Best Science Fiction Books

The new director of the Southern Reach — the agency that monitors Area X — inherits a dysfunctional organisation, a returned Biologist who cannot remember her expedition, and the dawning realisation that the border between Area X and the outside world may not be where anyone thought.

Michael Crichton's satirical thriller weaves together multiple storylines involving biotech corporations, genetic patents, talking transgenic animals, and the researchers, lawyers, and patients caught in the commercialization of the human genome. It is a darkly comedic indictment of an industry racing ahead of its own ethics.