Next challenges our sense of REALITY and notions ofMORALITY. Balancing the COMIC and the BIZARRE with thegenuinely FRIGHTENING and OISTURBING, Next shatters ourassumptions and reveals SHOCKING new choices where weeastt exnect.

Is a loved one MISSING some BODY PARTS? Are BLONDESbecoming EXTINCT? Is everyone at your dinner table of thesame species? Humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400genes; is that why a CHIMP FETUS resembles a human being?And should that worry us? There's a NEW GENETIC CURE FORDRUG ADDICTION--is it worse than the disease? We live in a time of MOMENTOUS SCIENTIFIC LEAPS,a time when it's possible to SELL OUR EGGS AND SPERMonline for thousands of dollars and to test our spouses forgenetic maladies. We live in a time when one fifth of all OUR GENES AREOWNED by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and hisfamily can be pursued cross-country because they happen tohave certain VALUABLE genes within their chromosomes... Devilishly clever, Next blends fact and fiction into abreathless tale of a new world where NOTHING IS WHAT ITSEEMS and a set of new possibilities can open at every turn.

ALSO BY MICHAEL CRICHTON
FICTION
The Andromeda Strain
The Terminal Man
The Great Train Robbery
Eaters of the Dead
Congo
Sphere
Jurassic Park
Rising Sun
Disclosure
The Lost World
Airframe
Timeline
Prey
State of Fear
NONFICTION
Five Patients
Jasper Johns
Electronic Life
Travels