in this case ISBN 978-3-16-148410-0) The International Standard Book Number, ISBN, is a unique[1] commercial book identifier barcode. ... Techno-thrillers are a hybrid genre, drawing subject matter generally from spy thrillers, war novels, and science fiction. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... Michael Crichton (born October 23, 1942, pronounced [1]) is an American author, film producer, film director, and television producer. ... A hardcover (or hardback or hardbound) book is bound with rigid protective covers (typically of cardboard covered with cloth or heavy paper) and a stitched spine. ... Also see: 2002 (number). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link displays 2003 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Collins was a Scottish printing company founded by a schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819. ... Jurassic Park is a techno-thriller novel written by Michael Crichton that was published in 1990. ... A cautionary tale is a traditional story told in folklore, to warn its hearer of a danger. ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... By the mid 20th century humans had achieved a mastery of technology sufficient to leave the surface of the Earth for the first time and explore space. ... Buckminsterfullerene C60, also known as the buckyball, is the simplest of the carbon structures known as fullerenes. ...

The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing. Artificial Life, (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and art form that examines systems related to life, its processes and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry [1] (called soft, hard, and wet approaches respectively[2]). Artificial life complements traditional Biology by trying to... A termite cathedral mound produced by a termite colony: a classic example of emergence in nature. ... Complexity in general usage is the opposite of simplicity. ... A genetic algorithm (GA) is an algorithm used to find approximate solutions to difficult-to-solve problems through application of the principles of evolutionary biology to computer science. ... Simple reflex agent Learning agent The terms agent and intelligent agent are ambiguous and have been used in two different, but related senses, which are often confused. ...

Plot summary

The novel is narrated by the protagonist Jack Forman, an unemployed software programmer who used to work with artificial intelligence. He was fired for attempting to expose an internal scandal in his company. As a result, no other company would employ him and he is forced to take the role of "house-husband" while his wife Julia works as a dedicated executive for Xymos, a nanorobotics company, putting strain on family life. Xymos claims to be on the verge of perfecting a revolutionary new medical imaging technology based on nanotechnology, but Jack is skeptical. A protagonist is the main figure of a piece of literature or drama and has the main part or role. ... Unemployment rates in the United States. ... Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ... A programmer or software developer is someone who programs computers, that is, one who writes computer software. ... Garry Kasparov playing against Deep Blue, the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion. ... A scandal is a widely publicized incident involving allegations of wrong-doing, disgrace, or moral outrage. ... Two homemakers. ... Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the scale of a nanometre (10-9 metres). ... Buckminsterfullerene C60, also known as the buckyball, is the simplest of the carbon structures known as fullerenes. ...

Jack's baby daughter Amanda develops a very strange rash that propagates and becomes very severe. He takes her to the hospital, but the doctors are unable to find the cause of the rash. She is then taken to an MRI and strangely, she is instantly cured. Sometime later, Jack is surprised to see that the memory chip of a mp3 player belonging to his son has been completely disintegrated. During this time, Jack begins to suspect his wife is having an affair, as her behavior becomes increasingly distant. A rash is a change in skin which affects its color, appearance or texture. ... The mri are a fictional alien species in the Faded Sun Trilogy of C.J. Cherryh. ... A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. ...

Jack's old company, which has become a contractor to Xymos, offer to rehire him to help deal with an alleged software problem. His sister steps in to manage the family while he is away. Jack's wife, Julia, is involved in a suspicious car crash.

Jack travels to the remote Xymos manufacturing facility in Nevada. Upon arrival, the Xymos team leader, Ricky, gives Jack a brief tour of the building, and explains that the company is under contract from the Department of Defense to create a swarm of nanorobots that act as a camera for reconnaissance and spying. The swarm is created by genetically modified E. coli bacteria, which creates gamma assemblers from raw materials that in turn churn out new nanobots. However, the swarm could not work in the wild because they were quickly blown by the light winds, a problem the engineering team could not solve. As a result, the Pentagon decided to cancel their contract. Ricky then reveals that building contractors failed to properly install filters in a vent in the building, and the assemblers, bacterias, and nanobots were blown into the desert, forming a swarm on its own. These swarms were given solar power and memory. They appear to be self-sufficient, reproducing and evolving rapidly. Most alarmingly, the swarms exhibit rudimentary intelligence and what seems to be predatory behavior, attacking and killing small animals. Jack cannot explain this behaviour as Ricky says the code did not include algorithms that allow genetic evolution. This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... The United States Department of Defense (DOD or DoD) is the federal department charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government relating directly to national security and the military. ... Mixed reconnaissance patrol of the Polish Home Army and the Soviet Red Army during Operation Tempest, 1944 Reconnaissance is the military term for the active gathering of information about an enemy, or other conditions, by physical observation. ... Spy and secret agent redirect here; for alternate use, see Spy (disambiguation) and Secret agent (disambiguation). ... Genetic engineering, genetic modification (GM), and gene splicing (once in widespread use but now deprecated) are terms for the process of manipulating genes in an organism, usually outside of the organisms normal reproductive process. ... Binomial name Escherichia coli T. Escherich, 1885 Escherichia coli (usually abbreviated to E. coli) is one of the main species of bacteria that live in the lower intestines of warm-blooded animals (including birds and mammals) and are necessary for the proper digestion of food. ... For other uses, see Reproduction (disambiguation) Reproduction is the biological process by which new individual organisms are produced. ... This article is about evolution in biology. ... This snapping turtle is trying to make a meal of a Canada goose, but the goose is too wary. ...

At the fab plant, he is joined by members of his old software development team - Mae, Charley, David, Rosie, and Bobby. The nanoswarm kills a rabbit outside the complex and Jack goes outside with Mae to inspect. She checks the rabbit and finds that it died of suffocation resulting from the nanobots blocking its bronchial tubes. Mae goes inside for equipment while Jack waits for her. Meanwhile, two swarms approach Jack. He outsmarts the swarm temporarily using his knowledge of their programming. However, the swarm figures out his trick, proving that the swarms are indeed learning. The swarms attack him but he manages to get through the airlock and inside the lab before going unconscious.

He wakes up and Mae tells him that he went into anaphylactic shock. He explains the situation to the team and concludes that the swarm must have nested in the desert to reproduce. They decide to attempt to find this nest by tagging the swarm with radioactive isotopes and following them back to their nest at night. A strong wind picks up, forcing the swarms to remain dormant, and the team goes to a shack to find the isotopes they can use as tags. Eventually, the wind dies down and four swarms surround the shack. Jack uses his knowledge of the swarm's programming again and organizes the group to exit the shack in a formation similar to a flock of birds, effectively confusing the swarm. However, David undergoes a mental breakdown and breaks formation, running for the door to the complex. The swarm surrounds him, and Rosie runs after him in a hopeless attempt to save him. The swarm kills them both. Anaphylaxis is a severe and rapid systemic allergic reaction to a trigger substance, called an allergen. ...

With only three people, their numbers are not great enough to confuse the swarm. They are forced to take shelter in the cars parked outside. The Swarm begins an attempt to enter the cars. Mae and Jack noticed that the swarms have evolved yet again, and now attempt to confuse the prey by reflecting images of them like mirrors. This was definitely not a part of the original programming. Eventually, the swarms find a way to enter the cars through the hood. The wind picks up in speed again, so Jack and Mae open the doors to escape. Charley manages to spray his swarm with the isotope and open his door before he falls unconscious. Mae and Jack escape back to the lab.

However, Jack goes back out again to save Charley. Using a motorbike found in David's car, Jack confuses the swarms by varying the speed. Both Charley and Jack return safely to the lab.

Jack and the rest of the surviving team try to relax after the devastating attack. At dinner, Charley wonders aloud whether or not the nanoparticles can get into a brain. Jack ponders about this. When suddenly, alarms go off. Outside the fab plant, stands "Ricky". The team soon realizes that it was not actually Ricky, but nanoswarms taking on a crude mirror of his shape. The swarms have now advanced enough to somewhat effectively mimic their prey.

Jack, Mae and Bobby set out to find the swarms at night. They discover the swarm nest in a cave and successfully destroy it, using a combination of explosives and an ATV as a Molotov cocktail. They return to the plant, exhausted. The term All-Terrain Vehicle or ATV is used in a general sense to describe any of a number of small open motorized buggies and tricycles designed for off-road use. ...

At this point, Jack's wife, Julia, who had been hospitalized after the suspicious car accident, flies out to the facility. When Jack, Mae and Bobby return to the facility, they are enthusiastically greeted by Julia and Ricky. Julia begins to break down with Jack, apologizing for her behavior for the past few weeks. He, however, is no longer interested in domestic issues. She attempts to kiss him, but they are interrupted by Ricky. He has found Charley dead in a locked room with a swarm flying around him and the phone wires cut. Jack cannot understand how the swarm got inside the rigorously protected, airtight building, why Charley would have cut the wires which would stop the facility's communications and cut them off from the world, nor why Julia and Ricky seems to be coming up with various out-of-character ways of how he died. Mae and Jack become suspicious.

Jack goes to sleep and has a terrible nightmare. He wakes up the next day and find Mae looking over a security video (which Ricky said was lost because the wires had been cut) and to Jack's horror, sees a video of Ricky and Julia kissing. They also see Charley fighting viciously with Ricky. Both of them end up in the communication room where Julia kisses Charley, injecting a stream of swarm into his mouth. Julia suddenly enters the room while Jack and Mae are watching and grows suspicious.

Eventually, Jack and Mae then realize that everyone in the facility except themselves have been infested by a parasitic version of the nanobots that are capable of controlling their hosts, including Ricky and Jack's wife, Julia. These nanobots evolved alongside the other swarms, and they evolved to a milder form that slowly devours their host, while allowing the hosts to travel and contaminate others.

Jack comes up with the idea to contaminate the sprinkler system with a phage that kills the nanobot-producing E. coli bacteria. Mae takes a bottle of phage to give to the other team members while Jack secretly goes to the sprinklers, but the other members aren't fooled and Julia kisses Mae. However, having drunk the phage herself, she is not contaminated. Jack is caught, but fights his way through to the sprinkler system. In order to intercept, Ricky shuts off the security system, but this will explode parts of the production conduit containing the bacteria, with Jack holding an open flame to a sprinkler, they are doomed either way. In panic, they switch the security system on, covering themselves in the bacteria from the sprinkler system, thus killing not only themselves, but the strain itself. Jack and Mae escape the facility in a helicopter shortly before the facility explodes due to a methane gas leak. A bacteriophage (from bacteria and Greek phagein, to eat) is a virus that infects bacteria. ... Methane is a chemical compound with the molecular formula CH4. ...

Jack puts together all the missing links. Amanda's rash was caused by gamma assemblers, which irritated her skin. The MRI's strong magnetic field pulled the assemblers right off. His son's MP3 player was also damaged by the assemblers. These assemblers were most likely brought home by Julia. Jack also discovers an e-mail on Julia's laptop that indicates that the release of the swarm in the wild wasn't accidental but was done intentionally. It was she who authorized the release of the swarms in the first place. They released it in hopes that it would evolve and solve their problem, failing to realize the potential consequences of their actions. The swarm then infiltrated Julia and Ricky, influencing (and later controlling) their actions. A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. ...

Jack returns home and gives a dosage of phage to all his children and himself. He is uncertain of the future. Mae is in a meeting to try to make everyone understand the seriousness and the depth of the problem. Everyone that came into contact with the swarms are now dead, except for Mae, Jack, and all of Jack's children. The swarms seem to be also extinguished, however, some assemblers could have survived. Meanwhile, back at Jack's house, his children Eric, Nicole, and the baby Amanda are throwing up. Jack is starting to feel dizzy. He knows he had no choice other than to give himself, the children, and his sister the phage to kill off any possible swarms they may be harboring in their bodies.

Characters in "Prey"

Major Characters

• Jack Forman – The protagonist. A programmer with a strong background in biology, he is an expert in the field of agent-based artificial intelligence software.

• Julia Forman – Jack's wife, she is the vice president of Xymos and a driving force behind the development of the nanorobots.

• Ricky Morse – The team leader for Xymos' nanotechnology research project.

• Mae Chang - A field biologist on Jack's consulting team.

• Charley Davenport - A member of Jack's team who specializes in genetic algorithms.

• David Brooks - An engineer on the team

• Rosie Castro - A specialist in natural language processing

• Bobby Lembeck - A programming supervisor

• The 'Swarm' - Any of the many predatory clouds of nano-machines serving as an antagonistic force in the novel. A notable aspect of the swarm is its capacity for fully Lamarckian evolution, as each cloud's 'members' can effect choose exactly which aspects are to be transmitted or modified down into the next generation through manipulation of the E. coli used to produce the new robots.

• Vince Reynolds - the maintenance operator of the Xymos lab.

• Amanda- Jack and Julia's baby daughter.

• Nicole - Jack and Julia's daughter.

• Eric - Jack and Julia's son.

A genetic algorithm (GA) is an algorithm used to find approximate solutions to difficult-to-solve problems through application of the principles of evolutionary biology to computer science. ... Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of artificial intelligence and linguistics. ... Lamarckism or Lamarckian evolution is a theory put forward by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de Lamarck, based on heritability of acquired characteristics, the once widely accepted idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring. ...

Minor Characters

• Ellen - Jack's sister from out of town. She took care of his kids while he has in Nevada.
• Don Gross - Jack's former boss, who fired Jack.
• Gary - Jack's lawyer.
• Maria - Jack and Julia's cleaning lady.
• Annie - Jack's headhunter.
• Carol - Julia's assistant.
• Mary - Ricky's wife.
• Tim Berman - The man that took over Jack's job.

Major themes

Prey deals with the threat of intelligent nano-robots escaping from human control and becoming autonomous, self-replicating and dangerous. It loosely deals with the grey goo concept that has been widely explored in science fiction. Many aspects of the story, such as the cloud-like nature of the nanoparticles, their evolution, and even their hiding place all closely follow Stanisław Lem's 1964 novel, The Invincible. Intelligence is the mental capacity to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend ideas and language, and learn. ... Look up nano in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... ASIMO, a humanoid robot manufactured by Honda. ... Self-replication is the process by which some things make copies of themselves. ... Grey goo refers to a hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all living matter on Earth while building more of themselves (a scenario known as ecophagy). ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... StanisÅ‚aw Lem (1966). ... 1964 (MCMLXIV) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1964 calendar). ... The Invincible is a science fiction novel written by Stanisław Lem and published in Polish in 1964. ...

Another theme is how short-sighted decision-making at the corporate level can lead to disaster when the companies involved control dangerous new technology. Michael Crichton states that the book is about what will happen if suitable controls are not placed on biotechnology before it develops to such an extent that it can threaten the survival of life on Earth. The structure of insulin Biological technology is technology based on biology, especially when used in agriculture, food science, and medicine. ...

Trivia

• It has been said that the swarm in Prey is the inspiration for the mystical monster on Lost, though nanobots have been officially denied as the nature of the creature.^[1][2] However, Damon Lindelof has said (in the 4/30/07 podcast), "Basically anything that appears in a Michael Crichton novel - dinosaurs, nanobots, time travel -- they're all in play."

Lost is a genre television show and includes a number of mysterious elements that have been ascribed to science fiction or supernatural phenomena. ... Lost is a popular American serial drama television series that follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a tropical island, after a passenger jet flying between Australia and the United States crashes somewhere in the South Pacific. ... Damon Lindelof, 2006 Damon Laurence Lindelof (born April 24, 1973) is an American television writer, executive, hack, and most recently noted as the co-creator, executive producer, head writer and show runner for the hit television series Lost. ... An orange square with waves indicates that an RSS feed is present on a web page. ...

Footnotes