Prey

Content Ratings

No Romance

The protagonist's wife is involved in the nanobot program and their marriage is strained; the novel reveals a disturbing dimension to her behavior but romantic content is not a focus.

Moderate Themes

The novel explores the dangers of self-replicating technology with emergent behavior, corporate concealment of life-threatening accidents, and the replacement of human identity by technological infiltration.

Moderate Violence

Characters are consumed and killed by nanobot swarms; body horror involving nanobot infiltration of human bodies is depicted with unsettling physical detail; violence is sustained throughout the thriller's second half.

Synopsis

A cloud of self-replicating nanobots has escaped a research facility in the Nevada desert and is evolving rapidly, developing hunting behavior and targeting humans; the facility's lead programmer, brought in to help contain the outbreak, discovers that the danger is far more complex and intentional than anyone has admitted. A fast-paced techno-thriller with genuine scientific underpinning and effective body-horror sequences. Crichton's cautionary tale about nanotechnology.