It is
surprising that this book was written over forty years ago. In the beginning I
had not realised it at all. Of course, I saw that the story was set in the 70s,
but I had not noticed it was actually written in that decade. This is significant
because if you read such a dated technological thriller you expect, however, to
perceive a certain naivety and a very different atmosphere from recent novels,
because time changes in both the writing and the audience. The readers are now
much better prepared and savvy than those of 1972, so the fact that a book of
this type is able to astonish them is no doubt a sign that this is a great
book.
However you
can notice this is one of the first works of Crichton. Over time he has
definitely improved in style, but even then, as I have seen in
"Andromeda", you could see his genius.
The plot
has to do with the treatment of mental illnesses through advanced techniques of
manipulation of the brain by means of its connection to a computer, making
precisely the man nothing more than a terminal. As usual in books of this
author the science becomes the main protagonist. The characters take a back
seat, but no matter, because the reader is captivated by everything else,
although in fact it is a decades-old science fiction. The wonder of reading,
however, is intact, as well as the feeling at the end of the novel that it is
able to teach us something and it was not just a pastime.
The ending
is perhaps not unexpected, as well as the general development of the plot, but
proves to be a match for other great novels of the same genre written much more
recently.
As always,
before Crichton, I can only bow.
The Terminal Man
on Amazon.com.
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