Description:

Welcome to our genetic world.Fast, furious, and out of control.This is not the world of the future—it's the world right now. ** ### Amazon.com Review Is a loved one missing some body parts? Are blondes becoming extinct? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes; is that why a chimp fetus resembles a human being? And should that worry us? There's a new genetic cure for drug addiction--is it worse than the disease? What's coming *Next*? Get a hint of what Michael Crichton sees on the horizon in this short video clip: high bandwidth or low bandwidth We live in a time of momentous scientific leaps, a time when it's possible to sell our eggs and sperm online for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses for genetic maladies. We live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes... Devilishly clever, *Next* blends fact and fiction into a breathless tale of a new world where nothing is what it seems and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn. *Next* challenges our sense of reality and notions of morality. Balancing the comic and the bizarre with the genuinely frightening and disturbing, *Next* shatters our assumptions and reveals shocking new choices where we least expect. The future is closer than you think. ### From Publishers Weekly Do you own your body's cells? If a doctor develops a cure for a disease using your cells in the process, are you entitled to a share of the profits? These are some of the questions Crichton explores in his latest science-as-boogeyman polemic. Baker does all he can to give life to the characters, but they are little more than tools to convey the plot, so the author leaves him little to work with. Baker subtly shifts the tone of his voice to distinguish between characters and deftly alters the cadence of his speech to keep the narrative flowing. Despite his best efforts, though, Baker cannot turn the nonfiction interludes between chapters into anything remotely interesting. As if these weren't distracting enough, the multiple subplots make it quite difficult to keep track of what's going on, or how one plot line relates to another. Reading a book that goes in this many directions would be difficult enough, but on audio it's almost impossible to follow. Baker's performance is excellent all around, but listeners hoping Crichton would return to *Jurassic Park* form will be left wanting. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.