Prey is a techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton first published in hardback edition in November 2002 and as a paperback edition in November 2003 by Harper Collins. According to IMDB there will be a film adaptation due out in 2007; details are unavailable. Like Jurassic Park , the novel serves as a cautionary tale about developments in science and technology; in this case, nanotechnology.
The book features relatively new advances in the computing/scientific community, such as artificial life, emergence (and by extension, complexity), genetic algorithms, and agent-based computing.