After reading this post on Cracked.com, I had a wicked urge to read Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton again. And, of course, if you read Jurassic Park, you have to read The Lost World–if only for the dinosaurs.
 |
| Jurassic Park |
Jurassic Park, I’ve always thought, was a modern Faust story, but with dinosaurs. With all the philosophizing and cautioning from Ian Malcolm, the chaos mathematician. Most people, I’m sure, have seen the movie. But the book is a lot different; I like it a lot better. It’s a lot scarier for one. Instead of a handful of Velociraptors, there are almost 40 of them in the book. They’re bloody everywhere.
As most people know, the action starts when the security systems start to fail due to the efforts of a disgruntled computer tech and some serious delusions about how dangerous the dinosaurs are. From that point, there are chases, close escapes, lots of deaths, and non-stop action right until the end.
The only pauses come when Crichton uses the injured and drugged out Ian Malcolm to get his points about science across. Because the park owners and technicians are trying to recreate extinct creatures, Malcolm believes that the park is destined to fail spectacularly. After Malcolm gets attacked by one of the Tyrannosaurs and is doped up on morphine until they can get off the island, every time he appears on stage, he goes off about how stupid Hammond (the owner) and the rest are. They don’t know how to care for the animals. More importantly, they don’t know what the animals are capable of. They believe in the infallibility of their systems. And, according to Malcolm, they don’t know how to use the technology they’ve discovered. This is where my Faust theory comes into play. One of the things the Faust story is about is the misuse of new knowledge. Ethics always runs behind scientific discover and because Hammond and the crew are more concerned about making money than anything else, they never stop to ask if they should have recreated dinosaurs.
I’ve had a copy of Jurassic Park since junior high and I take it out and reread it every few years because it has almost everything I look for in a great book. Intellectual puzzles. Dinosaurs. Action. Deep thoughts. Suspense. It’s a fantastic book. Even though it’s been more than 20 years since it was written, it still holds up.
 |
| The Lost World |
The Lost World is Crichton’s follow up to Jurassic Park. It, too, features a drugged up Malcolm spouting off about his theories. But there are more dinosaur species and more chases and narrow escapes. Not as many people die, but it’s still a suspenseful read. The movie sequel is a bit different than this book. Unbeknownst to the survivors of the first book, Hammond had a second site where he was breeding dinosaurs. In order to get healthy adults, Hammond’s people created hundreds and hundreds of eggs. After the events of Jurassic Park, the company collapsed and Site B was abandoned. But the dinosaurs were left behind.
Reading The Lost World, I got the same feeling of frustration that I had with the company scientists in the first book, playing around with and observing the dinosaurs with little thought to the danger everyone was in. You just want to smack them on the head and shout and them to get the hell off the island before anyone else gets eaten. This goes double for Lew Dodgson, a geneticist who was partly responsible for things going to hell last time by tempting the disgruntled employee who tanked the computers at the park. He’s still obsessed with getting his hands on dinosaurs. As soon as he arrives on the island, he proceeds to piss off the Tyrannosaurs. Just like last time, panic ensues.
The best part of the book is the animal behaviorist Sarah Harding. I love Crichton’s strong, smart female characters. Most of the time, it seems that the women in the books are the only one’s with their heads screwed on correctly.
While The Lost World is not quite as good Jurassic Park, it’s still a great modern cautionary tale. Just like Frankenstein, they teach us that what is dead really ought to stay dead. If you can’t follow that part, then leave dinosaurs the hell alone.