| Once again Crichton draws upon his own medical | | | | guard (he's technically under arrest for his latest |
| background to speculate on the promise and perils of | | | | seizure-caused violent assault), manages to escape |
| scientific breakthroughs. Once again we meet | | | | the hospital. Crichton also foresees the potential |
| all-too-human scientists playing God and their subjects | | | | abuse of this technology -- he includes a brief scene |
| who are just too stubborn and full of life to go along | | | | where a young man comes in to the hospital to have |
| with their assigned roles. Benson is a computer | | | | electrodes implanted in his skull to directly stimulate |
| programmer with brain damage from a car accident | | | | the pleasure zone of his brain. |
| that sometimes gives him seizures that make him | | | | To emphasize Crichton's points, the hospital's |
| extremely violent. This makes him a prime subject | | | | computer whiz kids are playing with computer |
| for the Neuropsychiatric Research Unit of University | | | | programs named George and Martha. They're |
| Hospital. | | | | designed to replicate human emotions -- but just |
| From his own career as a computer scientist | | | | before Benson flies the coop, George and Martha |
| specializing in artificial life, he formed the delusion that | | | | start going berserk with each other in irrational ways |
| machines were competing with human life. It's the | | | | they're not programmed for. What follows is much |
| careful irony of Crichton's story that Benson was | | | | like a typical mystery with the good guys trying to |
| picked to have an electronic computer placed in his | | | | track down a vicious killer, only this one is a scrawny |
| brain to control his seizures through monitoring his | | | | computer programmer with a head full of electrodes |
| brainwaves. | | | | he thinks are trying to take him over. |
| Thus the "Terminal Man" of the title because Exhibit | | | | Just as Dean R Koontz would adapt the crime thriller |
| A for his own hallucination. His freedom from seizures | | | | format to the horror and far out science fiction |
| must depend on one of the machines he believes | | | | genres, Crichton adapts it to the speculative science |
| wants to compete with us -- and it's embedded in his | | | | field -- much as Robin Cook also does. The end |
| own brain. This is not a stable situation, of course. | | | | comes down to a more old-fashioned chase scene |
| And because this is a Crichton novel, the people in it | | | | where Benson comes to the end that we now see |
| will prove onery and contrary and not go along with | | | | was inevitable -- starting with the moment the |
| the program, both on purpose and by accident. | | | | Neuropsychiatric Research Unit picked him for their |
| This is especially true of Benson who, despite just | | | | experiment. |
| having had major brain surgery and being under police | | | | |