Jurassic Park

Michael Crichton does an outstanding job at merging realism with science fiction with his most popular novel ‘Jurassic Park’. The mix between just enough realistic details and events blends perfectly with the somewhat hard to believe premise of recreating dinosaurs that take over their habitat. Between the excellent setting buildup and compelling characters that have a very strong sense of humanity, this book is perfect for anyone looking for a fun book to read. ‘Jurassic Park’ also has a deep underlining meaning often portrayed through the character Ian Malcolm. Ian Malcolm really describes the situation and boils them down into what seems like a real-life scenario, through his deep philosophical under tones to his description of patterns throughout nature, giving this book a surprisingly thoughtful and concerning tone that correlates with the world around you. Crichton splits the book perfectly as you bounce between characters and scenarios, changing the mood drastically, whilst still maintaining the flow of the novel between chapters. Whilst the first 50 pages or so can seem like a task, as soon as the cast gets on their way and begin establishing these bonds and showing their true character, you will find yourself glued to the book until the final few pages. Once the climax starts, it does not stop until the very last page, where you will find yourself thoroughly enjoying the journey Crichton created. The two young children in this book, Lex and Tim, are also outstanding contributions and are actually really competent for their age, and their journey with Dr. Grant leads to the 3 establishing strong bonds through the countless life or death situations. The description and realism of the process of creating dinosaurs and the dinosaurs themselves makes it immediately apparent that Crichton spent hours upon hours of research to make sure everything he was saying was factually realistic. Between how they obtained the dinosaur DNA and the entire shady and grim process Wu and Hammond do not tell you is really great and surprisingly interesting. Also, the great descriptions of violence and gore is done quite well and Crichton shifts between sudden and intense descriptions, to very subtle small references leading up to certain characters demise. This switch of tones and descriptions really adds to the entire novel through the outstanding use of words. The description of scenery and surroundings is also very adept in this novel, and it makes you almost feel like you are truly in a humid, moist theme-park located in a random island of the coast of Costa Rica. The description of the giant and cumbersome beast’s and the intelligent input Dr. Sattler and other characters bring to the table is also very interesting to watch as it grows and expands almost seamlessly. And no two dinosaurs are remotely alike, they are all so different and portray completely different ideas of what you may know about dinosaurs. This book was truly a joy to read and if you are on the fence about buying it, please do so, you will not regret it. Crichton’s ability to write such a genius piece whilst keeping it thrilling and entertaining with intelligent details and an immersive setting to tie it together is truly amazing and outstanding. This is one of the most compelling novels I have read and I greatly recommend you purchase this book to experience Crichton’s expert abilities.

Before I say anything about the book, I need to say Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World, are probably two of my all time favorite movies so I can’t really help but compare the books to the movies. I’ve probably watched those a thousand times. The movie were perfection and set the bar high; I never read the book because I was afraid it would suck and then how would I view the movie? Alternatively, what if the book was better and then the movie suddenly sucked? The third movie was a total disappointment. It would be a long time before I figured out the third movie had no book to support it, and I would then attribute the bad plotline to the fact that the story had been nothing more than box office fan fiction. Now with advertisements for a fourth Jurassic Park, and a second fan fiction, I found myself once again intrigued and captivated by test-tube dinosaurs… And hoping the 4th is a better fiction than the 3rd considering it too is inspired by its predecessors and not actually based on a pre-written plotline. So I worked up the courage and opened the book.

A short summary probably isn’t necessary with the story’s fame, but just in case, here goes. Eccentric billionaire John Hammond is the founder of a biotechnology company, InGen. He’s working on a top-secret project: A state of the art genetics lab with a resort on a privately owned island off Costa Rica where the main attractions are genetically engineered dinosaurs. But after locals begin complaining of strange animal attacks, Hammond’s investors want the project investigated for safety reasons. Enter paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, mathematician Ian Malcolm, and lawyer Donald Gennaro; it’s their job to assess the park’s value and safety measures. Also meet John Hammond’s grandkids, Alexis and Tim who’re just here for the tour. Unfortunately, they’re all arriving in time to witness what happens when a disgruntled employee takes revenge on a dinosaur zoo. Chaos ensues.

I’ve never been more relieved by a book’s excellence! Of course, the book was very different from the movie in some ways. John Hammond isn’t a jolly Santa-like Dino-nut who wants to bring adventure to the world’s children; oh no, he’s just an overambitious money-grubbing douche-bag who won’t listen to reason. And Alan Grant? He loves kids. (That was actually harder to get used to!) And if you’ve seen the movies and know that the velociraptors are supposed to be the villains of the story; they are but the T-Rex is almost as bad. Maybe he can’t see you moving, but he’s going to track you like a bloodhound.

I actually didn’t mind the differences. It was like having two people look out the same window and having them each describe their first impression. Nobody ever views the world exactly the same way as the person next to them, even when they’re looking at the same thing. So going from the movie to the book was like experiencing the story through someone else’s eyes. It was just as beautiful as before, just different. I loved ‘seeing’ the paddocks teaming with strange animals for the very first time; hearing about the sounds they could have produced, feeling character reactions. The banter between long-winded Ian Malcolm and the employees were fascinating even as Grant stood by, being both a main character and oddly quiet observer.

My only complaint with the plot had to do with Arnold finding the products of Dennis’s sabotage. Something about “the security system is down.” Basically, security is security; it’s not an either or kind of thing. How can a company so genius it can use DNA to raise the dead forget to think about two separate security systems? Or rather why would human security and animal security be tied so disastrously together? It seems you would have to worry about locking down the humans at a resort in the event of an animal escape. It would also seem in the event of a natural disaster you’d want those fences on a different system, on a back up generator, to protect guests… Or am I forgetting the year this story was written; maybe with tech at our fingertips I’m forgetting how limited it once was. And I’m not saying the fictional-theoretical security system couldn’t still have been sabotaged, I’m just saying regardless of human interference, one system to control both inhabitants of the island seems rather short sighted…

The book was a fun adventure with just enough science talk to make the story plausible. The movie version may have changed some things around, it still managed to keep the integrity of the book. Although, the two endings were very different… So different it made me think about The Lost World and of course now I’m reading that.

The first time I read this book was somewhere around 1993-1995, when I was a teenager and well before I had taken any biochemistry or genetics classes. That was a very long time ago, and my memory of this book was probably warped by seeing the movie quite a few times in the years in between.

Reading it through for the second time, as an adult, I find this book immensely fun, but there are some problems.

The dinosaurs are genetically engineered to need L-lysine, so that if they leave the island, they won’t die. For them, it is an essential amino acid, so it is added to their foods. Guess who also must consume L-lysine because we can’t make it ourselves! That’s right, humans. All essential amino acids are readily available in meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy. Lysine is available in soy, black beans, quinoa, and pumpkin seeds, and chances are many more plants available to dinosaurs that made it off island. But, for the meat eaters, all meat has lysine in it… so I’m not really sure why this was ever thought to be a “good idea”. Michael Crichton with his medical school background surely must have known that lysine was an essential amino acid for humans, and while difficult, it isn’t top of the list for vegans to supplement like Vitamin B12.

How DNA is talked about…. as a piece of DNA. Presumably, dinosaur genomes comprised a certain number of chromosomes, each species may have had different numbers, such as humans have 46, chimpanzees have 48, it is mostly the same stuff but split up on the different chromosomes. In order to “make a dinosaur”, or anything from a starting genome, you must have a way for that genetic material to replicate once you inject a genome into an egg that has had the original genetic material blasted out. You can’t just put in one long piece of DNA, you need sites to initiate chromosome replication, you need centrosomes and telomeres. A lot of times, these are very similar on different chromosomes, and assembling a whole genome takes a lot more effort than what was described here.

Ugh... the thriller trope with a very young, attractive female scientist (24?) who is an expert in her field, while the male scientists are all mid to late 30s or 40s. And… she is given absolutely nothing to do. She is the only adult woman for almost the entire book (there are some adult women at the beginning). I know this was written at a different time, but geez this could have been better.

“When you compared the DNA of man to the DNA of a lowly bacterium, you found that only about 10 percent of the strands were different.” Um nope. This isn’t true now, this wasn’t true in 1990 when this book was published, this has never been true. Some genes overlap, some DNA bounces back and forth between human (or animals) and bacteria, but the genetic material is VERY DIFFERENT in prokaryotes versus eukaryotes. Humans have close to 50% genes in common with a banana, last common ancestor 2 Billion years ago. Humans share around 80% of DNA with fish (last common ancestor 375 Million years ago), and humans share 98% DNA with chimpanzees (last common ancestor ). So… this 10 percent “different strands” is way out there, even if we were living in a world where dinosaur DNA could be obtained and then used to make some dinos. (This stuff erks me, just like typos in books.)

All the computer charts and navigating menus… which makes up a big part of the book and hasn’t aged well. Velociraptors are attacking and a kid is trying to figure out what buttons to push to turn on the electric fences. I know this was supposed to be riveting climactic stuff, but pushing buttons on a computer just doesn’t get me on the edge of my seat these days.

Anyway, I’ve decided to rate it 5 stars, because I read this during the coronavirus pandemic, at a time when I was feeling very nervous about an upcoming surgery, so I needed some escapism and this was a great book for that.

If you are a fan of the movies then this is a must read. I was a little hesitant at first since I had seen all of the movies and thought the story would pretty much be the same, but the book is fairly different for two reasons. The first is the book goes really deep into the ethical, legal, and scientific issues that center around the revival of an extinct species. This doesn’t really make it into the movies and it is a refreshing take on a story that I have seen many times. The second reason is that the dinosaurs are portrayed more closely to birds than reptiles. Whether or not birds are their own class or a part of reptiles is a controversial topic in the field of biology, but it was neat to see the dinosaurs’ behavior described as birdlike in the book. And of course, if you’re looking for scary dinosaur action, there’s plenty of it in this book.

Seriously. This is one of my all time favorite books. This is amazing. The movies are classics and wonderful. But this book is 10 times better to me. The suspense, the creepy undertone throughout the whole novel, so much more action and impact with what Crichton wove through this whole book. I’m astounded at how much he did in this and grateful he wrote it because I will re-read this masterpiece a 100 times over.

Just read it please.

Possibly it was the idea of ruining a childhood favorite. The first time I ever saw Jurassic Park was as a kid in a drive in. They were sparse back then but they were around and it was an absolutely terrifying way to see that movie.

I was afraid to read the book. Afraid it would tarnish my view of the movie. I would say, if you have that fear, it's okay. The book IS better than the movie. It doesn't make the movie any less good, just a different version of the same story. Some characters were done very dirty by the movie and some got a bit of an upgrade.

You should definitely read it though. Crichton is a terrific writer. He has a way of telling the story that both shows you the way and lets you fill in pieces with your own imagination. He paints vivid pictures, sometimes with a few words. He keeps it interesting, even with what could have been a very dry beginning as he built his world.

There will of course, be things that become dated. That is the burden of dinosaurs. New discoveries are made all the time. But he does plan for that outcome in the book (movie too).

Anyways, read the book.

What Stephen King is to horror; Michael Crichton is for alternative-science and futuristics. Jurassic Park is a classic that should be read for a reason; the simple premise of "What if Theme Park, But Dinosaurs" could have come off as less realistic in a lesser writer, but Crichton has the knack for showing how the human heart points, and he spins a tale of suspense and dread from a plot where we know what will happen -- but Jurassic Park is able to relish in the hubris of man like the best Greek Tragedy.

For those who love the movie, there is enough different to keep their attention, and should be on anyones to-be-read list. As an avid reader, I read it after watching the movie and; not to be cliche, but the book is better -- and that's saying something because Jurassic Park is also a classic film.

I read this years ago and loved it.  Helluva page turner.  So when my boss/client told me to pick a popular writer of thriller-type novels, and study one of them to get the tone he wants for his novel, I chose JP because I was familiar with it, not just from having read it but from multiple viewings of the film which I love.  A familiar work would allow me to study the structure without losing myself in the story.  I thought.  Turns out I was dead wrong about that.  I got caught up immediately.

Because I was interested in how it worked as narrated as well as how it read, I purchased the Audible version of it at a discount, and moved back and forth between it and the ebook.  (By the way, it's nice that at least some Kindles will play the audio right along with the ebook.  Audio broadens my understanding of a work, and listening while reading, though it slows down the latter dramatically, even though I normally listen at 1.5x the normal speed, is a highly immersive way of approaching the text.

But what about the book???  Yes, okay I'm getting to that.  The book.  Well... It still counts as a page-turner, no question.  I got caught up in the narrative so often that I found I had to consciously slow down and look for the things I wanted to study.  Crichton could tell a story!  And in that respect, he's like Tolkien, a damn fine storyteller, but kind of a crap writer.

Yeah, I'm sorry if there are Crichton fans out there foaming at the mouth, but the drawbacks of his writing are so clear, and in some cases so dire, that I couldn't  overlook them.  The most egregious problems are his characters.  None of them have real internal lives.  Crichton gives lip service to family, exes, jobs and the like, but they're not terribly developed.  But this is a thriller, you say, they don't have to be.  And I would agree up to a point.  But consider:

John Hammond is a joke.  He's an uber rich guy who exists for two reasons: First to pay for and supervise the development of the park, and second, to be annoyed when people tell him the park isn't going to work.  He's so obtuse that when Ian Malcolm explains things to him, his consistent response is to ask the rest of the people in the room what Malcolm is talking about.  There's nothing about him that isn't cardboard, and even the cardboard doesn't ring true. Ian Malcolm, or as I like to call him Information Dump Malcolm, exists to explain things.  From the get go, all he ever does is lecture.  He doesn't have conversations, he doesn't connect with anyone.  He's like an AI.  Say: "Chaos Theory," and off he goes, explaining it.  Say: "Look, real dinosaurs," and you get pages of explanation about what's wrong with science today. After a while I just skimmed over his dialogue.  The kids:  Two of the most utterly pointless, useless characters ever penned.  Lex is so annoying that I kept hoping the T-Rex would gobble her up like an hors d'oeuvre.  She never shuts up, never does what she's told, screams, whines, and makes endless noise when everyone is telling her to be quiet or the dinosaurs will eat them.  She's an insufferable know-it-all, who knows virtually nothing about anything, and doesn't really want to know anything.  All she wants to do is play "pickle" and whine about how none of this is fun and she's hungry.  The only time she's bearable is when she's unconscious.  Tim is a virtual non-entity, but at least he's an improvement over his sister. Everybody else: Almost totally interchangeable except for their area of expertise. I don't really feel like I'm being harsh here either.  I'm willing to give props for a compelling story told in such a break-neck fashion that had I not been paying close attention to the text, I might never have caught these problems. Or at least they might not have gotten up my nose so completely.  What you have is a decent thriller with a great plot and a damn good hook: cloning dinosaurs.  It was timely then and it still is, it plays to our fears and our desires, and Crichton knows how to manipulate both.

I think I'm pretty much finished with this book now, I doubt I'll ever need to read it again unless I want to remind myself of the spare, efficient style of it.  Crichton proved to me that the advice about dialogue -- use "said;" the eye skips right over it -- is completely true.  His work is an education for any writer, but particularly those who are going to write fast-paced stories.  

He tells a great story, and that's really the bottom line.