Jurassic Park (novel)

Plot

In 1989, strange animal attacks occur throughout Costa Rica. Evidence collected from the attacks points to Procompsognathus, an extinct dinosaur. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist colleague Ellie Sattler meet with an EPA official to discuss the attacks, but are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond, the founder of bioengineering firm InGen, for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on the remote island of Isla Nublar.

The "preserve" is a cover for the construction of "Jurassic Park", a theme park showcasing living dinosaurs recreated using ancient DNA found in the blood inside insects that were fossilized and preserved in amber. Gaps in the genetic code were filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control breeding, all of the park's specimens are raised as females with a genetic flaw that makes them lysine deficient and unable to survive outside captivity.

The recent attacks have made Hammond's investors skittish. Hammond requests that Grant and Sattler tour the park and endorse it ahead of the park's opening. They are joined by mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro, both of whom are pessimistic about the park. Malcolm, consulted before the park's creation, is emphatic that it will collapse. Hammond also invites his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis 'Lex' Murphy, to join the tour. The park staff present comprise senior engineer John Arnold, biotechnologist Henry Wu, game warden Robert Muldoon, PR director Ed Regis, chief programmer Dennis Nedry, veterinarian Harding, and several laborers.

While touring the park, Grant finds a Velociraptor eggshell, seemingly proving Malcolm's assertion that the dinosaurs are breeding against the geneticists' design. Grant deduces that using frog DNA to fill gaps in the dinosaurs' genetic code resulted in an environment that was conducive to dichogamy, causing some of the female dinosaurs to become males and establish a breeding population. The park's automated tally system failed to account for the newborns, having been programmed to allow operators to input the expected number of dinosaurs.

Nedry, angered by Hammond refusing to pay him for months of overwork, commits corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, an employee of InGen's rival, Biosyn. Activating a backdoor he wrote into the park's software, he disables the security systems and steals frozen embryos for the park's fifteen dinosaur species. Attempting to rendezvous with Dodgson's agent, he becomes lost due to a tropical storm. Nedry's sabotage disables the electric fences around the park's enclosures, allowing most of the dinosaurs to escape. He is killed by a Dilophosaurus during his attempted escape.

Meanwhile, the tour group, on their way back to the main lodge, discovers that dinosaurs have been escaping the island by stowing away on the supply boats. When the power is turned off, the tour group is left stranded next to the Tyrannosaurus rex enclosure due to the tour cars being powered by underground wires connected to the main power grid. A Tyrannosaurus rex breaks through the depowered electric fence and attacks the tour group. Grant rescues Tim and Lex, but Malcolm is severely injured and left behind, while Regis is killed and eaten. Muldoon and Gennaro, while searching for the tour group, find Malcolm and leave him in Harding's care.

Arnold tries to reboot the control room's systems and undo Nedry's meddling while repair crews begin patching up the park. However, the staff does not realize that a flaw in the rebooting process has left the main generators turned off, leaving only the overtaxed auxiliary generator operational. It quickly breaks down, disabling the entire island's power. The park's dangerous and untamed Velociraptors escape their enclosure and kill Arnold and Wu. Grant and the children make their way back to the island's control complex by rafting down a river on an inflatable boat, narrowly escaping multiple dinosaur attacks.

Grant and Tim restart the main generators and regain control of the park's systems. Warned by Grant that raptors are aboard, Gennaro contacts the island's departing supply ship and recalls it seconds before it makes landfall. Hammond, walking outdoors while contemplating InGen's future, is killed by a pack of Procompsognathus after he falls down a hill and breaks his ankle. Grant, Sattler, Muldoon, and Gennaro search for the surviving raptors and discover a vast nest hidden in the park's waterworks.

Malcolm seemingly dies from his injuries. Everyone is evacuated by the Air Vigilance Service, which declares the dinosaurs hazardous and razes the island with napalm. The survivors are detained in a Costa Rican hotel. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Gutierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica. Gutierrez informs Grant that an unknown pack of animals has been migrating through the Costa Rican jungle, implying that the surviving dinosaurs have been reintroduced into Earth's ecosystem.

Development

Crichton began working on the project in 1981, but soon set it aside because there "seemed to be an enormous mania about dinosaurs" at the time, and he was hesitant to "ride a current fashion". He eventually proceeded after concluding that the public's fascination with dinosaurs "was permanent." According to Crichton, "It was a very different story. It was about the person who did the cloning, operating alone and in secret. It just wasn't satisfactory."

Crichton revived the idea around 1988. Crichton initially avoided the park idea, finding it too similar to his 1973 film Westworld. He sought to avoid certain ideas that had already been done in media, such as dinosaurs in a city, instead setting the story on a tropical island.

The novel was originally told from the perspective of Hammond's grandchildren, who are present at the park as the dinosaurs escape. He also added "a tremendous amount of material" on chaos theory that would come from Malcolm, who had been only a minor character up to that point in development.

In May 1990, Crichton submitted his manuscript to publisher Alfred A. Knopf.

Jurassic Park was released in October 1990. For the novel's 30th anniversary, the Folio Society published a special edition in 2020, featuring six illustrations based on scenes in the book.

Themes

Jurassic Park critiques the dystopian potentialities of modern science. Ian Malcolm is the conscience that reminds John Hammond of the immoral and unnatural path that has been taken. The final condition of the park is epitomized by the word "hell" which highlights the sacrilegious nature of Hammond's attempt.

The plot of Crichton's novel has similarities to Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, where humanity creates something without truly knowing anything about it. Henry Wu is unable to name the things that he creates, which alludes to Victor Frankenstein not knowing what to call his flawed imitation of God's creation. The immorality of these actions lead to human destruction, echoing the creature's vengeance on his creator.

As Dale Speirs notes at p. 18 of "Vanished Worlds: Part 6" in Opuntia 483 (Sept. 2020), Jurassic Park resembles Katharine Metcalf Roof's November 1930 Weird Tales story "A Million Years After", about dinosaurs hatching from millions-of-years-old eggs.

Similar to how his other novels represent science and technology as both hazardous and life-changing, Crichton's novel highlights the hypocrisy and superiority complex of the scientific community that inspired John Hammond to re-create dinosaurs and treat them as commodities, which only lead to eventual catastrophe. Crichton uses the opening of the book to highlight the shift of scientific research from occurring in universities for the betterment of all mankind, to private labs where research is conducted "...in secret...in haste, and for-profit". The similar fears of atomic power from the Cold War are adapted by Crichton onto the anxieties evoked by genetic manipulation.

Reception

The book became a bestseller and Crichton's signature novel, with largely favorable reviews by critics. In a review for The New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt described it as "a superior specimen of the [Frankenstein] myth" and "easily the best of Mr. Crichton's novels to date". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Gene Lyons held that the book was "hard to beat for sheer intellectual entertainment" largely because it was "[f]illed with diverting, up-to-date information in easily digestible form". Both Lyons' Entertainment Weekly piece and Andrew Ferguson's review in the Los Angeles Times, however, criticized Crichton's characterization as heavy-handed and his characters as clichéd. Ferguson further complained about Ian Malcolm's "dime-store philosophizing" and predicted that the film adaptation of the book would be "undoubtedly trashy". He conceded that the book's "only real virtue" was "its genuinely interesting discussions of dinosaurs, DNA research, paleontology and chaos theory".

Jurassic Park had sold nine million copies as of 1993. Three years later, it was awarded the Secondary BILBY Award.

Sean Guynes, writing for Tor.com in 2022, felt that Jurassic Park overlooked the dinosaurs as mere plot devices, and was critical of the prose and character development. He simultaneously praised the book for posing questions about the impact of scientific advancements on society, calling it Crichton's "smartest novel" for this reason. He wrote that Jurassic Park "was a bestseller, but it was never acclaimed and isn't remembered with much fondness. It was, for all intents and purposes, a mediocre thriller novel. But it asked big questions and it started something even bigger—a franchise". He went on to call the novel "an important look at scientific ethics and possibility that deserves to be reconsidered as a masterpiece" of the science fiction genre.

Adaptation

The novel eventually led to the Jurassic Park franchise, starting with a 1993 film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg. It was distributed by Universal Pictures, which acquired the film rights to the novel in 1990. Crichton performed early work on the film's screenplay, with David Koepp eventually taking over.

The film adaptation excised much of the scientific dialogue, with Crichton saying, "I feel very strongly that books should be the best books they can be, and you should not worry about what the movie will do. In movies, a little bit of that kind of dialogue goes a long way. A movie like Jurassic Park is not the format to have extended discussions on the scientific paradigm."

The film was a critical and commercial success, leading to a sequel novel by Crichton, titled The Lost World and published in 1995. Spielberg returned to direct the 1997 film adaptation, titled The Lost World: Jurassic Park. No further novels were written by Crichton, although the film series would continue, with Spielberg involved as executive producer. Jurassic Park III was released in 2001, and the Jurassic World series began in 2015. Although not based directly on the novels, these films do include elements from the novel that were unused in the first film.

References

Bibliography

References

1. "JURASSIC PARK | Kirkus Reviews".
2. (2001). "Michael Crichton on the Jurassic Park Phenomenon". Universal.
3. Papamichael, Stella. (August 19, 2005). "Jurassic Park Trilogy: The Ultimate Collection DVD (1993-2001)".
4. Given his reasoning that genetic research is expensive and "there is no pressing need to create a dinosaur", Crichton concluded that it would emerge from a "desire to entertain", leading to a [[Wildlife refuge. wildlife park]] of extinct animals."Return to Jurassic Park: Dawn of a New Era", ''Jurassic Park'' Blu-ray (2011)
5. (1993). "The Making of Jurassic Park: An Adventure 65 million Years in the Making". Boxtree Limited.
6. (27 November 2019). "The story of the big bad Jurassic Park logosaurus". Grapheine.
7. Hicks, Ann. (October 21, 1990). "Fall books please people watchers". Gannett News Service.
8. (October 29, 1990). "A Reading on New Books". The Windsor Star.
9. "Jurassic Park miscellaneous notes".
10. Weiss, Josh. (October 12, 2020). "Jurassic Park: Folio Society edition offers six jaw-snapping illustrations of Michael Crichton's dinosaur opus".
11. Elderkin, Beth. (October 14, 2020). "Jurassic Park Gets a Scarily Gorgeous Collector's Edition for Its 30th Anniversary".
12. Gallardo-Terrano, Pedro. (2008). "Rediscovering the Island as Utopian Locus: Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park.". Contemporary Literary Criticism.
13. Miracky, James. (2008). "Replicating a Dinosaur: Authenticity Run Amok in the Theme Parking in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Julian Barnes's England, England.". Contemporary Literary Criticism.
14. Speirs, Dale. (2020). "Vanished Worlds: Part 6". Optunia.
15. Roof, Katherine. (1930). "A Million Years After".
16. Geraghty, Lincoln. (2018). "Jurassic Park".
17. (November 15, 1990). "Books of The Times; Of Dinosaurs Returned And Fractals Fractured". [[The New York Times]].
18. (November 16, 1990). "Jurassic Park".
19. (November 11, 1990). "The Thing From the Tar Pits : JURASSIC PARK By Michael Crichton (Alfred A. Knopf: $19.95; 413 pp.)". [[Los Angeles Times]].
20. Warren, Tim. (August 20, 1993). "'Jurassic Park' strikes again". The Baltimore Sun.
21. "Previous Winners of the BILBY Awards: 1990 – 96". The Children's Book Council of Australia Queensland Branch.
22. Guynes, Sean. (January 11, 2022). "Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park Is a Terrible Masterpiece".
23. [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jurassicpark.htm Jurassic Park (1993)]. Box Office Mojo (1993-09-24). Retrieved on 2013-09-17.
24. (2022-06-13). "Jurassic Park movies in order: The full timeline explained".