Jurassic Park (novel)

For the feature film, see Jurassic Park (film).

For other uses, see Jurassic Park (disambiguation).

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park

File:Jurassicpark.jpg Original paperback cover of Jurassic Park. Design by Chip Kidd.
Author	Michael Crichton
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction & Techno-thriller novel
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date	November 1990
Publication place	United States
Pages	416 pp (original hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-394-58816-9 (original hardcover)
Followed by	The Lost World

Jurassic Park is a techno-thriller novel written by Michael Crichton that was published in 1990. Often considered a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering in the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it uses the mathematical concept of chaos theory and its philosophical implications to explain the collapse of an amusement park showcasing certain genetically recreated dinosaur species. It was adapted into a film in 1993.

The book has one sequel, The Lost World, in 1995, which was also adapted into a film, in 1997.

Plot

The novel, in an "introduction", is initially presented as a brief report on the consequences of "The InGen Incident", which occurred on August 1989. This "fiction as fact" presentation had been used by Crichton before, in Eaters of the Dead and The Andromeda Strain, and is used again in Rising Sun.

The narrative begins by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. After paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student Ellie Sattler enter the sequence of queried experts they are abruptly whisked off by billionaire John Hammond (founder and CEO of International Genetic Bio-Engineering, or In-Gen) for a weekend visit to a "zoological preserve" he has established on an island 120 miles off the west coast of Costa Rica.

Recent events have spooked Hammond's considerable investors and, to placate them, he means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a rock-star-like mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic, but Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainably simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system.

A mosquito in Baltic amber.

Upon arrival the park is revealed to contain cloned dinosaurs, which have been recreated from damaged dinosaur DNA (found in mosquitos that sucked Saurian blood and were then trapped and preserved in amber) that have been spliced with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA to fill in the sequence gaps. Hammond proudly showcases InGen's secret advances in genetic engineering and parades them through the island's vast array of automated systems.

To counter Malcolm's dire prognostications with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy, who have been sent on vacation while their parents divorce. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds an eggshell seeming to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design (the population graphs proudly introduced earlier were naturally distributed, reflecting a breeding population, rather than displaying the distinct pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display).

Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations (they did not bother to set their software to search the motion detectors for more than the expected number of creatures, only fewer) and the park's controllers are reluctant to realize that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathus forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population.

In the midst of this the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts some corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's infamous archrival, Biosyn. By activating a back door he wrote into the system, Nedry manages to quickly steal 15 frozen embryos from the laboratories without being detected by the island's security systems. He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at the auxiliary dock deep in the park (use of the main dock would be noticed). But his plan goes awry: during a sudden tropical storm Nedry becomes lost inside the park and stops his stolen jeep at a dead end. He gets off the jeep to figure his location. He is then spat upon and blinded by a venomous Dilophosaurus before being eaten.

Nedry's plan called for him to secretly deliver the embryos and return to the park's control room within fifteen minutes but, without him to quietly patch the system, the park's security is left off, leaving the electrified fences deactivated. Without the barriers to contain them, dinosaurs begin to escape. A Tyrannosaurus rex and a juvenile tyrannosaurus attack the people on tour, destroying the vehicles, killing InGen public relations manager Ed Regis, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park.

Ian Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident but found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, in between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive.

The park's upper management — engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond — struggle to maintain control over the situation and for a brief while they manage to get the park largely back in order. But a series of arrogant mistakes on their part plunge the park into greater disarray. The viciously intelligent Velociraptors that were locked away too close to the central compound finally escape and pick off Wu and Arnold in the ensuing carnage. Muldoon sprains an ankle, and Harding — the chief veterinarian — and Ellie Sattler are also injured. Finally, Grant and the kids slowly make their way back to the central compound, carrying news that several young raptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were onboard the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland.

With no social order left, the survivors organize themselves and eventually secure their own lives. Just when the crisis is largely over, Hammond, furious with being ignored and desperate to regain control, has an accident, is picked apart by compys, and dies alone. Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Finally Grant, Sattler, Muldoon, and Gennaro set out into the park to find the wild raptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious and nonviolent, they emerge unharmed. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B had discovered and killed the raptor stowaways.

In the end the island is suddenly and violently razed by the fictional Costa Rican Air Force. They survivors are told that Malcolm has scummed to his injuries and died. The survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. However, reports have surfaced from a Costa Rican doctor that an unknown pack of animals has been killing livestock and eating crops as they migrate toward the Costa Rican jungle.

Dinosaurs and other extinct animals featured

Dinosaurs and other extinct animals confirmed to be on Isla Nublar in the novels:

• Apatosaurus (Camarasaurus in some editions)
• Cearadactylus (Pterosaurs in some editions)
• Dilophosaurus
• Euoplocephalus
• Hadrosaurus
• Hypsilophodon (Dryosaurus was used in context to describe this animal)
• Maiasaura
• Microceratops (Callovosaurus in some editions, and Microceratops was renamed to Graciliceratops)
• Othnielia
• Procompsognathus(Called Compys in the book for short)
• Stegosaurus
• Styracosaurus
• Triceratops
• Tyrannosaurus rex
• Velociraptor antirrhopus

• Later editions of the novel list Microceratops in place of Callovosaurus on the population tables presented in the book. Microceratops, however, is observed by characters in the park whereas Callovosaurus is not.
• Later editions of the novel use Camarasaurus in place of Apatosaurus, although Apatosaurus remains on the population tables presented in the book.
• A dinosaur presumed to be a Coelurosaurus had just begun the DNA extraction procedure at the time the story takes place.
• In addition to dinosaurs and pterosaurs, several prehistoric plants and at least one species of insect, Meganeura, was also resurrected from extinction for the park.

Biological issues

Main article: Biological issues in Jurassic Park

Scientists have argued that much of the book's content is impossible for various reasons, most notably the suggested means of recovering dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes trapped in fossilized tree sap. While this theory is largely a plot device by Crichton, both novel and movie sparked debate on the feasibility of cloning dinosaurs.

Four arguments why it would not be possible to obtain dinosaurs with this process are summarized thus:

1. Dinosaur DNA would be very difficult to correctly sequence without a complete, intact DNA strand for comparison.
2. Any gaps in the resulting DNA sequence must be filled with dinosaur DNA; using frog DNA as the story suggests would likely produce an organism that varied from the original animal.
3. In order to clone a complete DNA sequence, an oocyte from the same organism is required. Since no dinosaurs are alive today, this would be impossible.
4. A dinosaur embryo would not be able to develop correctly without an egg from its own species.

Furthermore, it is likely that any prehistoric DNA obtained from a fossilized mosquito would be combined with the mosquito's own, again making it problematic to clone an 'accurate' and viable organism.

A theme expressed throughout the story and its sequel is that of homeothermic (warm-blooded) dinosaurs, a recent theory popularized by paleontologist Bob Bakker. While the cinematic adaptation of Jurassic Park used ostrich eggs as vessels to facilitate expression, the novel described "a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell." The plastic was called 'millipore', invented by an eponymous company subsequently bought by InGen.

Ironically, most of the dinosaurs featured in the movie are not from the Jurassic period; they are actually from the Cretaceous period.

Film adaptation

Main article: Jurassic Park (film)

Universal Studios paid Michael Crichton $2 million for the rights to the novel in 1990, before it was even published. In 1993, the Steven Spielberg-directed film adaptation was released. Many plot points from the novel were changed or dropped. David Koepp wrote the screenplay for the film, with Crichton's assistance.

Crichton also wrote a sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World, which was also made into a movie. Jurassic Park III, a movie not based on a Crichton book, has also been produced. Many changes have been made from the original book to the movies, such as the swapping of identities of Lex and Tim; whereas in the books Tim is the eldest, although still into Dinosaurs and Lex is a young frightened tomboy.

References

• Cano R.J., Poinar H.N., Pieniazek N.J., Acra A., Poinar G.O. Jr. (1993). Amplification and Sequencing of DNA from a 120–135-Million-Year-Old Weevil. Nature, 363:536–538
• Weaver, R. F. (2002). Molecular Biology. McGraw-Hill, New York, p. 76. ISBN 0-07-234517-9
• Noonan, J.P., et al. Genomic sequencing of Pleistocene cave bears. Science 309(5734):597-9, July 2005.

Further reading

The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. Or How to Build a Dinosaur. Rob DeSalle and David Lindley. BasicBooks, New York, 1997. xxix, 194 pp., illus. $18 or C$25.50. ISBN 0-465-07379-4.

Jurassic Park Pictures

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External links

• Official site
• Jurassic Park at the official Michael Crichton website
• Jurassic Park Legacy - A JP Encyclopedia
• JPdb - Jurassic Park Database
• The Jurassic Park Wiki
• Jurassic Park: Horizontal Evolution by Harrison Mujica-Jenkins at latephilosophers.com