In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud nanoparticles - micro-robots - has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. It has been programmed as a predator. It is evolving swiftly, becoming more deadly with each passing hour. Every attempt to destroy it has failed... Drawing on up-to-the-minute scientific fact, "Prey" takes us into the emerging realms of nanotechnology and artificial distributed intelligence-in a story of breathtaking suspense.

Michael Crichton is the author of The Andromeda Strain, Congo, Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, The Terminal Man, The Lost World, Airframe and Timeline. He is the winner of an Edgar Award (1980; The Great Train Robbery) as well as an Emmy, a Peabody, and a Writer's Guild of America Award for the television series ER.