Michael Crichton and The New Zoo

MC’s new and final novel is just around the corner (Fall 2010, if that’s what HarperCollins is still going with), and all I’ve been able to dredge up is that in some lecture Crichton maybe implied his next book explored the environment.

With the preachers of Global Warming sitting on our shoulders since Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, what else might you ask could be remotely interesting about our environment?

Try Enriquez’s Ted Talk, On Genomics and Our Future. Since 2001 when Venter’s company versus, I mean, and the NIH and DOE-funded HGP sequenced the first human genome, plant genome, and a ton of other firsts, they found some strange organisms inhabiting this planet with us…like an amoeba with a genome 200 times larger than a human’s. Maybe the best way to storage is not the microchip? And Deinococcus radiodurans can be blasted with 5000 Gray of ionizing radiation no problem (10 Gray kills a human), blowing apart its genome, then within 12 to 24 hours, it reassembles. Imagine that. Seriously.

Try Venter’s Ted Talk (also SALT seminar) on the biodiversity of the ocean. Ever swallow ocean water? Each milliliter contains one million bacteria and 10 million viruses. YUM. Venter’s global expedition (via his 95 foot sailboat) found 50,000 new species of bacteria per barrel of sea water, and contrary to logical assumption, the ocean is not homogenous. Completely different batches of species were found at different sample sites. And the Sargasso Sea, a place previously presumed inhospitable to life turns out to be teeming with it.

Ira Flatow’s got a NPR episode, Is There Anything Else Out There? (4/2009), that addresses some fascinating questions like, What microscopic life have we left in outer space and, more interesting, what have we brought back? Is there some life form that could exist under our noses, in our noses, that we haven’t discovered because it is not DNA or RNA-based so we haven’t recognized it as life?

The environment theme is loaded, and Crichton was a brilliant shot.

I am a character-loving reader and writer. I prefer Lehane to Crichton. Plot falls to the background with me. I just don’t always need it (Money by Amis, She’s Come Undone by Lamb). Still, I can’t wait to read what the master of majestic science-based plotting started to cook up, and can’t wait to read what the co-writer will do with it! michaelcrichton.net

Anyone have any info on MC’s novel?? Seems we should have heard more by now.