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Dossier
Are medical thrillers your drug of choice? If so, this scary, all-too-believable story about a high-tech hospital that operates without human intervention should hold your attention. David Shobin, who already frightened folks out of their hospital gowns with The Unborn, knows how to mix the hard facts of present-day medical life with plausible predictions about the near future. Don't give this one to convalescing friends.
285 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 17, 2022
رواية خيال علمي جيدة
July 16, 2024
While slowly reading this book, I began to hate it then came to like it. It starts off with an unsettling prologue describing a four year old child being operated on in a machine-run hospital, without humans. Then being disposed of in an incinerator by robots.
While reading the rest of the book, it delves into the two main characters and their cringey romance. I honestly was very underwhelmed that it was focusing so much on the romance and not the terror of a machine-run hospital come to life. The only time I felt suspense was when the main characters were inside of the hospital, which seemed like only five chapters of the twenty-six chapter book.
The characters in this book is obviously written by a man. The female mc and male mc are gorgeous and genius. The female mc’s best friend is quirky, computer hacker genius, and straightforward. For some reason the male character is put in two very dangerous situations and only comes out with scrapes. There is also a few holes in the plot. The female mc is described one way by the author then is shown being completely different. The male mc is also admitted into the hospital for a hernia (which was not fixed) and is never brought up again?
The ending was underwhelming and was very family-friendly type ending. For example, “we all lived happily ever after!”
Overall, this novel has very few heart-wrenching parts and some hair-raising ones. I would recommend this book to anyone who only reads romance and is being introduced to thriller.
While reading the rest of the book, it delves into the two main characters and their cringey romance. I honestly was very underwhelmed that it was focusing so much on the romance and not the terror of a machine-run hospital come to life. The only time I felt suspense was when the main characters were inside of the hospital, which seemed like only five chapters of the twenty-six chapter book.
The characters in this book is obviously written by a man. The female mc and male mc are gorgeous and genius. The female mc’s best friend is quirky, computer hacker genius, and straightforward. For some reason the male character is put in two very dangerous situations and only comes out with scrapes. There is also a few holes in the plot. The female mc is described one way by the author then is shown being completely different. The male mc is also admitted into the hospital for a hernia (which was not fixed) and is never brought up again?
The ending was underwhelming and was very family-friendly type ending. For example, “we all lived happily ever after!”
Overall, this novel has very few heart-wrenching parts and some hair-raising ones. I would recommend this book to anyone who only reads romance and is being introduced to thriller.
May 17, 2015
A quick-reading medical thriller that focuses on a futuristic medical center where computers are completely in charge. Once you check in for your procedure, you don't see a human again until the autobots deliver you in a wheelchair to your loved ones waiting at the front door at the end of your stay. Everything seems to be going well at The Center until a 4 year-old girl, Christine, goes in for a tonsillectomy and doesn't come out. When her older sister and custodian, Maks, probes into the disappearance, she is told her sister experienced complications and died, but Maks cannot get her sister's body released to a funeral home or even a death certificate. Maks eventually meets Chad Dunston, a surgeon who was part of the central development committee who designed The Center and promises to get to the bottom of Christine's death.
While his professional, and personal, relationship with Maks grows, Chad finds himself developing a hernia and checks into The Center, both because he feels that The Center's otherwise unblemised track record makes it the safest place to go and to get a look at the inner workings of the place in hopes of gaining insight into what happened to Christine, as even his role in the design of The Center doesn't gain him access to the human-free zone. All goes well until Chad is delivered to the OR and the program on the computer screen indicates it has scheduled him for a testicular biopsy instead of hernia repair. Now he knows there is something messed up at The Center, but trying to infiltrate the computer system may be harder than it seems, if the computers that were designed to 'learn' have since outpaced human learning and are now turning on us.
The plot of this book was not as medically oriented as I would have liked, as it focused more on computers and its futuristic sci-fi plot loses some of its luster in that it was written in 1997 and the 'way out there' medical and computing technology that the author proposed, has already been well-surpassed in less than 20 years. Granted, I haven't heard yet of a hospital that requires no humans but the patients, but advances like the Da Vinci robot have thinned the dividing line that used to separate wholly human things like surgery from the capabilities of computers. Also at the time the book was written, the Human Genome had yet to be sequenced, which these days feels like it happened forever ago, and the genome's sequencing is an ongoing theme over the course of the book.
Overall, a decent read, but clearly dated. Did make me think about the possibility of the time when technology created by humans takes over the world and makes our existence unecessary. In the meantime, I'll be satisfied with what we have.
While his professional, and personal, relationship with Maks grows, Chad finds himself developing a hernia and checks into The Center, both because he feels that The Center's otherwise unblemised track record makes it the safest place to go and to get a look at the inner workings of the place in hopes of gaining insight into what happened to Christine, as even his role in the design of The Center doesn't gain him access to the human-free zone. All goes well until Chad is delivered to the OR and the program on the computer screen indicates it has scheduled him for a testicular biopsy instead of hernia repair. Now he knows there is something messed up at The Center, but trying to infiltrate the computer system may be harder than it seems, if the computers that were designed to 'learn' have since outpaced human learning and are now turning on us.
The plot of this book was not as medically oriented as I would have liked, as it focused more on computers and its futuristic sci-fi plot loses some of its luster in that it was written in 1997 and the 'way out there' medical and computing technology that the author proposed, has already been well-surpassed in less than 20 years. Granted, I haven't heard yet of a hospital that requires no humans but the patients, but advances like the Da Vinci robot have thinned the dividing line that used to separate wholly human things like surgery from the capabilities of computers. Also at the time the book was written, the Human Genome had yet to be sequenced, which these days feels like it happened forever ago, and the genome's sequencing is an ongoing theme over the course of the book.
Overall, a decent read, but clearly dated. Did make me think about the possibility of the time when technology created by humans takes over the world and makes our existence unecessary. In the meantime, I'll be satisfied with what we have.
August 1, 2024
A mysterious technologically advanced hospital run completely by automation. When a real doctor who helped start this hospital has a botched surgery there he begins an investigation into the real purpose of the center. A young woman who is searching for her young sister who she can’t find any information about also gets involved in the search. What they discover is surprising and pretty gross actually. I liked it because it had the element if sci fi but in a realistic way.
June 10, 2020
Ok, but I predicted the ending mostly.
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April 1, 2013Ned. Titel: dossier
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews