Sphere
by Michael Crichton · first published 1980
43% recommend50% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
First-contact science fiction that is engrossing and thought-provoking, with a section on the anthropomorphic problem of imagining alien minds as human. Suits fans of ideas-driven thrillers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Sphere is a 1987 novel by Michael Crichton, his sixth novel under his own name and his sixteenth overall. The story follows Norman Johnson, a psychologist engaged by the United States Navy, who joins a team of scientists assembled to examine a spacecraft of unknown origin discovered on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The novel begins as a science fiction story but quickly transforms into a psychological thriller, developing into an exploration of the nature of the human imagination.
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Thanks for posting this. Crichton was my favourite author when I was a young boy (I still remember how engrossing Sphere was for me) and to this day I had no idea that he tried his hand at programming.
on “Michael Crichton and Computers” ↗I've read Sphere by Michael Crichton several times and always enjoy it. I particularly like the way things are seen by some characters and then another character brings an alternate perspective that changes the reader's…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite sci-fi books?” ↗Sphere by Michael Crichton. I was quite young at the time, but I remember being completely engrossed. Please don't relate it to the movie version :)
on “Ask HN: What is the best fiction book you've ever read? ” ↗Learned about this equation from the late Michael Crichton's book "Sphere". A really great first contact science fiction story.
on “60 years later, is it time to update the Drake equation?” ↗Michael Crichton's Sphere has a good section about the "anthropomorphic problem", about how we imagine extraterrestrial life as essentially human. Regardless of how they look, they still act human in our imagination. Why apply…
on “Japan to Draw Up UFO Encounter Protocols After U.S. Footage” ↗Yes, I too had the same disparity in recognizing the author as a young 'un, reading CONGO and SPHERE and so on .. Mr. Crichton sure had his finger on the pulse of the technological world we live in. What a wild series of stories he has created .. he was my favourite author until Messrs. Stephenson and…
on “NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth” ↗Relevant book Crichton's Sphere.
on “The Octopus: An Alien Among Us” ↗Funny coincidence, I was just reading "Sphere" by Michael Crichton, and the zoologist in the novel was presenting the same argument about the the intelligence of octopuses. Side-note, this book is driving me crazy, the characters seem to be the dumbest…
on “I spent eleven years working on this Line Rider track” ↗The sounds a bit like the book Sphere by Michael Crichton.
on “Ten Thousand Years” ↗Michael Crichton loved writing books on this trope. e.x. Jurassic Park - Stuck on an island full of dinosaurs Congo - Stuck in a lost city full of deadly intelligent apes Sphere - Stuck in an alien ship on the bottom of the ocean
on “Typography in Alien (2014)” ↗…novels nearly identically to my imagination (within reason, given content and technological limitations): - Phillip K Dick / Richard Linklater - A Scanner Darkly - Michael Crichton / Barry Levinson - Sphere - Ted Chiang / Denis Villanueve - Story of Your Life (Arrival) - Bret Easton Ellis / Roger Avery - The Rules of Attraction - Alex Garland / Danny Boyle - The Beach I often wonder if the influence of…
on “Consider Phlebas Published by the Folio Society” ↗Yeah this reminds me a lot of Michael Crichton's Sphere, which starts with a professor, funded by the military, who was tapped to analyze in great detail how to deal with first contact with aliens.
on “Big Companies and the Military Are Paying Novelists to Write Sci-Fi for Them” ↗The atmosphere isn't homogenized perfectly, leading to turbulent condensation. Micheal Crichton's Sphere mentions this (actual) fact in regards to certain gases, such as Helium, being needed in high pressure environments…
on “Quote Origin: I had exactly four seconds and Google had told me it wasn’t enough” ↗This was a (minor?) plot point in Crichton's "Sphere". Paraphrasing: if a smart bacterium steps on the battery of one of our space probes and gets destroyed by the heat, the smart bacteria community may think the aliens (we, humans) sent it to them for…
on “Is the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS alien technology? [pdf]” ↗Reminds me of the the giant squid from Michael Crichton's Sphere.
on “Giant squid filmed in Pacific depths, Japan scientists report” ↗