A Review of the Novel Sphere by Michael Crichton

One of my favorite authors, Michael Crichton, died recently and it got me thinking about my favorite Crichton book, Sphere. It was the first book by Michael Crichton that I had ever read. It was also the book that made me decide that I wanted to be a writer.

In this novel, a group of specialists is put together and sent to the bottom of the Pacific ocean to investigate a mysterious spacecraft that has been there for at least 300 years. The main protagonist is Norman Johnson, an accomplished psychologist. Among his group of specialists are Harry Adams, a sarcastic mathematician; Ted Felding, an excited and optimistic astrophysicist; and Elizabeth Halpern, a biologist.

Michael Crichton does an excellent job of making the human emotions realistic. The characters are very believable. One of the things that I most enjoy about this book is that the novel's "Hero" is a middle-aged, overweight man, who often finds himself in awkward situations. He is not smooth, suave, or charming in any way. Yet, he remains a character that you believe in and you root for throughout the novel. The other characters succumb to natural human flaws as well. One of the biggest problems I have with most novels I read is that the "Hero" is an unbelievably, clean-cut, perfect person with no flaws and the antagonist is an ultimate evil character without a trace of good in their soul. However, this is never believable to me. Luckily, in Sphere, the heroes all have character flaws that come with any human being. Norman is middle-aged, overweight, and overly analytical of all of his friends. Harry is arrogant and ego-driven. Ted is annoyingly optimistic. Elizabeth is always trying to prove herself due to some kind of inferiority complex that she has gotten from being a woman in a generally male-dominated field of study. Despite these flaws, you grow to care for the characters, and hope that they succeed in what becomes an increasingly more life-threatening, seemingly impossible struggle.

The antagonist is Jerry, a mysterious entity communicating to them on their computer screens that appears after Harry enters the mysterious sphere found on the spacecraft. Even Jerry seems child-like and wondrous, seeming to cause chaos more from the fact that he doesn't understand concepts like death or pain, than from some kind of evil motivation.

The fact that neither the protagonists nor the antagonist are pure good or evil does not detract from the power of the story at all. The characters are trapped at the bottom of the Pacific ocean with no communication to the surface, and at the mercy of an entity that seems to cause chaos whenever it rears its head.

Most importantly, in my opinion, the ending leaves you slightly suspicious. It's not a cop-out ending, everything is explained, but you're not quite sure about one little detail that makes you love the book even more, because you're not spoon-fed everything.

Michael Crichton will be missed. He gave the world many literary masterpieces such as this book, and he left his mark on many.