I recently finished Michael Crichton's "The Andromeda Strain" and "Prey". Very good books. Currently reading another Crichton book, "Timeline".
"The Andromeda Strain" is probably one of my favorite reads of Crichton's so far. I love how he applies his medical training and making it seem like an alien bacterium that can kill you in seconds or make you suicidally insane just as fast seem likely. Scientists are confined to an ultra-clean room (Crichton describes the process of decontaminating the human body). While reading, you can only hope that they can find a cure or treatment before the strain begins its reign of terror.
"Prey" leaps into a plausible, but so far imaginary, scenario of what would happen when the potential for nanotechnology and its uses collides with human ambitions and the stress of gaining funding for the project. Nano-robots get out of a lab's control, prowls outside in a Nevada desert and kills animals it comes across. Crichton describes a possible way for companies to manufacture nano-robots, and the ending might surprise some.
"Timeline" is about a group of archaeologists at a French dig site who are trying to reconstruct the medieval site with funding from a technological group. That's about as far up as I have read so far, but apparently the archaeologists will get to travel back in time as a way of being more accurate at reconstruction of the site.
Those are the books that I have finished reading and one that I am currently reading. Crichton (RIP) can really tell a good story.
