Prey by Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton excels at writing technological thrillers. He has covered many areas of science and technology – Prey delves into nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence.

The basic storyline is (without giving anything away) that a lab in the Nevada desert is working on nanoparticles that, when working together, can act as a camera. An application of this could be to inject them into patients to visualise parts of the body – a high-tech angiogram, for example. However, something goes wrong and a swarm of nanoparticles is unleashed into the desert. They are able to evolve – they are intelligent and can no longer be controlled by the scientists and computer programmers. The swarm is deadly and their creators are now the prey.

Q & A by Vikas Swarup

I’ve just finished reading Q & A by Vikas Swarup. It tells the story of Ram Mohammad Thomas, an eighteen year old waiter in Mumbai, India. He wins one billion rupees after answering twelve questions correctly on a television quiz show, Who Will Win a Billion (similar to Who Wants to be a Millionaire). The show’s producers are convinced he must have cheated. He’s an uneducated orphan who has spent much of his living in slums – how could he possibly know the answers?