Michael Crichton has really done it again.

I can remember a time when books like The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park led me to the conclusion that Crichton—a graduate of Harvard Medical School—really had it in for science. His cautionary novels were replete with tales of scientific hubris, of commercial and governmental interests going off half-cocked and placing humanity at risk. This was all the more frustrating because Crichton's scientific background was self-evidently solid enough that he must have been aware of the extremity of his positions, and of the damaging, anti-science conclusions to which his arguments might lead.

Then—unaccountably—Crichton came to his senses. In State of Fear, Crichton took the environmental movement's argument apart, brick by brick, and exposed it for a politically motivated patchwork of hype, half-truth, and outright falsehood. He backed his work up with dozens of pages of references to peer-reviewed research, all of which check out nicely. Since State of Fear, Crichton has been hitting the lecture circuit hard, and by at least one estimate—mine—has had a measurable effect in turning back the tide of environmental ignorance.

With his next novel—appropriately entitled Next—Crichton turns the same kind of attention to the state of tomorrow's art and today's regulation in the science and industry of genetic engineering. While Crichton takes care not to assert that the scenarios he envisages have occurred, he makes it plain—again backed by solid research—that they certainly might have, and undoubtedly will have before too much longer.

What kind of scenarios? Try these on:

• A mother and child kidnapped because a private interest owns the patent to her one of her father's gene. Kidnapped? No... Legally apprehended.
• A woman discovers that her husband—a genetics researcher—has a previously unknown child: a transgenic chimpanzee.
• A talking, transgenic parrot takes offense at the notion that he—a sentient being—can be owned by a human.

If played out, all of these scenarios have real, legal consequences within today's political environment. Some have been addressed, and some have not... but Crichton's fundamental message is that we as a society should be rethinking how we will deal with these issues now, because within such an environment many existing laws and regulations have real, jury-ready consequences that are downright painful to contemplate.

If you like Crichton's work, you'll love this one. If you haven't read him yet, you're in for a treat, and—even better—you're likely to learn something. Bonus points if you follow up the endnotes on your own and actually formulate an opinion you can vote on.