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Revision as of 18:51, 19 October 2007

For the feature film, see Jurassic Park (film), for other uses see Jurassic Park (disambiguation)
Jurassic Park
File:Jurassicpark.jpg
Original paperback cover of Jurassic Park. Design by Chip Kidd.
AuthorMichael Crichton
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction & Techno-thriller novel
PublisherAlfred A. Knopf
Publication date
November 1990
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Audio
Pages416 pp (original hardcover)
ISBNISBN 0-394-58816-9 (original hardcover) Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Followed byThe 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

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) 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 "trapdoors" 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 crashes his stolen jeep. He is then spat upon and blinded by a poisonous 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, 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. The survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments.

Dinosaurs and other extinct animals featured

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

  • 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 what happens in the film is impossible for various reasons, notably the suggested means of recovering dinosaur DNA: that mosquitoes sucked the blood of dinosaurs, became stuck in tree sap, which became amber, preserving the mosquito and DNA inside. While this theory as suggested by Crichton is largely a plot device, the novel and movie did spark serious debate on the possibility of cloning dinosaurs.

There are 4 main reasons why it would not be possible to obtain dinosaurs with this process:[1]
1. Dinosaur DNA is difficult to obtain and to sequence. Although ancient dinosaur DNA has been found, the DNA is broken apart and must be put in its proper sequence, a difficult task without a complete strand of dinosaur DNA available.

2. Even if we have the DNA sequenced, there will be some gaps that must be filled. Unlike in the movie, these gaps can't be filled by splicing frog DNA. Dinosaur DNA must be used to fill in the gaps in the DNA. However, we don't have the DNA to do this either. Also, splicing in frog DNA will not create a dinosaur, it would create a mutant or a frog/dinosaur type organism (which would almost certainly be non-viable).

3. Once the DNA is sequenced and complete, it must be inserted into an oocyte so that it can be cloned. The oocyte must come from the same organism that is being cloned, and since no dinosaurs are alive today, this would be impossible. It wouldn't work to insert the DNA into crocodile ova because crocodile ova is specialized for crocodiles, not dinosaurs.

4. Even if crocodile ova could hold dinosaur DNA, a problem still arises with the development of the dinosaur embryo. Dinosaurs were born through eggs, so we simply can't put them inside of an organism. We must put them in eggs. In the movie, the scientist used ostrich eggs. However, this would not work because every organism must have a specialized egg. A turtle's egg will not have the nutrients necessary for a fish, nor would a fish have the nutrients necessary for a turtle. Every organism must have its own special egg to nourish its young.

One of the themes expressed throughout this story and its sequels is that of homeothermic (warm-blooded) dinosaurs, a recent theory popularized by paleontologist Bob Bakker. While the cinema incarnation of Jurassic Park used ostrich eggs as vessels to facilitate expression, the novel very specifically utilized "a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell." The plastic was called "millipore", created by an eponymous subsidiary of InGen.[citation needed]

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, in which Tim is the 'Computer Geek' and the eldest, whereas in the movie Lex is the eldest and the computer expert.

See also

References

  1. ^ Jurassic Park: Is it possible

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.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Jurassic Park (novel).
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