A review by burritapal_1
Sphere, by Michael Crichton
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
<spoiler >
A group of scientists traveled to a deep sea habitat in the Pacific ocean, where a spacecraft has been discovered on the ocean floor.
At first believing it to be a ship from another civilization, when they begin exploring it they find out that it's a spacecraft from the United States, that is from about 70 years in the future, but that it's been laying on the ocean floor for 300 years.
Meanwhile, on the surface of the ocean, a violent storm has made all the ships that were the support of the scientific team move out of danger's way, and now the team is on their own.
In a large cargo hold of the ship, they find a strange sphere, rather metallic looking.
Ted, the astrophysicist says that this discovery is of major importance, and "shot the unique hypothesis event to hell."
The "unique event hypothesis" is the hypothesis that there is no other intelligent life in the universe except our own. Beth Halpern, the zoologist, explains how life barely arose on earth, let alone anywhere else in the universe:
" 'well, it barely arose on the earth,' Beth said. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and single-celled life appeared 3.9 billion years ago - almost immediately, geologically speaking. But life remained single-celled for the next 3 billion years. Then in the cambrian period, around 600 million years ago, there was an explosion of sophisticated life forms. Within 100 million years, the ocean was full of fish. Then the land became populated. Then the air. But nobody knows why the explosion occurred in the first place. And since it didn't occur for 3 billion years, there's the possibility that on some other planet, it might never occur at all.
And even after the cambrian, the chain of events leading to Man appears to be so special, so chancy, that biologists worry it might never have happened. Just consider the fact if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out 65 million years ago - by a comet or whatever - then reptiles might still be the dominant form on earth, and mammals would never have had a chance to take over. No mammals, no primates. No primates, no apes. No apes, no man.. there are a lot of random factors in evolution, a lot of luck. That's why biologists think intelligent life might be a unique event in the universe, only occurring here.' "
Oh beautiful planet earth, you are so lucky, aren't you. 🥺
When they get inside the spacecraft, they start to explore. By sitting in the seats by the consoles, buttons come up that Beth begins pushing. (It's very user-friendly. The seats conform to their bodies, display screens appear.. ) Videos start playing, and the scientists believe that it's video of the spacecraft's entry event:
" a dense white cluster of stars suddenly appeared in the center of the screen. The cluster expanded as they watched. It was a strange effect, Norman thought. There was still a distinct black ring that expanded outward, with stars in the outside and on the inside. It felt as if they were flying through a giant black donut.
' my god,' Harry said softly. 'do you know what you are looking at?'
'no,' Beth said. 'what's that cluster of stars in the center?'
'it's another universe.'
'it's what?'
'well, okay. It's probably another universe. Or it might be a different region of our own universe. Nobody really knows for sure.'
What's the black donut?' Norman said.
'it's not a donut. It's a black hole. What you are seeing is the recording made as this spacecraft went through a black hole and entered into another - is someone calling?' Harry turned cocked his head. They fell silent, but barely but heard nothing."
Norman Johnson is the psychologist brought along on this trip, and he's also the narrator of the story. Harry, the math expert, goes inside the sphere, and we find out how this affected him, by reading Norman's notes: quote Norman wrote in his notebook: subject is a 30-year-old black mathematician who has spent 3 hours inside a sphere of unknown origin. On recovery from the sphere was stuporous and unresponsive; he did not know his name, where he was, or what year it was. Brought back to Habitat semicolon slept for one half hour then I woke abruptly planing of headache."
He gets really pissed off when Norman is questioning him, and then he starts looking around him for the others, saying they should all go to the surface:
" Norman sat on the bunk opposite Harry and watch as Harry drank. Harry was demonstrating a rather typical manifestation of shock: the agitation, the irritability, the nervous, manic flow of ideas, The Unexplained fears for the safety of others - it was all characteristic of shocked victims of severe accidents, such as major auto crashes or airplane crashes. Given an intense event, the brain struggled to assimilate, to make sense, to reassemble the mental world even as the physical world was shattered around it. The brain went into a kind of overdrive, hastily trying to reassemble things, to get things right, to reestablish equilibrium. Yet it was fundamentally a confused period of wheel spinning."
Now an alien intelligence begins contacting the crew, at first using only numbers. Harry cracks the code, and the alien's name is apparently "Jerry." Now Jerry regularly communicates with them, claiming authorship of the dangerous life forms threatening the crew, "just because he can." Norman finally realizes that Jerry, is really Harry.
After Harry goes in the sphere, he's able to bring things to Life by imagining them. I believe he doesn't realize he's doing at least at first, but first he brings killer squid, then killer shrimp, then killer octopus, then killer snakes...
" 'sea snakes are not usually aggressive,' Beth said. "some divers even touch them, play with them, but I never would. God. Snakes.'
'Why are they so poisonous? Is it for immobilizing prey?'
'You know, it's interesting,' Beth said, 'but the most toxic creatures in the world are all water creatures. The Venom of land animals is nothing in comparison. And even among land animals the most deadly poison is derived from an amphibian, A toad, Bufotene marfensis. In the sea, there are poisonous fish, like the blowfish, which is a delicacy in japan; there are poisonous shells, like the star cone, AlaVerdis lotensis. Once I was on a boat in Guam and a woman brought up a star cone. The shells are very beautiful, but she didn't know you have to keep your fingers away from the point. The animal extruded its poison spine and stung her in the palm. She took three steps before she collapsed in convulsions, and she died within an hour. There are also poisonous plants, poisonous sponges, poisonous corals. And then the snakes. Even the weakest of the sea snakes are invariably lethal.'
'nice,' Harry said.
'Well, you have to recognize that the ocean is a much older living environment than the land. There's been life in the oceans for three and a half billion years, much longer than on land. The methods of competition and defense are much more highly developed in the ocean - there's been more time.' "
When they start figuring out that Harry is the one responsible for the dangerous creatures that they're continually attacked by, Norman explains why the sphere is so dangerous to us: quote quote remember your idea that the sphere might strike us below the belt? Unquote Norman said. " the way the AIDS virus strikes are in system below the belt? AIDS hit us at a level we aren't prepared to deal with. So, in a sense, does the sphere. Because we believe that we can think whatever we want, without consequence. " Sticks and Stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. We have sayings like that, which emphasize the point. But now suddenly a name is as real as a stick, it and it can hurt us in the same way. Our thoughts get manifested - what a wonderful thing - except that all our thoughts get manifested, the good ones in the bad ones. And we simply aren't prepared to control our thoughts. We've never had to do it before....
" 'do you know anything about Jungian psychology?'
Beth said, 'that stuff has never struck me as relevant.'
'Well, it's relevant now,' Norman said. He explained. 'Jung broke with Freud early in this century, and developed his own psychology. Jung suspected there was an underlying structure to the human psyche that was reflected in an underlying similarity to our myths and archetypes. One of his ideas was that everybody had a dark side to his personality, which he called the "shadow." The shadow contained all the unacknowledged personality aspects - the hateful part, the sadistic parts, all that. Jung thought people had the obligation to become acquainted with their shadow side. But very few people do. We all prefer to think we're nice guys and we don't ever have the desire to kill and maim and rape and pillage.' "
Beth has gone in the sphere as well. It affects her a little differently. She becomes paranoid. But for now Beth and Norman are keeping Harry unconscious, the only way they can figure out to keep from getting killed by his manifestations.
"the computer didn't have any information about the effects of keeping a person asleep for 12 hours straight, but that was what they would have to do. Either Harry would make it, or he wouldn't....
the sphere was still there, with its changed pattern of grooves. In all the excitement he had almost forgotten his initial fascination with the sphere, where It had come from, what it meant. Although they understood now what it meant. What had Beth called it? A mental enzyme. An enzyme was something that made chemical reactions possible without actually participating in them. Our bodies needed to perform chemical reactions, but our body temperatures were too cold for most chemical reactions to proceed smoothly. So we had enzymes to help the process along, speed it up. The enzymes made it all possible. And she had called the sphere a mental enzyme."
When the much diminished team is finally able to surface, and they are going through decompression on a ship, they all talk about what they're going to say about what happened. They know that if they tell the truth, there will be a huge navy investigation, most likely implicating them, but more than everything else, who would believe the truth? So the three of them, Beth, Harry and Norman decide that they're going to agree to forget everything, and make up a story about ocean conditions and habitat failure killing the other members of the team. All three of them have been inside the sphere and have come by the power to envision things and bring them to life, so supposedly, just by agreeing to concentrate on losing that power, they will make it go away. This part was a little hard to swallow. But there's some clues that Beth may not have "lost her power."
This makes me think there's a follow-up to this book.
Kudos to the deceased author for his unique imagination of an alien intelligence that is not anything like humans. And some parts are informative, i love that in a book.
A group of scientists traveled to a deep sea habitat in the Pacific ocean, where a spacecraft has been discovered on the ocean floor.
At first believing it to be a ship from another civilization, when they begin exploring it they find out that it's a spacecraft from the United States, that is from about 70 years in the future, but that it's been laying on the ocean floor for 300 years.
Meanwhile, on the surface of the ocean, a violent storm has made all the ships that were the support of the scientific team move out of danger's way, and now the team is on their own.
In a large cargo hold of the ship, they find a strange sphere, rather metallic looking.
Ted, the astrophysicist says that this discovery is of major importance, and "shot the unique hypothesis event to hell."
The "unique event hypothesis" is the hypothesis that there is no other intelligent life in the universe except our own. Beth Halpern, the zoologist, explains how life barely arose on earth, let alone anywhere else in the universe:
" 'well, it barely arose on the earth,' Beth said. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and single-celled life appeared 3.9 billion years ago - almost immediately, geologically speaking. But life remained single-celled for the next 3 billion years. Then in the cambrian period, around 600 million years ago, there was an explosion of sophisticated life forms. Within 100 million years, the ocean was full of fish. Then the land became populated. Then the air. But nobody knows why the explosion occurred in the first place. And since it didn't occur for 3 billion years, there's the possibility that on some other planet, it might never occur at all.
And even after the cambrian, the chain of events leading to Man appears to be so special, so chancy, that biologists worry it might never have happened. Just consider the fact if the dinosaurs hadn't been wiped out 65 million years ago - by a comet or whatever - then reptiles might still be the dominant form on earth, and mammals would never have had a chance to take over. No mammals, no primates. No primates, no apes. No apes, no man.. there are a lot of random factors in evolution, a lot of luck. That's why biologists think intelligent life might be a unique event in the universe, only occurring here.' "
Oh beautiful planet earth, you are so lucky, aren't you. 🥺
When they get inside the spacecraft, they start to explore. By sitting in the seats by the consoles, buttons come up that Beth begins pushing. (It's very user-friendly. The seats conform to their bodies, display screens appear.. ) Videos start playing, and the scientists believe that it's video of the spacecraft's entry event:
" a dense white cluster of stars suddenly appeared in the center of the screen. The cluster expanded as they watched. It was a strange effect, Norman thought. There was still a distinct black ring that expanded outward, with stars in the outside and on the inside. It felt as if they were flying through a giant black donut.
' my god,' Harry said softly. 'do you know what you are looking at?'
'no,' Beth said. 'what's that cluster of stars in the center?'
'it's another universe.'
'it's what?'
'well, okay. It's probably another universe. Or it might be a different region of our own universe. Nobody really knows for sure.'
What's the black donut?' Norman said.
'it's not a donut. It's a black hole. What you are seeing is the recording made as this spacecraft went through a black hole and entered into another - is someone calling?' Harry turned cocked his head. They fell silent, but barely but heard nothing."
Norman Johnson is the psychologist brought along on this trip, and he's also the narrator of the story. Harry, the math expert, goes inside the sphere, and we find out how this affected him, by reading Norman's notes: quote Norman wrote in his notebook: subject is a 30-year-old black mathematician who has spent 3 hours inside a sphere of unknown origin. On recovery from the sphere was stuporous and unresponsive; he did not know his name, where he was, or what year it was. Brought back to Habitat semicolon slept for one half hour then I woke abruptly planing of headache."
He gets really pissed off when Norman is questioning him, and then he starts looking around him for the others, saying they should all go to the surface:
" Norman sat on the bunk opposite Harry and watch as Harry drank. Harry was demonstrating a rather typical manifestation of shock: the agitation, the irritability, the nervous, manic flow of ideas, The Unexplained fears for the safety of others - it was all characteristic of shocked victims of severe accidents, such as major auto crashes or airplane crashes. Given an intense event, the brain struggled to assimilate, to make sense, to reassemble the mental world even as the physical world was shattered around it. The brain went into a kind of overdrive, hastily trying to reassemble things, to get things right, to reestablish equilibrium. Yet it was fundamentally a confused period of wheel spinning."
Now an alien intelligence begins contacting the crew, at first using only numbers. Harry cracks the code, and the alien's name is apparently "Jerry." Now Jerry regularly communicates with them, claiming authorship of the dangerous life forms threatening the crew, "just because he can." Norman finally realizes that Jerry, is really Harry.
After Harry goes in the sphere, he's able to bring things to Life by imagining them. I believe he doesn't realize he's doing at least at first, but first he brings killer squid, then killer shrimp, then killer octopus, then killer snakes...
" 'sea snakes are not usually aggressive,' Beth said. "some divers even touch them, play with them, but I never would. God. Snakes.'
'Why are they so poisonous? Is it for immobilizing prey?'
'You know, it's interesting,' Beth said, 'but the most toxic creatures in the world are all water creatures. The Venom of land animals is nothing in comparison. And even among land animals the most deadly poison is derived from an amphibian, A toad, Bufotene marfensis. In the sea, there are poisonous fish, like the blowfish, which is a delicacy in japan; there are poisonous shells, like the star cone, AlaVerdis lotensis. Once I was on a boat in Guam and a woman brought up a star cone. The shells are very beautiful, but she didn't know you have to keep your fingers away from the point. The animal extruded its poison spine and stung her in the palm. She took three steps before she collapsed in convulsions, and she died within an hour. There are also poisonous plants, poisonous sponges, poisonous corals. And then the snakes. Even the weakest of the sea snakes are invariably lethal.'
'nice,' Harry said.
'Well, you have to recognize that the ocean is a much older living environment than the land. There's been life in the oceans for three and a half billion years, much longer than on land. The methods of competition and defense are much more highly developed in the ocean - there's been more time.' "
When they start figuring out that Harry is the one responsible for the dangerous creatures that they're continually attacked by, Norman explains why the sphere is so dangerous to us: quote quote remember your idea that the sphere might strike us below the belt? Unquote Norman said. " the way the AIDS virus strikes are in system below the belt? AIDS hit us at a level we aren't prepared to deal with. So, in a sense, does the sphere. Because we believe that we can think whatever we want, without consequence. " Sticks and Stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me. We have sayings like that, which emphasize the point. But now suddenly a name is as real as a stick, it and it can hurt us in the same way. Our thoughts get manifested - what a wonderful thing - except that all our thoughts get manifested, the good ones in the bad ones. And we simply aren't prepared to control our thoughts. We've never had to do it before....
" 'do you know anything about Jungian psychology?'
Beth said, 'that stuff has never struck me as relevant.'
'Well, it's relevant now,' Norman said. He explained. 'Jung broke with Freud early in this century, and developed his own psychology. Jung suspected there was an underlying structure to the human psyche that was reflected in an underlying similarity to our myths and archetypes. One of his ideas was that everybody had a dark side to his personality, which he called the "shadow." The shadow contained all the unacknowledged personality aspects - the hateful part, the sadistic parts, all that. Jung thought people had the obligation to become acquainted with their shadow side. But very few people do. We all prefer to think we're nice guys and we don't ever have the desire to kill and maim and rape and pillage.' "
Beth has gone in the sphere as well. It affects her a little differently. She becomes paranoid. But for now Beth and Norman are keeping Harry unconscious, the only way they can figure out to keep from getting killed by his manifestations.
"the computer didn't have any information about the effects of keeping a person asleep for 12 hours straight, but that was what they would have to do. Either Harry would make it, or he wouldn't....
the sphere was still there, with its changed pattern of grooves. In all the excitement he had almost forgotten his initial fascination with the sphere, where It had come from, what it meant. Although they understood now what it meant. What had Beth called it? A mental enzyme. An enzyme was something that made chemical reactions possible without actually participating in them. Our bodies needed to perform chemical reactions, but our body temperatures were too cold for most chemical reactions to proceed smoothly. So we had enzymes to help the process along, speed it up. The enzymes made it all possible. And she had called the sphere a mental enzyme."
When the much diminished team is finally able to surface, and they are going through decompression on a ship, they all talk about what they're going to say about what happened. They know that if they tell the truth, there will be a huge navy investigation, most likely implicating them, but more than everything else, who would believe the truth? So the three of them, Beth, Harry and Norman decide that they're going to agree to forget everything, and make up a story about ocean conditions and habitat failure killing the other members of the team. All three of them have been inside the sphere and have come by the power to envision things and bring them to life, so supposedly, just by agreeing to concentrate on losing that power, they will make it go away. This part was a little hard to swallow. But there's some clues that Beth may not have "lost her power."
This makes me think there's a follow-up to this book.
Kudos to the deceased author for his unique imagination of an alien intelligence that is not anything like humans. And some parts are informative, i love that in a book.