The Terminal Man
Books | Fiction / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction
3.6
(66)
Michael Crichton
From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a neurological thriller about the dangers of cutting-edge medical experimentation. Harry Benson suffers from violent seizures. So violent that he often blackouts when they take hold. Shortly after severely beating two men during an episode, the police escort Benson to a Los Angeles hospital for treatment. There, Dr. Roger McPherson, head of the prestigious Neuropsychiatric Research Unit, is convinced he can cure Benson with an experimental procedure that would place electrodes deep in his brain’s pleasure centers, effectively short-circuiting Harry's seizures with pulses of bliss. The surgery is successful, but while Benson is in recovery, he discovers how to trigger the pulses himself. To make matters worse his violent impulses have only grown, and he soon escapes the hospital with a deadly agenda. . .
AD
Buy now:
More Details:
Author
Michael Crichton
Pages
272
Publisher
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published Date
2014-03-11
ISBN
0804171297 9780804171298
Community ReviewsSee all
"Well, I will give Michael Crichton his due...this is much better than The Andromeda Strain. While that book's plot can be summarized as "Everyone thought there was a deadly emergency but it turns out there wasn't", this book is much more of a straightforward thriller. It spends much less time on philosophy and technical digressions, and he tries really hard to develop his characters. Unfortunately, that's where his novels continue to not work for me. As hard as he tries to give them personalities, they still all feel very flat to me. There are three primary male doctor characters in this novel, and I would challenge anyone, if their dialogue was taken out of context, to be able to identify who said it. There's just nothing particularly memorable about any of it. That's his greatest weakness as a writer, and it's what holds his novels back from being great."