Abduction was an experiment by medical thriller novelist, Robin Cook. Dr Cook decided to flex his writing ability to include science fiction, instead of the usual medical books he tends to write, which aren't a stretch for him to do since he is a doctor after all. Perry Berg is president of Benthic Marine and a passenger aboard The Benthic Explorer, a 450-foot research ship endeavoring to drill into, and sample for the first time, the earth's magma core. Also onboard are the lovely Dr. Suzanne Newell; ex-navy commander and present submersible skipper Donald Fuller; and navy-cum-Neanderthal divers Richard Adams and Michael Donaghue. It is this cast of characters who, with the reluctant Perry, dive to the stilled drill site in order to make repairs. En route, they are sucked (or suckered) into a defunct undersea volcano and deposited into an otherworldly wonderland. That takes about 75 pages of fairly cogent spadework. The next 375 pages sprout some of the looniest, most derivative, made-for-TV-movie science fiction imaginable. Our heroes, you see, have been abducted to Interterra, an undersea world of staggering beauty and unheard of technologies--intergalactic travel and eternal life, for starters--populated by stunningly beautiful, toga-wearing, first-generation humans. First generation meaning the first generation of humans to populate Earth (we're second generation). When my Dad, another avid reader, told me about this book, I knew I had to read it. I had always liked Robin Cook's novels, but they were always usually about the same thing, about medicine. I don't particularly like that type of genre, as I'm more into horror novels. The world Dr. Cook made up could be real, that's what was so great about it. Ok, so it wasn't a classic like H.G. Wells' Time Machine, but it's still good. I suggest that anyone who wants to get into sci fi read this book. It's really easy to read and it's entertaining to the majority of people who read books. I do have problems with this book, but it has nothing to do with the writing or anything like that. It has to do more so with this so called advanced society, they have slaves (they call them worker clones, it's a nicer word than the word slave, but means the same). They also don't die, don't have any conflict in their lives, and don't really have contact with others except for touching. While immortality is appealing, I don't want it if there's nothing to life when you do have immortality.
Title: Abduction |
9/12/04
