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Sphere

3.64 of 5 stars 3.64 · rating details · 70,011 ratings · 1,237 reviews

A group of American scientists are rushed to a huge vessel that has been discovered resting on the ocean floor in the middle of the South Pacific. What they find defines their imaginations and mocks their attempts at logical explanation. It is a spaceship of phenomenal dimensions, apparently, undamaged by its fall from the sky. And, most startling, it appears to be at leas...more

Paperback, 371 pages

Published June 23rd 1997 by Ballantine Books (first published 1987)

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Jul 10, 2007 Jamie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: 7th graders and anyone else

First, an overlong apologist's review of Michael Crichton. Then, a very short review of Sphere.

(Life update: I am procrastinating).

In my opinion, you can only truly rate a Michael Crichton book by a) the depth and originality of the concept and b) the lucidity of the monologue/essay that will always occur, usually as a rant from some broken visionary genius or another, approx. 4/5 of the way through the book.

Rating Michael Crichton on his prose, either its subtlety or execution, is sort of po...more First, an overlong apologist's review of Michael Crichton. Then, a very short review of Sphere.

(Life update: I am procrastinating).

In my opinion, you can only truly rate a Michael Crichton book by a) the depth and originality of the concept and b) the lucidity of the monologue/essay that will always occur, usually as a rant from some broken visionary genius or another, approx. 4/5 of the way through the book.

Rating Michael Crichton on his prose, either its subtlety or execution, is sort of pointless... there's no doubt that this man is a shitty prose writer, short on synonyms and prone to spend most of his energy on frenetic descriptions of action. He's basically writing scripts... which is why the man gets the Dan Brown money, but no respect from the smarties.

So in the man's defense: Michael Crichton is not really a writer, he's an idea man, and that's what attracted me to him in the first place, way back at age eleven. He's the first person I know of since maybe Jules Verne or H.G. Wells to do high quality sci-fi thought experiments, almost always focused on some aspect of humanity's inexorable "progress." In his better books, these are made far more interesting by the aforementioned monologue/essay. This is a hat trick I've never seen another writer (skilled or not) employ so effectively; these speeches almost always provide a (genuinely!) surprising counterpoint, and reframes the "innovations" Crichton describes in terms of different core needs. So suddenly the Timeline is not about BS quantum physics, it is about the rising social need for authenticity. Lost World is not about cashing in on the notion of cloning again; its about successful species as extinction-level events. These speeches are usually so tightly written in comparison to the rest of the text that I've started to think that Michael Crichton starts with them, and build a plot out/afterwards.

Sphere is, in my opinion, Michael Crichton's most interesting book on two levels. First, the plot: a truly great parable on the endgame of technology, and the long-sought-after dream of Alladin's magic lamp. I don't want to go too deep, but I'll say that it is, in my humble hypothesis, the uncredited inspiration for the excellent show Lost. While the plot is a highlight, I personally keep this book high on my list of favorites, after all these years, because of the Essay, which breaks with/plays off Crichton's typical form: instead of a broken monologue with a human genius, it takes the form of an italicized, nearly stream of consciousness Socratic dialogue with... something. Again, the writing is problematic (Crichton manages to use the word "foam" 23 times or so in two paragraphs) but, even after all these years, the content still stirs me: the subject is consciousness and the power and meaning of the question mark... again I'll let him do the rest. You can (and should) disagree with his analysis, you can shrug aside his monosyllables, but if something in his notion of What Makes Humanity? doesn't stir you, then you are missing out. You have finally and irrevocably left the seventh grade, that painful age of wondering, in favor of a well-fortified adulthood... and as nice as that sounds, you probably left something essential behind.

Hmmm... I may have gotten a little presumptive towards the end there. I'm sure some very smart people have very good reasons for scoffing at Michael Crichton. Allright, let me adjust my position: if you read Sphere, and have thoughts, positive or negative, about the Essay, please write me. If you know of other works, academic or flippant or otherwise, on the same topic, forward 'em. It happens to be one of my favorite things to discuss.

Four stars: One demit for bad writing, the fact that I haven't read the book in seven years, the undercooked movie, and my general cowardice (I would seem SO much smarter if I reserved five stars for Gravity's Rainbow...). (less)

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Dec 16, 2011 Lowed rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 22, 2009 Noelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

it is awsome!!!!!!!!!!

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Jul 25, 2008 Zatchmo rated it 5 of 5 stars

A team of people have been called to a ship in the middle of the ocean. No one knows why they have been called, or exactly where they are. All they have been told, is that something has been discovered under the sea. As the team embarks on their journey, they wonder what they will find, and why all the secrecy? Soon, they will find out.

Michael Chrichton has done it again! Although this particular peice of work may not be as believable as his other novels, it exceeds his other books in thrill, a...more

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Jan 28, 2008 Michael Ashburne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Read this when I was in high school, and was one of the few times I've been up nearly all night reading, saying to myself every hour, "I need to go to sleep," but then couldn't put it down. The movie adaptation was atrocious, so don't judge this story based on the film (I always pictured Ted Knight in the role of Ted, not Liev Schreiber [though Mr Schreiber is a talented actor]). The story has a very tense, claustrophobic feel, and rightly so, as the characters are trapped at the bottom of the o...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Zach Judkins rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: pretty much anyone, but mostly high schoolers

Shelves: favorites

This is my favorite book by this author. Michael Crichton doese a great job coming up with innovative book ideas while making them fast paced and readable. this one blows the others away. It begins with an expedition to research an alien craft more than a mile beneath the ocean surface. A team of navy personal and specialists that have been assembled for just such an occurrence descends to a "habitat" set at the bottom of the ocean for them to live while they investigate the craft. And of course...more

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Aug 17, 2007 John Wiswell rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sci fi readers, pop readers, teen readers preparing for complex fiction

Sphere tackles a lot of science fiction favorites - telepathy, mental influence of reality, undersea exploration, undiscovered life forms, extraterrestrials and a weird kind of time travel that I still haven’t wrapped my mind around ten years after the first time I read it. These elements swirl around a small crew who are sent to examine an interstellar sphere underneath our oceans. Claustrophobia and paranoia set in on the group, especially as the truly bizarre things start to happen. Easily Cr...more

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Mar 25, 2009 Millard.stephen added it

after reading Sphere i thought of the things that had happened in the book. Of how he just maid diffrent charicters disappered as if they had no major role at all. What I did like was that there was a mistery that keped me interested on the last one houndred pages. I learned that we the human species will never be ready to contact an alien species because we will know nothing about them. I also learned that after a certan depth oxigen becomes toxic to humans and we must breath exotic gases. i wo...more

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Jul 11, 2007 Ed G rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Crichton fans, adventure fans, mystery fans

All I'm going to say about Crichton is that he has a knack for what I call the "miracle ending". In one summer I read Congo, Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man, The Great Train Robbery and Sphere. I felt the same about each of them when I finished each.

He's a very good writer with captivating storylines, dead on science, compelling plot and in depth characters, but...I feel like he gets tired of writing the same story or can't properly tie things together at the end so he has som...more

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Feb 20, 2008 Victor rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: I wouldnt wish this on my worst enemies

Words cannot express the contempt I harbor for this book.
My hatred for it knows no boundries. There are few pieces of literature that I cannot come to appreciate in some way, even fewer that compel me to demand the time back that I spent reading it so that I may do something more productive like piss on the third rail.

It was rather suprising, considering Michael Crichton has published some excellent work. I guess he pulled this one out of his ass while drunk/high/stoned/oncrack/bordering on suic...more

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Mar 18, 2013 Becky rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So, when I pick up a Michael Crichton book, it's usually because I'm going to be traveling or doing something else where it would be useful to bring along an activity that will keep me totally absorbed for many hours without making me think too much. On that basis, this should be a 5-star book, because it totally hit the mark. But I'm deducting stars for the reasons we all know: Crichton's writing is not good. Some parts of the book make no sense when you think about them (in this case, the endi...more

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Mar 13, 2013 Gustav rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: 7th graders+

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was a great book. The main guy is named Norman Johnson. He is a phychologist. He is called over for an airplane crash. He is confused because they sent him to near the hawaiian islands. He arrives, and a soldier is there. He askes what this is all about. The man says there is a fin at the bottom of the sea. He is hesitant. He tells the story. They were laying wire at the bottom of the sea, and their line was cut in half, like scissors cut it. Like a clean cut. And they investigated. It turn...more This was a great book. The main guy is named Norman Johnson. He is a phychologist. He is called over for an airplane crash. He is confused because they sent him to near the hawaiian islands. He arrives, and a soldier is there. He askes what this is all about. The man says there is a fin at the bottom of the sea. He is hesitant. He tells the story. They were laying wire at the bottom of the sea, and their line was cut in half, like scissors cut it. Like a clean cut. And they investigated. It turns out to be a ship at the bottom of the ocean floor, one thousand feet deep. First they think it crashed there but then they realize that this ship, one half of a mile long, has not a scratch on it. So it just appeared there.
Then he tells why the guys are called in. A psychologist, Norm, an astrophysicist, Ted, a zoologist, Beth, a math guy, harold, and so on. So they all are sent to the ocean floor. They put on suits, and go out to the ship, because they first sent a robot, but it could not handle it at all. First, they open the door. They see three blurred primary colors. They are like, "wow, these guys see like us!" Then they unblurr their masks. They are buttons. Here is the spooky part, they see english stenciled under them. That really freaks them out. They press one and it opens the door in. They ship has air that is breathable in it, so they take their masks off. The ship was made in the united states in 2043. They go around the ship, and eventually find a big sphere in there. It seems that it can open and close. They can not figure out how to open it. They go back in the sub, and wierd creatures start appearing, like mutants. They all are wierd. There are some that really appeal to a lady named edmunds. She goes out and gets eaten and sizzled by little creatures. They all go back in, and they eventually find an alien in cryo freeze. They go back to the sub. Then their printer starts sending messages in numbers. They figure out the code. There is a guy named Jerry. He picked up television signals, and then speaks in what they say in TV. They are freaked out by this and he starts to make threats. Then on the monitor that was watching the sphere thing they see harry. He somehow opens the sphere. He gets in it. They are freaked out. He comes out three hours later. He has cant remember anything but what he discribes as foam. Then Norm, sends messages to Jerry. Jerry says he makes these huge octopus things. Jerry is oddly attracted to human emotions. They get mad at him and they send a giant squid at them. They freak out, because it is destroying their sub.norm sneaks out and over to the big ship. The angry squid is looking for him. Norm finds some grenade tipped spear launchers. He shoots the big monster squid. It is scared off. He goes to the sub. It is almost destroyed. Jerry will not communicate. He is bored so he goes through the first communications. He finds what he thinks is a typo. But there are more of them. It turns out that Jerry was Harry. Harry is a man on this ship. He was the guy that went into the sphere.
Then a squid starts attacking the ship. It is taking too much pressure, so they find harry. Harry is controlling the beast. They find him. They get him unconcious. They beast stops. Everyone is killed by an evil monster or squid. That is, not harry, beth or Norm. They are alive. Beth says, "you know how you forget things after you have been in the sphere?" Well, you were in it. You just do not remember. She is still talking. You are a threat to the ship, and our lives. So she locks him in a room, and takes away the oxygen flow in there, so he cant breathe. He is almost dead. He finds a mask. He goes through the emergency exit, the roof. He swims to the alien ship. he pictures the sphere opening. it opens. he gets in. He basically is talking to himself in there. He runs through the ship, finds his scuba suit and swims out to the escape sub. He goes almost to the surface, then turns around. He gets beth and harry and goes to the surface. So the power of the sphere was to think something, and it happens. They hate the memories of the ship so they imagine the sphere never happened. It works, so they never knew about it. They make a cover up story. Everyone is happy.
THE END(less)

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Feb 06, 2013 Rowena rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, woah-i-did-not-expect-that

So, I went to our old house this morning and stumbled across Sphere by Michael Crichton lodged behind my Britannica. Though there were several other books too that were neatly packed in my book case, this book in particular holds a lot of childhood memories. Tattered, dog eared and oxidized beyond repair, this book deserved to be remembered as the book I always dreamed of writing about.

Anyho! Sphere evolves around a team of scientists who were engaged to do a scientific study on a submerged sphe...more

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Feb 04, 2013 Elizabeth R. rated it 3 of 5 stars

Quick review.

I've read several Crichton titles, and consider him pretty much a master or adept at the genre. Wasn't sure if Sphere would interest me (even if a book is well done, if it's not your sort of book, it's not for you), but there it was in the pile, so I started reading it about a week ago.

It seemed a slow starter, but that could have been me. The premise is that a team of people are sent to a deep water environment to investigate what turns out to be some kind of space ship (?) or time...more

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Jan 18, 2013 James rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sphere boils with philosophic potential, but in the end gets stuck somewhere between psycho-science and scripted action. This is a classic page turner, but often you'll find yourself too busy soaking up the endless action sequences to give the philosophical undercurrents any mind. In the end, the driving narrative drowns out the subconscious sanctity required to digest our dear protagonists' whimsical forays with logic and morality.

The scientific setup is undeniably promising. My imagination ti...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Beth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sphere is a psychological thriller, and a science fiction novel that opens your mind to new ideas about the future, or about life among the stars. The story begins with the military finding something odd and never seen before, on the bottom of the ocean. The government, wanting to know what that strange spaceship looking object was, sends four highly intellectual people: A biologist, a mathematician, a psychologist, and an astrophysicist along with a few people from the U.S. Navy to explore the...more

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Mar 13, 2012 03celestes rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read the book sphere. It is a great, action packed book! It makes you feel smart for reading it and has this way of sucking you in. It’s written by Michael Crichton. The story has a very interesting setting. It takes place at the bottom of the ocean.
The book is about Norman, a fifty year old physiologist who is called on a secret mission in the middle of the ocean. Little does he know what kind of mission. He is exploring a spaceship found underwater. Inside the space ship they find a Sphere...more

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Feb 18, 2012 Lily rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 08, 2012 Donovan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: thriller, sci-fi

This was a great read and I was fortunate enough to have read it before I saw the movie. The story in itself is quite simple with enough hooks that you will find it hard to put down. There are a couple of twists and turns that have you open your eyes - even at 4 in the morning. It is a quick read and I finished it in a couple of days.

Plot ***Spoilers***
A group of scientists, including psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, biologist Beth Halpern, and astrophysicist Ted Fielding,...more This was a great read and I was fortunate enough to have read it before I saw the movie. The story in itself is quite simple with enough hooks that you will find it hard to put down. There are a couple of twists and turns that have you open your eyes - even at 4 in the morning. It is a quick read and I finished it in a couple of days.

Plot ***Spoilers***
A group of scientists, including psychologist Norman Johnson, mathematician Harry Adams, biologist Beth Halpern, and astrophysicist Ted Fielding, along with Navy personnel, are dispatched to a deep sea habitat at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to explore a crashed spacecraft.

To their surprise, they discover the spacecraft is not alien, but an American spacecraft constructed fifty years in the future and apparently sent through time, crashing 350 years before its creation. On further exploration, the team discovers a mysterious spherical artifact, clearly of extraterrestrial origin, which quickly becomes the focus of their attention. Harry becomes quite certain that, because the ship's future constructors didn't seem to learn their ship had already been discovered, the members of the team aren't likely to survive. At this point a Pacific storm traps the scientists on the ocean floor without contact or support from the Navy on the surface for over a week.

The crew soon focuses on asking questions about the sphere and then on attempting to open it and learn about its nature, contents, and origin. Harry eventually succeeds in opening it and goes inside. Upon returning, he has a terrible headache and he remembers little about what happened inside or how he opened it.

As they continue to theorize, they are contacted by an intelligent, seemingly friendly life form which calls itself Jerry, apparently from within the sphere. It first contacts them via a code of seemingly strange number series, which Harry translates. But while they struggle to communicate with Jerry, increasingly bizarre and deadly events occur, including the appearance of sea creatures that Beth claims don't exist, and soon Jerry tells them he is "manifesting" the creatures. Members of the team start to die in various attacks by sea life and a new form of giant squid, and the dwindling survivors struggle to placate the unthinkably powerful, childlike, and temperamental Jerry.

Throughout their time in the habitat, both Norman and Harry notice that Beth gets more and more beautiful. It is revealed that Beth's beauty is actually a manifestation from Jerry, because she was nice to him.

Norman suddenly has an important role as he realizes he must use psychology to keep the surviving team (now only himself, Beth, and Harry) alive by placating Jerry. Translating the original code himself, though, Norman discovers that Jerry is actually Harry: by entering the sphere, Harry acquired the power to manifest his subconscious thoughts into reality. As Harry noted his childhood fears of squid and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, he has unconsciously created them as an enemy.

Beth and Norman tranquilize Harry with a powerful mixture of sedatives and wait for contact to be reestablished with the surface. However, although Harry is sedated, the manifestations continue. Beth accuses Norman of having entered the sphere and gaining access to the power. Though unable to recall this incident, Norman is close to yielding until he watches a security video of Beth entering the sphere herself. Concluding that Norman is a threat to her, Beth irrationally plants potent explosives around the spacecraft and habitat and then attempts to suffocate Norman with the habitat's climate systems. Norman escapes to the spacecraft and, figuring out at last how to open it, enters the sphere. Norman begins to ascend by himself in the submarine, but realizes that he could never leave the others to die (previously Norman, attempting to thwart Beth's plan, had accidentally started the explosives' countdown). Now with the same power of thought as Harry and Beth, Norman fights Beth and brings both Harry and Beth to the escape submarine before the explosives destroy the site.

Afterward, while in a surface decompression chamber, the three survivors ponder what to tell the Navy about what happened. Realizing they could not control the power, they decide to use the power to remove it from themselves and their memories simultaneously, replacing it with memories of a technical failure. Afterwards, as they mourn the colleagues lost to this scenario, Norman compliments Beth's appearance, saying that she looks lovely despite their hardship in the deep. Beth only smiles, implying that she chose not to forget the power, which is why she retained her beauty that the power gave her.(less)

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Jan 14, 2012 Austin James rated it 3 of 5 stars

One of my favorite movies as a kid was Jurassic Park. I read the novel (which is by Michael Crichton) a couple years ago and thought it was pretty good.

I've been told by more than a few people that if I liked Jurassic Park, I should read Sphere – that it is Michael Crichton's best work. Now that I've gotten around to reading it, I'll tell you what I think...

Without spoiling anything, it's about a group of scientists who explore a crashed spacecraft deep underwater.

That's what I like about Michae...more One of my favorite movies as a kid was Jurassic Park. I read the novel (which is by Michael Crichton) a couple years ago and thought it was pretty good.

I've been told by more than a few people that if I liked Jurassic Park, I should read Sphere – that it is Michael Crichton's best work. Now that I've gotten around to reading it, I'll tell you what I think...

Without spoiling anything, it's about a group of scientists who explore a crashed spacecraft deep underwater.

That's what I like about Michael Crichton. In all his books, he usually comes up with a pretty good premise, and then plots a tightly woven story with more than a few surprises. Take this book. The premise is pretty simple: Underwater + Exploring the unknown. There's something scary about both those things. It's that fear that is the focus of this novel. If I were to compare it to a movie, I'd say it's similar to Ridley Scott's classic Alien – only with less monster and more mystery. Human psychology plays a big role in the book, which is convenient considering the main character is a psychologist.

Speaking of characters, I'll tell you the only thing I didn't like about the book. The characters are flat, stereotypical, and predictable. I can sum up the cast quickly: The insecure girl who is defensive in a man's world. The black guy with a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. The white middle aged main character whose work is under appreciated. I've read quite a few of Michael Crichton's books so far, and I've never came across one character worth remembering. For a novel that is suppose to explore human psychology, people sure do fit into neat little cliches.

I won't say Michael Crichton is one of my favorite authors – he's enjoyable in the same way one watches a summer blockbuster – don't think about it too much, just sit back and enjoy yourself. He's a wonderfully visual writer. He's good at moving the plot forward. He knows how to keep you interested even when you are pretty sure what is coming up next. That's why his work translates into television and film so well (which is actually pretty hard to do with most books).

If you want something easy, fun, and suspenseful, it's a book worth reading. I wouldn't say it's better than his novel, Jurassic Park, but it's better than most his other books. It's classic Crichton, a must read, if that's your thing. (less)

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Jan 02, 2012 John E. Branch Jr. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: techno-thriller

As with The Andromeda Strain, I was reluctant at the time (and still am) to place this in the category of genuine science fiction as I think of it, although I admit that it resembles what many people call SF, first in being fairly strong on the science and decidedly weak on the fiction, second in that it does present what one reviewer here called a "thought experiment" built on a more or less scientific idea. To account for my rating, one star less than I gave to The Andromeda Strain (my reminis...more As with The Andromeda Strain, I was reluctant at the time (and still am) to place this in the category of genuine science fiction as I think of it, although I admit that it resembles what many people call SF, first in being fairly strong on the science and decidedly weak on the fiction, second in that it does present what one reviewer here called a "thought experiment" built on a more or less scientific idea. To account for my rating, one star less than I gave to The Andromeda Strain (my reminiscence-cum-review of that here): by the time I read this, roughly 20 years later, I was simply more mature and experienced, so that, while I could see that this novel did better the kind of thing Crichton does, I could also see that what Crichton does is less valuable than my earlier estimate. I was, and still am, even inclined to suspect the author of a degree of corruption: by the time he wrote this, his books amounted to novelizations of movies that hadn't yet been made but which he had every intention of seeing made. They were attempts to craft a story suitably structured for the film medium and create an audience for the film ahead of time.

Many writers in the techno-thriller and science fiction genres have emerged whose skills were at first unbalanced--they were far better at developing ideas than at developing works of fiction. Many of the admirable ones among them--I need only name William Gibson--proceeded diligently to remedy that as far as they could and produced later work much more satisfying as novels than their earlier output. Others, such as Philip K. Dick, seemed to ignore the craft and pursued the development of their ideas instead, thereby producing increasingly rich, astounding work (in PKD's case, the movies came of their own accord). Crichton never did either of these to any great extent, focusing instead on money-making skills.

It may amount to faint praise, but at least it's true, to add this: Novels, like music and other forms, have many personal and private uses beyond the realms of art or entertainment, and this one served a purpose for my mother and me. We had both long enjoyed getting a thrill, a chill, a moment's "what if...?" discussion, and the like, from SF books, movies, and TV shows. Each of us got some of those payoffs from this book, and we got more from talking it over, and it added its dollop to the long-building compound that connected us.(less)

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Feb 16, 2011 Nicholas S. rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Sphere:
What one sees is almost always what one believes, but what one believes is not always what one sees.
Have you ever been expecting one outcome, but have the situation resolve itself completely differently? That is what happens to Norman Johnson when he thinks he is on his way to the site of an airplane crash. When he arrives at the crash location, he finds that there is no plane but a gargantuan spacecraft resting on the bottom of the ocean. This craft is found to be buried under coral, en...more Sphere:
What one sees is almost always what one believes, but what one believes is not always what one sees.
Have you ever been expecting one outcome, but have the situation resolve itself completely differently? That is what happens to Norman Johnson when he thinks he is on his way to the site of an airplane crash. When he arrives at the crash location, he finds that there is no plane but a gargantuan spacecraft resting on the bottom of the ocean. This craft is found to be buried under coral, enough of it so that it would have taken three hundred years to grow. Norman, a psychologist, along with a team of scientists and navy personnel go down to a diver’s habitat on the ocean floor to better observe the spacecraft. What they find there challenges both modern science and much of what they have always believed in. Sphere is a compelling read because of the surprises that it presents to the reader and the many diverse characters; however, the story is sometimes hard to follow since the transitions between different parts of the same scene are not well written.
The first reason that Sphere is a compelling story is the surprises that it presents to the reader. The most prominent example of this is shown in the beginning of the story, when the reader is led to believe that Norman is heading to an airplane crash site. “For a decade, Norman Johnson had been on a list of FAA crash site teams […]”(4). However, when Norman arrives at the site, he is surprised to find that a spacecraft, not an airplane is on the bottom of the ocean. This piece of information is designed to shock the reader since it is used in conjunction with afore quoted scene, which leads the reader in a direction opposite of that actually taken by the story. The surprises presented to the reader in this story usually make people continue to read because they know to expect the unexpected.
I also highly recommend Sphere due to the diversity of the characters. Many of the characters in this story are very different from each other. For example, Harry Adams, a mathematician is the complete opposite of Beth Halpern, a zoologist. Not only are their occupations very different, but their personalities are equally different. “And now at last he could see something swirling the muddy sediment behind her, in the darkness beyond the lights.” (304). As it is later explained, Beth’s fear is manifested in the form of pure energy, which represents Harry’s profession. Harry’s fear is shown in other parts of the story as being the squid, which represents Beth’s job, a zoologist. Both of them are afraid of each other’s field of work, which makes them frightened of each other.
Even though the story can often be profound, it can also be hard to comprehend. This is usually due to poorly written transitions between different parts of the same scene. For example, there is one scene in which Norman goes to a submarine to deposit mission logs so there will be a record of the mission in case they do not survive. When he reaches the submarine, he is given an all clear signal, saying that there were no sea creatures or other unknown entities in the area. When he leaves the sub, on the very next page, there is a giant squid just outside waiting to attack him. It feels to me like there needs to be some sort of transition between all clear on the long range sonar to a squid being right on top of him. Confusing transitions or lack thereof make this book difficult to understand at times, but overall, this story is still excellent.
Sphere is a compelling read because of the surprises that it presents to the reader and the many diverse characters; however, the story is sometimes hard to follow since the transitions between different parts of the same scene are not well written. Many parts of this story relate to real life, specifically the human condition. When people are trying not to think about something, whatever it is pops immediately into their mind. In this story, that happened with disastrous consequences since the thoughts of the character manifested in a very obvious way (e.g. giant squid). This really puts into perspective the effect of negative thoughts that humans have. Even though it can feel like these negative thoughts may feel like they are overpowering us, we are in control of our thoughts and we can overcome violently negative emotions. Even though this book did have some unclear transitions, the plot was still excellent and I think it warrants a five out of five rating
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Jul 11, 2010 Crystal Starr Light rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Here is yet another novel made into a movie and my first from Michael Crichton. I become more and more surprised at how Hollywood takes extreme artistic licensing in transforming the book to the movie. Situations are similar, most of the cast are the same, but there are distinct differences between the movie and the book that greatly make a difference in interpreting.

Plot:
Norman Johnson, a psychologist, is hauled to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to preside over a supposed plane crash. What he...more Here is yet another novel made into a movie and my first from Michael Crichton. I become more and more surprised at how Hollywood takes extreme artistic licensing in transforming the book to the movie. Situations are similar, most of the cast are the same, but there are distinct differences between the movie and the book that greatly make a difference in interpreting.

Plot:
Norman Johnson, a psychologist, is hauled to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to preside over a supposed plane crash. What he learns is that he is actually a part of a mission to explore a crashed spaceship hiding underwater for around 300 years and this mission is based on a report he gave to the secretary of the United States on contacting Unknown Life Forms.
Norman, along with Ted Fielding, astrophysicist, Beth Halpern, zoologist, Harry Adams, mathematician, Harold Barnes, USN Captain, and four other Navy personal travel down to a deepsea underwater habitat to investigate this spaceship. Inside the ship resides a sphere. Quickly things turn downhill as the sphere unleashes its alien power.

Good:
I think the book is much clearer about what is happening than the movie was. There are not as many confusing, unexplained occurences. Of course, this is in part due to the inability to show as much in a movie as in a book, but part of it is the fault of the movie.
Further, Michael Crichton is great at his characters. It is nice that Norman is a normal human being, scared out of his wits, making stupid mistakes, and not some young, hunky, smart aleky guy. The people in this book are just that: people. Not supermodels or fakes. Real live people.
Also, the whole idea is absolutely original. Instead of meeting aliens who may or may not be friendly, the team meets an empty spaceship with an alien object in it.
Crichton steadily builds the tempo of this novel. He starts out somewhat slow almost lazy, but it gets more and more intriguing the further you get into the book. By the last 100 pages, I had a hard time putting it down.

Bad:
While not as confusing as the movie, it is difficult to tell which manifestations originated from which person. Did Norman manifest the jellyfish or Harry? Was Beth's seduction Norman's or Beth's? Other than this, there is not much to lament about (other than one of my favorite characters dies...)

Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:
There is quite a bit of foul language, mostly da**, he**, bi***, and God's name. Beth acts seductive to Norman at one point. Over the course of the novel, six people die. Their deaths are somewhat graphic but not overly. Several people try or talk about killing each other.

Overall:
An immensely intriguing book and an enjoyable ride to the bottom of the sea. Well worth the money I spent for it. After reading this book, I definitely want to check out more of Michael Crichton's. (less)

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Jul 08, 2010 mark rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Fans of Crichton and The Law of Attraction

Shelves: favorites

The Sphere (1987) is Michael Crichton’s metaphor for his own mind. The novel preceded Travels (1989); Crichton’s autobiographical work that attempted to explain himself and his beliefs. The plot of Sphere, the characters, the style, the action, the setting, the monsters, the technology, the science are all mostly irrelevant. Nevertheless, that’s what people focus on. And that is Crichton’s conclusion—that people, humans, do not want, and cannot, function effectively if they (we) truly engage the...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Check out more reviews and SciFi/Fantasy fun at Lions and Men.

In Michael Crichton's Sphere, a group of scientists and other academics are sent to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to investigate the discovery of a technologically advanced spacecraft. When they arrive, the small group of intellectuals realize that the spacecraft is anything but what they expected, and that its contents have the power to alter the fate of the world.

Sphere is a classic science fiction novel. A group of intelligent pe...more

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Apr 13, 2009 Elketw rated it 5 of 5 stars

Category: Books
Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author: Michael Crichton

Ini jelas jenis buku yang cerdas. Karena selain ini merupakan novel fiksi, novel ini juga banyak menuliskan rumus kimia,teori fisika dan berbagai teori matematika. Namun jangan takut dulu untuk membenci buku ini, karena buku ini merupakan buku yang sangat menarik dan menegangkan.

Buku ini sendiri saya temukan diantara tumpukan buku diskon di pesta diskon buku di Palmerah tahun lalu. Sampai sekarang tidak pernah ada nia...more

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Oct 17, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars

here is what i learned from this book. and i can say this because michael crichton is dead (God rest his soul).

[ahem]

do no fall victim to one of the classic blunders, the most famous of which is "when someone asks if you're a god you never EVER say no" (as seen in ghostbusters where i get most of my everyday advice), but only slightly less well-known is this: "always be the first person to use any alien technology....ALWAYS." then you should probably use your god powers to make the rest of the...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Raymond Hu rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love this book because it was like very horror like to sci-fiction to me which i love. Although i am afraid of scary stuff when it has sci-fiction in it it puts the spark in the book that makes me want to read it until i'm done. This book is about somehow a future human spaceship landed back into our time and scientist are trapped inside some sort of their own nightmares under 1000 feet of water with no help until a week later. It actually freaked me out at first when i read it because the hor...more

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May 06, 2011 Lee rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This week, here in the UK, we had a national referendum on whether to change our voting system from the one currently in use to one which would hopefully have more accurately represented the views of the electorate. There were many good reasons for changing to this new system, but there were also good reasons to stick with our current system. The campaign to keep our current system did not, on the most part, point out these good reasons. Instead they used ad hominem arguments and made claims tha...more This week, here in the UK, we had a national referendum on whether to change our voting system from the one currently in use to one which would hopefully have more accurately represented the views of the electorate. There were many good reasons for changing to this new system, but there were also good reasons to stick with our current system. The campaign to keep our current system did not, on the most part, point out these good reasons. Instead they used ad hominem arguments and made claims that were frankly untrue, culminating in a vile pair of posters that claimed that if you voted to change the voting system then you were in fact voting to either endanger our troops in Afghanistan or withdraw medical treatment from babies with heart defects.

Of course this is what happens with any debate when it enters the realms of politics. On paper it's hard to justify our use of the current voting system over the proffered one. But the parties that form a majority in our Parliament have that majority precisely because we use the voting system we do, so clearly they were not above saying just about anything to ensure the referendum went their way.

I'm a mathematician so the questions I deal with aren't likely to suffer this fate, but scientists who study climate change aren't so lucky. Dealing with climate change is something that has to be done, but it's an expensive task that electorates aren't going to like, so liberal politicians tend to delay doing anything about it while conservative politicians try to refute the research. And by refute the research I mean they make ad hominem arguments about the scientists involved and use fallacious arguments about the science.

However, there are some good points that climate change skeptics could raise if they chose to do so, and Michael Crichton seemed to be the only person on that side of the debate who did so. I personally enjoyed State of Fear for what it was - trashy pop fiction. I also enjoyed the essay at the end wherein Crichton explained his views, that he wasn't denying the reality of climate change merely pointing out that the scientific community had to be above the cheap arguments and hyperbole that politicians were prone to use, and also pragmatically pointing out that the money required to cut carbon dioxide emissions to low enough levels to stave off global warming would be sufficient to deal with AIDS and famines in Africa, and still have change to spare.

So yes I may have disagreed with Crichton. And yes he shouldn't have turned someone into a child molester in his novel just because they gave him a bad review - small penis or no small penis. But he was alas the sanest member of the climate change skeptics society, now we have that British guy who looks like a frog and who I really hope the Queen exiles from our green and pleasant lands, or insane Republicans in the US explaining that climate change can't be real because God wouldn't let it happen.

The point I'm badly making is - I have no problem with Michael Crichton, and I love many of his books. This book, though, was one of his more mediocre efforts. An interesting premise that just doesn't really go anywhere. But it does at least have Samuel L. Jackson in it as a mathematician. So not all bad.(less)

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Nov 21, 2010 Avel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Suspensful science fiction that keeps the reader guessing at every turn. A crew sent to study a mysterious spacecraft found at the bottom of an ocean. The story got on a rather slow start, I felt, but it is actually the author's way of building up suspense, as the crew (as well as the reader ) is baffled at every event; from guessing what their mission is all about, to the entry into the spacecraft, to the discovery of the sphere, to the speculation of whether they are communicating with an alie...more

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About Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton was an American author, film producer, film director, and television producer. His books sold over 150 million copies world wide, and among his best-known works were techno-thriller novels, films and television programs. His works were usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. Many of his future history novels had medical or scientific underpinnings, reflec...more

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Quotes from Sphere

“This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you - the ability to imagine.” — 33 people liked it

“Do you want to understand how to swim, or do you want to jump in and start swimming? Only people who are afraid of the water want to understand it. Other people jump in and get wet.” — 22 people liked it

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