| SPHERE Michael Crichton New York: Ballantine, August 1988 (© 1987) |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-345-35314-6 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-345-35314-5 | 371pp. | SC | $6.99 | |
In Sphere, Michael Crichton has dipped into the dark waters plumbed by Wells (The Man Who Could Work Miracles), Ursula LeGuin (The Lathe of Heaven), and many others. Norman Johnson, a fifty-three-year-old psychology professor, is summoned to mid-Pacific to investigate what he thinks is an airplane crash — nothing unusual, since he is on the experts list for such events. But this crash turns out to be somewhat different: it's a U.S. Navy spaceship from the future, which has on board a mysterious sphere some thirty feet in diameter. The ship is a massively sturdy construction, and study of its logs indicates that it apparently passed into and returned from a black hole.
At length, after most of the people involved have died in various gruesome ways, he discerns the answer: Anyone who manages to enter the sphere acquires the ability to will things to happen. This ability has been manifested unconsciously so far, hence the deaths; people's buried, primal fears are at work. But with his realization comes the means of escape, and once he and the other two survivors reach safety, they decide among themselves to simply will the knowledge of the ship away.1 Before leaving, they had placed explosives around it. These detonate as they reach the surface, presumably destroying the ship and its lethal contents.
In the end of the story, after they've survived the explosion (by implication, because they willed it so), they spend considerable time discussing what to do about the sphere. Harry concludes they will succeed in erasing all evidence of its existence, and even the evidence that the spaceship existed. To me that seems unlikely, because the Navy has videotapes recording everything they did on the bottom and the wreckage will still be down there.
Harry shook his head. "I don't think it's a paradox," he said. "I think that all knowledge of that ship is going to be lost." "You mean, we are going to forget it." "Yes," Harry said. "And frankly, I think it's a much better solution." – Page 365 |
I beg to differ. I don't think it's logical to assume that, even with their powers, they can wipe out every bit of evidence.
Norman took a deep breath, and looked at Beth and Harry. "Are we ready to forget the sphere, and the fact that we once had the power to make things happen by thinking them?" They nodded. Beth became suddenly agitated, twisting in her chair. "But how do we do it, exactly?" "We just do it," Norman said. "Close your eyes and tell yourself to forget it." "Then we have to do it all together," she said. "At the same time." "Okay," Harry said. "On the count of three." They closed their eyes. "One..." With his eyes closed, Norman thought, People always forget they have power, anyway. "Two..." Harry said. And then Norman focused his mind. With a sudden intensity he saw the sphere again, shining like a star, perfect and polished, and he thought: I want to forget I ever saw the sphere. And in his mind's eye, the sphere vanished. – Page 368 |
The novel works well as a story, and Crichton ably maintains the suspense throughout. But I find it hard to classify this novel as science fiction.2 I put it in that category because I have no better place for it. The reason for my difficulty is that the paradox of the ship's existence is not resolved by Johnson's stratagem, even if it ends the immediate threat of the survivors' godlike powers. Consider: the ship came from the future, when after apparently passing through a black hole it was thrown back in time on its journey home with the sphere it had somehow captured. Whether or not the ship, and knowledge of it, exist in our present, the ship will be built and launched in the future — because it has been, if you catch my meaning. Let me put it this way: The ship was unknown in our present at the beginning of the tale; now Crichton posits it will be unknown again at the end.
Another defect of the novel, though a lesser one, is that Crichton plays fast and loose with science. For a ship, no matter how sturdily constructed, to pass through a black hole and return is forbidden by what is known about the nature of black holes.
I therefore mark it down two notches. Read it if you want to pass some time with a page-turner, but be prepared for an unsatisfying ending. There are far better time-paradox novels that don't strain the logic or mangle the science as wantonly. I've reviewed two of them: Stuart Gordon's Time Story and the late Lloyd Biggle's The Chronocide Mission.
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