Prey (novel)

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Prey

First edition cover
Author	Michael Crichton
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction, Techno-thriller, horror, nanopunk
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication date	November 25, 2002
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	502
ISBN	0-00-715379-1
OCLC	50433577
Preceded by	Timeline
Followed by	State of Fear

Prey is the thirteenth novel by Michael Crichton under his own name and his twenty-third novel overall. It was first published in November 2002, making it his first novel of the twenty-first century. An excerpt was first published in the January–February 2003 issue of Seed magazine. Prey brings together themes from two earlier Crichton best-selling novels, Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain and serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology, in particular, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and distributed artificial intelligence.

The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing. Fields such as population dynamics and host-parasite coevolution are also at the heart of the novel.

Film rights to the book were purchased by 20th Century Fox.^[1]