Crichton's Novel "Sphere"

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Has anyone else here read this book? It was incredibly frustrating! A fascinating and extremely creative plot set-up ruined by terrible characterization and dead-end plot twists.

Last edited by starkid on 24 Feb 2014, 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

It was very interesting and it did have some strange events going on towards the end. I got the impression they chose to 'forget' in order to save the world from the effects of the sphere.

But it was confusing and not clear. However, I did enjoy reading this.

starkid, I read it years ago and kind of had your reaction. Great first half of the book, and then Crichton didn't know where to go with it.

And I think this also illustrates, for a writer, the advantages of having several projects going on at once. That way, it's easy to graciously back away from a project.

It started out very well up until they opened the ship. Things went down the toilet afterward. The quality of the writing and the plot/storyline ..and the characters themselves became bland and superficial.

It almost feels like Crichton was writing the novel up until the ship was opened and then rushed to finish it so it could hit the shelves on xmas or something like that.


I would suggest you read 'The Reality Dysfunction' novels (US marketed as 'Night's Dawn' trilogy). It an amazing set of novels.

I don't know. I looked it up on Amazon. It's contemporary and I really hate modern fiction; I was reading Crichton out of boredom. Plus it seems like one of those sprawling epic stories with a zillion characters, too many to keep track of, and too much dialogue and social stuff, not enough sciency stuff.

Yes it does have a good number of characters but the story does follow the 3 main characters.

However, the novels are deep into tech stuff. This is one of the few sci fi novels where orbital mechanics and physics in general are present the entire time.

I don't know if by social you mean lots of smoochy chit-chat or if you mean socio-political stuff. It has very few smoochy-chit-chat and lots of socio-political.

No spoilers here just giving you background info of the 'universe' the novel takes place:

1- Humanity has split into two strands, the Adamists and Edenists. The Edenists possess the affinity gene, which allows telepathic communication between one another and the construction and use of bio-technological (or 'bitek') constructs, including sentient, living starships (voidhawks) and enormous space habitats. The Edenists have a much greater standard of living than their Adamist counterparts. The Adamists are 'classic' humans who employ mechanical and cybernetic technology and use implants (including 'neural nanonics', essentially computer systems built into the brain which allow anything from enhanced memory and entertainment access to controlling starships) to achieve their ends. The Adamists reject bitek for religious and cultural reasons.

2- Politics, intrigue are as present in the novel as the daily life of the main characters. You get to see 'the big movers' and the way 'the little people' way of life in very different technological and ideological human factions. Human worlds are all in different stages of development so you do get to see the dirt poor and the ultrawealthy.

3- Space flight is a big part of the plot since the primary character is a starship captain. Much of the novel takes place in space and the author takes a lot of time having the characters deal with real physics during spaceflight.

4- The main, main plot of the book is centered around a star system where humans found the remains of an extinct alien civilization. These aliens had never left their star system (no FTL) but they colonized their star system with colonies and habitats much like the Edenist habitats. However, something catastrophic happened and the entire solar system except the sun was obliterated. All that is left around the star is an enormous debris field. The few technology that has been found and studied shows that this alien race encountered SOMETHING which destroyed them.

...and humanity is about to come into contact with that very same 'something'.


Oh, and the dead start coming back to posses the living. They aren't zombies...just souls that are desperate to escape 'the afterlife' because that 'something' haunts them too.

Like I said, its a REALLY good set of books