Book Review: Sphere by Michael Crichton
To be perfectly upfront, I read this book because I was desperate for something to read while on jury duty. This book has sat on my shelf, unread, since the late 90s and its comeuppance arrived when my local library had no available ebooks that I wanted to read.
I had previously read two Michael Crichton books: Jurassic Park and Congo, but maybe only when I was 12 or so, and I enjoyed them. Crichton’s reputation for writing solid mass market thrillers was enough for me to assume that this book would be adequately entertaining.
And indeed it was.
The premise is that the United States Navy has discovered a mysterious underwater object in the Pacific Ocean and they have summoned a team of scientists to assist with the investigation. As they work to discover the nature of this object during a prolonged stay in a deep-sea habitat, odd things begin to happen…
Sphere was fine, even interesting for the first two thirds of the story, before things started to seriously unravel. It proceeds as one might expect of a popular mystery/thriller novel. However, as the mystery of the sphere became clearer things started to get so ridiculous that I was pulled out of the story a little, but by then I just wanted to know how it ended so I kept on anyway.
The nice thing about the novel was that I didn’t have to think at all. These kinds of novels don’t assume anyone knows anything, so there were a lot of explanatory passages in Sphere about black holes, underwater exploration, military operations, and all that. When I want some really really light reading, I’m generally looking to be spoon fed everything, and in this regard Sphere more than met my expectations.
I appreciate Michael Crichton books because they know the reader is here for a good time, not a long time, and Sphere helped me sail through my jury duty without totally rotting my gourd. It doesn’t pose thought-provoking philosophical questions or delve deep into its characters’ psyches or address urgent social concerns, and I would never have expected it to. It’s entertainment, pure and simple.
Maybe I’ll make a tradition out of this. I know I have a copy of The Andromeda Strain somewhere at home…