Sphere

Sphere (1987) is a novel by best-selling author Michael Crichton, the sixth novel he released under his own name but his 16th novel overall. The novel follows protagonist Norman Johnson as he travels to the bottom of the ocean with a team of scientists to explore an unknown spacecraft. Inside the craft is a sphere that when entered enhances imagination and allows people to manifest reality from their unconscious mind. Sphere was made into a 1998 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Samuel L. Jackson, and in 2020 HBO announced plans to turn the novel into a television series.

This guide uses the 2012 First Vintage e-book edition.

Plot Summary

The novel is ostensibly set in the 1970s or early 1980s. Norman Johnson, a psychologist who occasionally helps the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) gather information from plane crash survivors, is transported to a Naval ship west of Tonga as part of a government team studying unidentified life forms (ULF). A potentially alien spacecraft has been discovered on the ocean floor. Along with Norman is a team made up of the team leader, Harold (“Hal”) Barnes, a retired Navy officer; Theodore (“Ted”) Fielding, an astrophysicist; Harold (“Harry”) Adams, a mathematician; and Elizabeth (“Beth”) Halpern, a zoologist. The team’s mission is to investigate the spacecraft.

The team is taken to their underwater habitat, Deep Habitat 8 (DH-8), on the ocean floor. Shortly after they arrive, they enter the spacecraft for the first time. Rather than an alien craft, the team discovers that it’s a US spacecraft built around 2043 that was intended to carry a crew of 20. However, they find no sign of a crew. A theory emerges that the craft, launched as an unmanned probe, was designed to fly through a black hole and that doing so pushed it into the past.

Just before the second trip to the craft, the team learns of an approaching storm. Barnes tells the team that they must decide whether to return to the surface. Ted and Harry argue the point, and they decide to return. However, they go ahead with the second trip into the spacecraft to find a flight recorder. During this expedition, they discover a large room containing heavy equipment, weapons, and a sphere with unfamiliar markings that they believe are of alien origin. Harry believes that a door is hidden in the markings of the sphere.

The team theorizes that the ship picked up the sphere at some point before entering the black hole. They place cameras on the sphere so that they can watch it from DH-8. That evening, Beth is with Norman and Tina Chan, the communications officer. While Norman goes in search of a piece of cake, Tina and Beth discuss whether the sphere will open. Norman watches the conversation on video and sees the sphere open on the monitors. He runs back to Tina and Beth to tell them since they both have their backs to the monitors, but by the time he arrives the door is closed again. They review the video and see it open.

The team argues over the meaning of the door’s opening and closing. Barnes calls for everyone to prepare to evacuate to the surface. However, when they gather to leave, they discover that Harry has returned to the spacecraft. He waves to the camera and makes a brief speech before somehow opening the sphere’s door and disappearing inside. At the same moment, the surface ships cut their tethers and leave the area, abandoning the team, to retreat to safety and wait out the storm.

Harry is gone for hours, and when he returns, he’s disoriented and paranoid. Norman calms him, and he quickly returns to normal, though his mood is inexplicably elevated. As Harry rests, the team notices the sudden appearance of a school of small squid and, a short time later, a school of shrimp. Beth gathers a few specimens and finds them unusual, suggesting that both the squid and the shrimp are a previously unknown species. Over dinner, the team discusses their feelings toward squid; Harry admits to fearing squid after seeing the movie Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea as a child. Moments later, a school of jellyfish arrives outside DH-8. Jane Edmunds, the unit archivist, goes out to video the jellyfish and is killed by a corrosive gel that the jellyfish slime over her suit.

A code begins to appear on the computer screens. Ted and Harry believe that it’s either a discharge from the computer system or the sphere attempting to communicate. They compete to see who can solve the code first. Harry figures out that the code is spherical in nature and decodes it using a standard keyboard. They begin speaking to an entity called Jerry. They’re unclear what this entity is, but Harry believes that it was trapped inside the sphere and has escaped. Jerry expresses human emotion and appears capable of reading minds.

While talking to Tina about Barnes’s order to change the settings on the perimeter alarms, they see a human arm outside a portal. Norman and Beth go out and discover that Rose Levy, the cook, has been killed by an unknown attacker. Barnes calls them back inside as the perimeter alarms begin to go off, explaining that he had the alarms reset, believing that an unknown creature is in the water that was too large to set off the alarms previously. Shortly after, a massive squid attacks DH-8. Barnes takes Tina into the water in an attempt to scare it off. Tina is injured, and Barnes disappears.

The squid attacks a second time. Jane turns on an electric pulse that scares the squid off but causes fires in the habitat. Tina is killed when an explosion occurs in E Cylinder and Jane is killed while fighting fires in D Cylinder. Harry is knocked unconscious and the squid goes away. Through conversations with Jerry and recollections of events, Norman realizes that Harry is manifesting the giant squid and the other marine life. He hypothesizes that if they use anesthesia to put Harry to sleep, the squid will stop attacking. However, after Harry is asleep, other odd things happen, such as an unseen entity following Beth on her way back from the sub. Beth believes that Norman is manifesting these events, but Norman can’t remember going into the sphere. He finds evidence that Beth has gone into the sphere. She tries to kill him by shutting off life support in the lab where she has locked him in, but he escapes and goes to the sphere. He enters and gains the same power that Harry and Beth have.

Norman attempts to disarm explosives that Beth has placed around the habitat, but instead arms them. He then attempts to escape in the emergency sub but returns for Beth and Harry. They reach the surface safely despite the explosions. While decompressing, they decide to use the power the sphere gave them to forget the sphere and the manifestations, instead devising a story about an accident with the life support system to explain the deaths. It works for Norman and Harry, but Beth’s behavior suggests that she didn’t forget.