Books: The Crichton Strain

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THE TERMINAL MAN by MICHAEL CRICHTON 247 pages. Knopf. $6.95.

BINARY by JOHN LANGE 224 pages. Knopf. $5.95.

Michael Crichton, 29-year-old dropout physician and author of the bestselling novel The Andromeda Strain, is unleashing an entertainment epidemic. It is being spread through books and movies, only some of which bear his real name. Regardless of byline and credit, however, the Crichton strain is unmistakable.

Both The Terminal Man and Binary —written under the author's old Harvard Medical School paperback pen name, John Lange—share their author's distinctive touch. Crichton creations thrive on a scientific esoterica that owes more to fact than to fiction. Crichton people tend to be value-neutral technicians who, like sorcerer's apprentices, meddle with forces they cannot control. Above all, there is Crichton's almost compulsive awareness of time and his skill at explaining the complex without losing the reader's interest.

In Binary, which Crichton has just finished directing as an ABC-TV movie, a brilliant millionaire fanatic named Wright plots to destroy Richard Nixon. Wright believes that the President sold out the nation by breaking egg rolls with the Red Chinese. The Republican Party and the population of San Diego will have to go too, because Wright plans to saturate the city with nerve gas during the forthcoming national convention.

The whole novel is compressed into twelve hours, time enough for Wright to outwit a Defense Department intelligence agent, hijack several tanks of nerve-gas components, and rig a devilish device to dispense them. With two gases and two competitive adversaries about to mix lethally, the novel's title, Binary, and its suspense are readily understandable. Crichton also manages to turn the book into something of an early warning device. An epilogue in the form of think-tank recommendations to the Government suggests specific changes in existing procedures to prevent the theft of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Crichton's bureaucrats halfheartedly promise to review the report "in the near future."

In Terminal Man, the near future is practically upon us. The theme is mind control through psychosurgery, today hardly in the realm of science fiction (TIME, April 3). Crichton's surgeons plant 40 minuscule electrodes in the brain of Harry Benson, a psycho-motor epileptic whose fits turn him into a homicidal maniac. The electrodes, powered by a tiny nuclear battery implanted in Harry's shoulder, deliver small electrical impulses which check the epileptic fit at its onset.

Crichton maintains credibility with a fine array of documentary props, including a page of real brain X rays. Ironically, the plot turns on a physiological mechanism that is somewhat fanciful. Harry becomes addicted to the shocks, which give him a pleasant electrical high. His brain, therefore, contrives to have more frequent fits in order to receive more titillating shocks. Eventually the psychomotor epilepsy overrides the blocking capacity of the electrodes and Harry becomes a computerized monster. By this time he has escaped from the hospital and is well into murder and mayhem, with assorted police and medical practitioners in confused pursuit.