History Literature / Micro

* MundaneMadeAwesone: [[spoiler:At the end of the book, Drake is dead and the survivors are being rescued by the police as tiny microbots attack them. Enter the pathologist wielding...a horseshoe magnet, which effortless captures the microbots attacking people for easy destruction.]]

* PintsizedPowerhouse: Micro-humans are this compared to normal humans. Physical laws, such as gravity, having different mass/volume/surface ratios, and air resistance, affect them differently on their scale. Due to this, the micro-humans have comparatively more strength (e.g. character easily carry each other for long distances without being much worn out by it, even women carrying men), can leap astounding heights, and easily jump down comparatively huge distances without getting hurt. [[spoiler:When Karen is transformed back to her normal human size at the end, she is confused she can't simply pick up and carry Rick on her back anymore - it takes a moment to sink in for her that at normal size, it isn't so easy to carry another human]].

** ImprobablyCoolCar: Eric, Alyson and Drake arrive in a trio of Lamborghinis, apparently just to show off just how successfuly Nanigen is.

* AntiVillain: Strangely enough, the two {{Mooks}} Johnstone and Telius. Drake lies to them, saying the disappeared eight students are saboteurs from a corporate rival. As far as they know, they were protecting their employer's interests.

* Karen, a specialist in spiders and a martial arts expert.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Edward Catel with the disk containing info about Nanigen's shrinking technology. Also, Karen's insistence that she'll find a way back into the micro-world. "Once things get invented, they don't get un-invented. There's a way."]]

* ShoutOut: The hexagonal motif in the Tensor Generator room, and the book's section title pages recall FantasticVoyage.

* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: How Drake disposes of [[spoiler:Alyson]] and covers up the missing people's disapearance: he puts a knocked-out [[spoiler:Alyson]] in his Bentley and shoves it off of a cliff, the cover story being that he students, rejoiced at being hired, went and got drunk, and drove off a cliff into the ocean. No word on how he would've explained the absence of Kinsky, the Nanigen technician who got shrunk alongside the heroes, and who wouldn't have been partying with [[spoiler:Alyson]] and the students.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Edward Catel with the disk containing info about Nanigen's shrinking technology.]]

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: This being a Michael Crichton book, there are several. One character gets literally butchered and dismembered by ants, who then carry him piece by piece back to the ant hill. Other characters get eaten by other animals, drowned, blown up, impaled and exploded apart, smashed against walls, etc. Probably the most gruesome death is [[spoiler:Telius]], who gets eaten by a spider. However, since spiders digest their prey outside their bodies, he gets injected with venom and melts/dissolves/bursts from the inside out. Let's just leave it at this: the book describes the spider venom as "Ebola in 30 seconds".
** ''Averted'' in the case of [[spoiler:Karen.]] Mynah birds are insect-eaters, and their gizzards are like cement truck drums filled with gravel shards and strong acid, meant to break apart chitin armor. [[spoiler:But the one that swallows Karen stores her in its crop instead of passing her straight down to its gizzard, and that saves her life.]]

* BrainyBrunette: Inverted. Erika seems to be the most knowledgeable, but is noted to have blond hair.

* BigBad: Vincent Drake

* AuthorTract: A recurring Crichton moral is that nature is ''nasty''.

* AntiVillain: Strangely enough, the two {{Mooks}} Johnstone and Telius. Drake lies to them, saying the disappeared eight students are saboteurs from a corporate rival. As far as they know, they were protecting their employer's intrests.

* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Danny Minot]].

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: No, birds ''do'' have stomachs - gizzards. But very fortunately for [[spoiler:Karen]], they ''also'' have crops.

* AntiVillain: Strangely enough, the two {{Mooks}} Johnstone and Telius. He lies to them, saying they're saboteurs from a corporate rival. As far as they know, they were protecting their employer's intrests.

* AmbiguouslyBi: Karen
** She claims she hasn't slept with a man in a year.
** Has a particular fondness for Erika,she tries her best to comfort her when she's scared and protect her,[[spoiler: even going as far as trying to sacrifice herself for Erika (in vain). When Erika is killed, she talks about how she wishes she were there.]]
** [[spoiler: She doesn't seem to be nearly as taken with Rick as he is with her.]]

* AlphaBitch: Karen to Rick.

* AffablyEvil: Vincent Drake is calm, generous, friendly, and calmly disarms Rick's anti-corporate ranting...
** FauxAffablyEvil: ...Up until Peter reveals his plot to the other crew, in which he becomes a sleazebag degenerate with an EvilLaugh.

''Micro'' is a 2011 science fiction, adventure, techno-thriller novel written by Creator/MichaelCrichton and Richard Preston. This was the final novel Crichton started before his death in 2008. He hadn't finished it before that time, leaving it about one-third done. Preston, author of the nonfiction ''The Hot Zone'' (about the Ebola virus) and other science-oriented works, was chosen to finish the story and he made use of Crichton's remaining notes and research to do this.

A group of grad students are working in a secluded college laboratory. In short order we meet Peter Jansen, an expert on venomous reptiles, Karen, a specialist in spiders and a martial arts expert, Rick Hutter, an expert in tribal herbal remedies, Amar Singh, an Indian student, Erika Moll, a German student, Jenny Linn, a student who may or may not be of Asian descent, but is definitely a lesbian, and Danny Minot, whose research is to prove there are no objective truths. No one else at the lab likes him, but he seems unaware of this.

The group's research is interrupted by the arrival of Peter's brother Eric and a man and a woman, Vincent Drake and Alyson Bender from Nanigen. They're here to offer the students jobs at the up and coming research center, which is located in Hawaii. Once they arrive in Hawaii, Drake reveals that Nanigen's secret is shrinking technology. By means of something called a tensor core, Nanigen can shrink objects and people down to tiny size and send them into the "micro-world" to explore nature.

When Eric disappears and Peter discovers that Drake is up to dirty dealings and messing around with deadly nanobots, Drake decides all of the newly hired students need to "disappear." He shrinks them all down, along with a hapless technician who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Capturing the teeny humans in a bag, Drake initially intends to feed them to a snake kept in one of the labs, Alyson has an attack of conscience and sticks the shrunken humans in her purse and lets them go free outside.

She lets them go outside. Peter, Karen, Rick, Erika, Amar, Danny, Jenny and the technician, Jarel Kinsky, discover themselves in the tiny jungle world, and have to find a way back to normal size. In the meantime, Drake has learned of Alyson's betrayal. Not content to trust in nature to kill off the shrunken humans, shrinks two Nanigen goons, Johnstone and Telius, and sends them into the micro-world to hunt them down...

* [[FiveManBand Seven-Man Band]]:
** TheHero: Peter
** AloofDarkHairedGirl: Karen
** StrawVegetarian: Rick
** [[CatholicSchoolGirlsRule Naughty Catholic School Girl]]: Erika
** BollywoodNerd: Amar
** GenkiGirl: Jenny
** DeadpanSnarker: Danny

* BollywoodNerd: Amar Singh is the quietest and most pensive of the group.

* [[Five-ManBand Seven-Man Band]]:

** AloofDark-HairedGirl: Karen