Jurassic Park

Rating:
Summary: Warning Against Genetic Experiments
Review: The 'Introduction' starts with a warning against the biotechnology revolution. It is broad-based among thousands of laboratories. Much of it is thoughtless or frivolous. This work is unregulated and has no oversight among scientists. The author has projected these principles into this novel. What if extinct dinosaurs were recreated today? Crichton uses his scientific knowledge and talented imagination to create another best seller. A producer, John Hammond, uses scientific talent and piles of money to fulfill his plan; how could anything go wrong? Who was watching the reality to see if it matched the plan? Is there a practical use for dinosaurs? Will he perish, like Victor Frankenstein, at the hands of his creation?

Both crocodiles and sharks have been around since the Triassic age, roughly 220 million years ago. Would there be any problems is dinosaurs were to be recreated? Don't all plans contain simplifying assumptions and outdated data? Reading this book will give you the background to better understand the 1993 film, and the sequels. The book is better than the film, which is a simplified version of the book. There is a fad for dinosaurs among children. Perhaps a comic book version of the film would educate them?


Rating:
Summary: AWESOME READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: During Titanic, my husband rooted for the iceberg.

During Jurassic Park, I rooted for the dinosaurs.

At least, I did in regards to two characters. But I'll get to that in a moment.

It's biotechnology on acid - what if you could bring an extinct animal back to life? Would you? Should you? Sure, it would be neat to have a park full of dinosaurs, and get to watch them move and eat and generally live their lives. Hollywood has been making movies about dinosaurs since the first film was recorded, and most of those movies had humans living amongst them.

We know, scientifically, that such a scene is impossible. But what if it weren't?

But everyone knows the theme of this book - really, you want to know if the book stands up to the movie.

Seriously, how long have you been on Earth? Of course the book is better! The book is always better! It's right up there with the scariest of Stephen King novels - you're too afraid to turn the page, and too interested to set the book back down. From the moment the main characters land on the isolated island in Central America, off the coast of Costa Rica (and really, from about thirty pages before that), you know that most of the people on that island are Lunch.

Ketchup, anyone?

So it's a given that the end score will be Dinos 1, Human Nil. And of course it is - don't let me dissuade you of anything. The only question will be who actually manages to make it out alive: the foreboding doctor who cloned the animals; the paleontologist who is desperate to study them; the money-man who found the investors; the mathematician who has been predicting doom and gloom from the beginning; the eccentric (and possibly insane) man who, like Mrs Lovejoy, keeps insisting that the park "is for the children!"; or the children themselves of that man, who find themselves in the middle of it all.

Myself, I kept hoping that Hammond (the aforementioned idiot who planned the park as a destination for children's elaborate birthday parties) would be eaten, as would his exceedingly annoying seven year old granddaughter.

Horrid, I know, to wish a gruesome and grisly death on a seven year old. But this was a really annoying seven year old. If there's a dino who would like to eat you, you shouldn't attract its attention by screaming your head off. Would the world really have been a worse place if she had become something's midnight snack?

It's a great book. It's fun, and interesting, and dare I say, it even provokes thoughtful questions about our role here on Earth and environmental science and conservation.

(Albeit at the very end of the book and done in such a manner that you can safely skip that chapter.)

I highly recommend it. Just make sure you lock the windows and turn on the electric fence first.