Fantastic Voyage (Asimov)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
Note: the book is a novelization of a science-fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Harry Kleiner, based on a story by Otto Klement and Jerome Bixby. The novel was printed first, but Asimov didn't create the story behind it. He just made some "smart writing" out of it.
As the pandemic was just gearing up and teachers were required to report to school, even as the children were not, I found myself in an Englsih/Language Arts classroom. The teacher had left some books "to be taken". Yes, they were meant for kids, but I left all the ones that kids would read. I don't believe that Fantastic Voyage would have been taken by anyone other than an adult of similar age to my own. A hardcover book, it still has the label from the school library shelves.
I've never seen the movie, though I remember parts of it on TV when I was younger -- my older brothers might've been watching it, and clips might've appeared on shows about movies and special effects. I remember picking up a copy of the paperback a long time ago as well. Probably in high school. I didn't get very far into it. Perhaps had I seen the movie, I might've done better.
The same is true now: I would've gotten through it faster had I seen the movie and been more familiar with the story. As it was, the first few pages were a little tedious introducing the characters mostly through dialogue. After that, it sailed pretty well. The pun wasn't intended, but what they hell, I'll own it.
The story is set in a backdrop of the Cold War, but no enemy is mentioned. Just "them" or "the other side". A defecting scientist is attacked en route to a secret base and suffers a brain clot. It's inoperable and he's going to die if something drastic isn't done. The problem is that not only does no one know his secret, but they don't know if the "other side" knows it.
Pioneering research has been done in miniaturization, with a semi-reasonable explanation for where the extra mass goes. Now the limit is being pushed to shrink a team to the size of a bacteria, but it can only be sustained for an hour. After that, it will undo itself automatically. The team has that one hour to save Bendes' life and make their way to safety.
Actually, it's fairly routine, and the mission could be completed in under ten minutes without complications. But, of course, there are complications. Those complications could be accidents, or they could be the work of a saboteur working for the "other side".
The team consists of Capt. Owens who controls the sub; Dr. Michaels, who is mentioned as a pilot but is basically the navigator; Dr. Peter Duval, who is going to operate on the blood clot with a laser; Miss Cora Peterson, Duval's assistant; and agent Charles Grant, a soldier who is put in charge of the mission
Michaels scanned as much of the circulatory system as time allowed, and he navigates the sub through its journey. Miss Peterson -- I went back to double-check this -- is only a year out of graduate school with her Masters degree, so she isn't a "doctor" or anything, but she is Duval's assistant, and he won't procede without her.
Grant is put in charge to make final decisions after getting input from all concerned because any one of the crew -- even Grant himself, but he knows he's okay -- could be working for the "other side" to make the mission a failure, so that the patient dies. There are many times when the doctors think they fail have failed and should call to extracted, but Grant doesn't abort a mission until he sure that every avenue for sucess has been tried. Grant also serves as the non-scientist (like many of the readers) who has things explained to him.
At 180 pages, it was a quick read. It gave a brief tour of the circulatory system without being bogged down in technical terms. There was a sample chapter of Forward the Foundation which I didn't bother reading. (I listened to Prelude to Foundation and remember little of it.)
This was my "pool read", the book I took to read in the pool in the yard, not worried if it got wet.
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