The Original World of Jurassic Park

As Jurassic World: Dominion stomps into view, with great visuals (albeit with some inaccurate dinosaurs) and the stupidest plot in the entire series, I take a look back at the two books by Michael Crichton that re-ignited the world's fascination with dinosaurs.

Jurassic Park

Crichton, Michael (1990: Alfred A.Knopf: 448pp.)

The first thing to note about this book is that it's not the movie.  The premise carries over, but Crichton's human characters are quite different. John Hammond is a profit-hungry tycoon who uses any means available (and a miniature elephant that's an interesting side story) to attract investors and open his park.  Ian Malcom is a brilliant but dour annoyance without much personality. 

The dinosaur-cloning is explained pretty well. Stephen J. Gould wrote of this book that, while dino-cloning couldn't really be done, Crichton offered “the most clever and realistic solution” in fiction. Chaos theory is important from the beginning. Malcom warns piling one sophisticated security system and protocol on another, combined with the uncertainties introduced by the dinosaurs, would lead to catastrophic failure. He’s right, although nobody likes a sourpuss prophet, and I thought “good riddance” when he was apparently eaten by a T. rex. 

Crichton’s writing and characterization are not spectacular, but his style works well, building tension and offering some great scares, and the jargon is kept at a reasonable level. The dinosaurs are a varied and entertaining lot, true to the science of the time, and this is where the world learned the word Velociraptor. 

The sequel, The Lost World (1995: Alfred A. Knopf, 393pp.) written after the first movie and setting up the second one, keeps most of the characters and brings Ian back from the seemingly-dead. (John Hammond, though, stays dead.) Ian is closer to Jeff Goldblum in this one. Dr. Richard Levine, a guy who wonders about real "lost worlds" where prehistoric creatures might have survived, catches on to the hushed-up events of the first book. It makes sense when he finds a new island of dinosaurs: the site in the first book was too clean, too showy, to be the facility where so many failures and mistakes must have happened as Hammond's company learned to clone dinosaurs.  

And so we move, albeit slowly, to Site B. There we learn more about how the dinosaur-reviving was done and, of course, witness a lot more death. There's a little too much information stuffed in for most readers, although yours truly devoured it.  The new characters, Levine (whose disappearance on Site B sparks the plot) and action-scientist Sarah Harding, don't make a lasting impression. (It is worth noting that Harding gets a role played in 99% of prior science fiction by a man.)  The smart-bratty stowaway children are annoying. I almost thought it unfortunate that Crichton, like Spielberg, never crosses the line and feeds kids to dinosaurs.  

The T. rex is still the boss species, and Velociraptors are zooming around. We do, though, we get interesting new species including what a character thinks of, not surprisingly, as "A goddamn Stegosaurus" and a predator with previously unknown chameleon-like abilities. Modern paleontologists don't believe that's a thing, any more than they think T. rex could only see prey if it moved, but it's not so absurd that it takes us out of the story. The action sequences are very good, and there are plenty of thrills and scares.  Publisher's Weekly gave it a so-so review, then mentioned the first printing was two million copies, and it's hard to argue with success.

And so the Jurassic Park franchise catapulted dinosaurs back into popular culture, apparently to stay. 

Matt Bille

mattsciwriter@protonmail.com

www.mattbille.com