{4.5\/5} “Wear these at all times, even though they’re just a precaution: the alarms trigger automatically if life-support conditions go below optimum. But that won’t happen… Every single major system is redundant. We can lose power, we can lose air, we can lose water entirely, and we will be fine for a hundred and thirty hours.”<\/p>\n
Norman is a psychologist who’s called to the site of airplane crashes once in a while. But this time he’s taken to the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where no airplane has crashed. There’s something at the bottom of the ocean that’s been there for 300 years — it looks like a spaceship. He goes down to the craft with a biologist, a mathematician, a zoologist, an astrophysicist, and some navy personnel. What they find will be surprising and deadly.<\/p>\n
Sphere<\/strong> by Michael Crichton was published in 1987.<\/p>\n It’s a bit like Crichton’s earlier novel The Andromeda Strain<\/strong> in that there’s an unlikely event that happens — there’s a procedure to follow because someone has anticipated it, and they follow the procedure.<\/p>\n It’s a bit like the movie The Abyss<\/strong> in that there are dangerous events in an underwater setting.<\/p>\n The characters think the spaceship is alien at first, but the reality is even stranger.<\/p>\n It’s exciting, and possibly Crichton’s best book. He knows how to integrate science into the story.<\/p>\n