Books published by publisher Knopf 1987

Sphere is a novel written by author Michael Crichton that was published in 1987. The novel was adapted into the film Sphere in 1998. The story follows Norman Johnson, a psychologist engaged by the United States Navy, who joins a team of scientists assembled to examine a spacecraft of unknown origin discovered on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The novel begins as a science fiction story but quickly transforms into a psychological thriller, developing into an exploration of the nature of the human imagination. Crichton began writing the novel in 1967 as a companion piece to The Andromeda Strain. His initial storyline began with American scientists discovering a 300-year-old spaceship underwater with stenciled markings in English. However, Crichton later realized that he "didn't know where to go with it" and put off completing the book until a later date. "The idea of doing a story about contact with superior intelligence, a time honored theme, is that it's very hard if you stop and think about it. Most writers evade the issue by making the aliens recognizably human. It's 9 feet tall with spiky teeth and it wants to eat you. Or its 3 feet tall and it wants to hug you. In either case its humanlike... What's more likely about first contact with an extraterrestrial is that the alien wouldn't look humanlike at all. You might not even be able to see it or detect it. And its behavior would be absolutely inexplicable. Trouble is, it gets hard to dream up a story where at the center there is something inexplicable."