Review - Jurassic Park (the book)

I’m quite sure you know the movie Jurassic Park. It’s famous, not only for its story, but also for its innovative use of CGI and puppeteering. However, fewer people have read the book that it is based on, since reading is for nerds. (But since you’re reading this, you’re a nerd, and so have nothing to fear getting caught with a book in your hand. What is a nerd, any way? It seems that people with a semblance of intelligence are geeks, while people who hammer nails in with their head are deemed ‘cool’. Give me a break.) Anyway, tangents aside, this is the review of the book Jurassic Park, written by the late (and by that I mean dead) Michael Crichton.

While the movie starts out with a raptor attacking a man, the book starts out right after the fact. A helicopter flies in the injured man to a doctor, and tell her that the man was injured by some machinery, even though there are very clearly raptor scars on his chest. They think she’s Little Red Riding Hood, or something. She doesn’t really believe a tractor could scratch a man in the chest, but they insist thst their tractors are very dangerous, and so she treats him for a tractor bite. Of course, he dies, and she is very suspicious, so suspicious, in fact, that she never comes into the story again. A little girl gets bitten by a Compsognathus (abbreviated to a shorter, cuter name: compy), but she’s okay.

Dodgson, the mysterious villain in the book, knows that Dr. John Hammond, head of InGen, is secretly (or not-so-secretly) making dinosaurs. He thinks they’ll be in zoos everywhere, and even sold as pets. So he gets Nedry, the best character in the story, to steal some dinosaur embryos.

Meanwhile, Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler, who are not engaged, are being asked to come to Isla Nublar, which has been giving them money for a few years in exchange for their advice. Hammond’s lawyer, Donald Gennaro, who is stocky and muscular (rather different from the movie) keeps calling them, and eventually he tells them to get on a plane and head for Central America. They do. Doing so, they meet Dr. Hammond, the creator of Jurassic Park, and Ian Malcolm, who basically says the same thing every time he speaks. He always talks about Chaos Theory, while at the same time not really explaining it very well. He’s so preachy about it, I was surprised he wasn’t wearing a white collar.
Anyway, when they get on the island, they see dinosaurs, and are rather astounded by this. And so he tells them how he did it (But not with the handy-dandy Mr. DNA). He digs up insects preserved in fossilized amber, then tunnels into the amber and Tom the abdomen steals the blood, which may have dino DNA in it. This process, although realistic when the book was written, is now deemed impossible. The DNA in the blood would have decayed in the course of 65 million years.

Anyway, they go to their hotel, and notice that bars have been installed in the room, to prevent dinosaurs, some of which had previously escaped, from getting to the visitors. Dr. Grant is a little perturbed. Dr. Hammond’s grandchildren arrive, much to the anger of his lawyer Gennaro. In the book, the boy is older. Here, Hammond shows his more sinister side, as he is happy to have his grandkids on the dinosaur island in order to show how safe he believes it to be.

Eventually Nedry, that Shakespearean character of legend, desires to steal the embryos and give them to Dodgson. He sets a bug in the computer system to shut off the power, planning on fixing it as soon as he gets back. But he doesn’t get back, because the Dilophosaurus, who is large and can spit poison, blinds Nedry, and then eats him.
This part differs somewhat from the film. The T-Rex does break out of its pen, and when Allen stands still and the dinosaur ignore him, he decides it must sense movement. The lawyer doesn’t abandon the children; a park employee, Regis, does. And he is soon eaten by a baby Tyrannosaur.

Ian Malcolm is wounded by the dinosaur, and is brought back to the control room, only to give another sermon on chaos theory. The great white hunter, Muldoon, goes with the lawyer to hunt down the Tyrannosaurus Rex, while Dr. Grant and the kids try to get back to the control room. The T-Rex corners them in a waterfall, and stretches its tongue like Yoshi and tries to grab the kids with it. Luckily, a dart Muldoon had fired at it earlier had finally kicked in, and the beast let the kid go and fell down in slumber. They escape, to be hunted again by pterosaurs, and come to an inflatable raft, and the T-Rex stats chasing them down the river.

Meanwhile, Dr. Hammond and his assistant, Dr. Wu, find out that the dinosaurs are breeding, despite them all being female. The velociraptors, the deadliest of the terrible lizards, attack the control room, and almost kill Ellie, but instead jump off the roof and gobble up Dr. Wu, who was only a kid. Dr. Grant grabs some ‘raptor eggs, goes into the lab, then grabs some needles and inject poison into them. Then he feeds them to the velociraptors, but for the last dinosaur, he stabs it in the tail with the poisonous needle, and kills it.

Tim, the eldest of Dr. Hammond’s grandkids, gets the park back online, then he hand his little sister, like idiots, play with the computer, making animal sounds. Dr. Hammond, who considered this incident as a mere setback, heard the animal sounds, and thinking it to be a hungry T-Rex, runs away, falls off a cliff, and gets eaten by compys. Reverend Malcolm gives his final sermon, then dies.

Everyone else goes onto a helicopter, and as they leave, the Costa Rican government sends in the Air force to blow the place to hell, including some janitors that may have been on the island.

The book is somewhat different from the film. There are more characters and more dino fun, though it is more cynical than the movie, as Dr. John Hammond seeks to open the park no matter how many people die. The book is a good read, and if you like the movie, I’m sure you will like the book.

SIDE NOTE: I don’t agree with everything in the book. Call me Hammond all you like, but I bet I could get that park running just fine. Instead of electric fences, I would helicopter the dinosaurs into giant pits, with inescapable walls. And, to prevent overpopulation, I would move the babies to other zoos around the world. I would make millions. MILLIONS! And I don’t think it’s unethical to be determined, either. But that’s just my two cents. It’s a great story, silver screen or paperback.