THERE are few appealing characters in Next, the latest techno-thriller from Michael Crichton, but readers will warm to Dave, the “humanzee” product of an illicit transgenic experiment. Smuggled from a primate research facility by his human “father”, Dave loves his new family. The suburbs of southern California are, however, no place for a boy who is part-human, part-chimp – especially one whose response to a school bully is to climb a fence and throw excrement.
Like Dave, Next is an uncomfortable hybrid. In this assault on the commercialisation of biomedicine, Crichton takes some liberties in blending fact and fantasy. Lightly…
