"Techno-thriller gives pause for thought"
Jack Forman is a family man who has recently lost his high
tech job (creating computer codes designed to solve
problems by mimicking the behavior of bees, birds, and pack
animals a.k.a. predator/prey software) as a result of
having too much integrity. His attempts to blow the whistle
on corrupt management has resulted in him being blacklisted
in the job market. Jack's wife becomes the breadwinner
while Jack finds himself in the new role of stay at home
dad. Recently Jack's wife Julia, a Vice President for Xymos
Technology has begun keeping late hours at the company's
top secret laboratory in the Nevada desert and her behavior
at home with her family is erratic at best. Xymos is in
desperate need of more funds to continue their latest
project which involves precociously developed
nano-technology. Strange things begin to happen in the Foreman home, the
baby gets a mysterious illness and recovers just as
mysteriously, their son is seeing ghosts, memory chips are
disintegrating in appliances, and Julia, who has become
secretive and aggressive, is injured in a serious car
accident but refuses treatment. Jack begins to wonder if
his wife's behavior is merely due to stress of if she might
be having an affair. Jack soon gets his chance to find out when his old company
suddenly wants to hire him back to act as a consultant to
Xymos on the very project Julia has been working on. He
soon finds himself in the Nevada desert where it is
immediately obvious that something has gone very wrong with
the project. Julia and her coworkers have created a
scientific marvel which has the ability to self replicate
and evolve through problem solving codes similar to those
Jack himself had developed. In order for the "product" to evolve the desired behaviors,
the scientists had covertly released it from containment
within
the laboratory to the outside. Out in the desert the animal
population is dwindling rapidly and if the technology
cannot be contained, the human race will soon become its
next prey. As if this doesn't present problem enough, Jack
must also deal with resistance from his wife and her
coworkers, who are somehow not quite what they appear to
be. Here the he enemy is infinitely smaller than the dinosaurs
of Jurassic Park, but the moral is the same: Scientific
advances must be coupled with responsibility if the human
race is going to survive the outcome. This fast-paced
scientific thriller gives us all pause for thought, as this
futuristic technology could be just around the corner.
Copyright © 2005
Reviewed by Leslie Tramposch
Posted October 30, 2006
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