Jurassic Park – Michael Crichton
Science fiction, genetics, technology, dinosaurs, survival, fiction.
Dr. Carter finds someone bringing to her a person who was injured by a supposed construction accident, but she knows that the man who was carrying the injured person was covering up the real story with a lie. Dr. Carter knew that this young injured man was mauled by an animal. This was an incident that occurred offshore of Costa Rica, disclosed island, that was beginning the workings of what is to become Jurassic Park. Dr. Carter knew something was wrong and that the young man who died was defending himself. Nonetheless she didn’t pursue more information in regards of the accident. As we see here, there is existence of the island being worked on, but not to the nearly full completion that we see later in the novel. One of the present issues was the fact of this raptor attack proved them dangerous and potentially lead for their enclosure to have added security including electrical fences and higher walls. No one suspects nothing of importance with this incident.
Another dinosaur related incident occurs. Mike Bowman, his wife, and daughter go on vacation in Costa Rica and decided to find a secluded beach. His wife, Ellen, doesn’t think it is a good idea. Ellen has the right idea because going off trail to a secluded area that isn’t marked is a bad idea. Mike allows his daughter to go roam and discusses with his wife that she would be alright. The daughter goes to another part of the beach and lays down. She hears noises and then sees this lizard creature on its hind legs. She remains calm until it attacks her along with other lizard creatures. The father and mother come and find her then proceed to take her to the nearest hospital for treatment. The doctors tell her and her parents that it’s just a lizard, but the little girl swears that it was a dinosaur. Later that day, the doctor who treated her found a howler monkey partially eating the lizard. The doctor goes and darts the monkey with a tranquilizer and takes the specimen to send to a lab. Once that was received in the lab, the lab marks it as just another lizard, but one person, Alice Levin, believes that it is in fact a dinosaur.
This dinosaur related incident goes unnoticed, just as another animal attack, nonetheless. However, the two incidences involving some sort of animal doesn’t send any high alerts nor suspicion of something greater happening. Except the flaw of trying to create and maintain an island full of dinosaurs that the public isn’t aware about. What was going on? Why isn’t no one looking into these occurrences? Likely answer is the fact of not enough awareness to raise suspicion. Little concerns are silenced.
Alan Grant, a paleontologist, is at a dig cite with Ellie Sattler who is a paleobotanist specialist. A visitor shows up, Bob Morris to discuss some crucial information in regards of their cite and whose been funding their field research. After their discussion they received an x-ray from a lab wanting Grant and Sattler to look over what species it is, and both are astonished. It’s a dinosaur no question. Alice Levin calls them to tell them of their finding prior to the fax of the x-ray. John Hammond calls Alan Grant and extends an invitation to come visit, as well to provide funding for their dig cite, to the island that he and InGen has been working on. Alan and Ellie agree to go and a few days later they get information in regards of the island they are about to go on. Hammond arrives to pick them up and they head towards Costa Rica.
Biosyn, a rival company to InGen, hears news of what InGen has been working on. Lewis Dodgson explains that John Hammond is a genius for creating this island full of dinosaurs, it would make bank because of the popularity and the downside is the patenting of dinosaur DNA usage. Once the patent goes through, no one can make dinosaurs, only InGen. Dodgson has an idea to find a way to collect DNA to replicate these dinosaurs and create their own park. Dodgson goes to a café to meet this guy, Dennis Nedry to hire him for the extraction job and plans to pay him handsomely to collect the dinosaur DNA. This works out because Nedry works at the island and can easily get the dinosaur DNA and no one would have suspected a thing. The deal has been made and Dodgson hopes that this goes well.
Returning back to Hammond, Sattler, Grant, and Malcolm are on the island and allows them to get situated in their living space that they will be getting to at some point after the tour. Hammond has his grandchildren; Tim and Lex, come to stay at the island. They meet a man who was to be their tour guide for the rest of the day, Ed Regis. Ed takes the group to do a tour of the laboratory that Doctor Wu tells them how they were able to find dinosaur DNA and be able to analyze and clone to recreate these dinosaurs. They found blood sucking insects, mosquitos, trapped in amber. They extract all DNA inside the insect and have the DNA coded onto the computer. The computer tells them the missing pieces and what can be supplemented due to an algorithm. The scientists find what they need and supplement the DNA. Wu takes them into the other lab that is in charge of the nursing part of the recreating dinosaurs which involved eggs and hatching. They get to see a baby velociraptor being hatched before leaving. Wu tells them that the dinosaurs on the island can’t reproduce because they are all female. What is neglected to be aware of that they used frog DNA which frogs allow themselves to change sexes to ensure reproduction. After that, the guests are to go on a tour of the actual park itself. They get into a vehicle that will guide them remotely throughout the park while a computer inside has a narrator to tell them the different sorts of dinosaurs there are in the park as well as information about each dinosaur and how many are on the island in total plus subtotal of each dinosaur on the island.
Meanwhile, Wu talks to Hammond about domesticating a version of the dinosaurs that are on the island and Hammond doesn’t want that because it feels too fake in his opinion. The group travel from each part of the park leading up to a stop at the tyrannosaurus rex enclosure. Dennis Nedry presets a virus that would shut down the park long enough for him to grab the dinosaur DNA and leave the island unnoticed. That is when the park goes into chaos that Dr. Malcolm predicted earlier when discussing his chaos theory. The security fences and electric wires are off which means anything can happen. Urgency to go retrieve the park visitors and bring them to safety is a must order. Especially since they are right next to the tyrannosaurus rex enclosure.
For the rest of the novel, it is just survival and trying to maintain safety of primarily the children. Protecting them and each other from the main threat, velociraptors and other carnivorous dinosaurs present on the island. One of the issues is power that was turned off at the park which someone has to go turn on the power after everyone is in a safe and secured spot of the island away from danger. Ellie goes to the power box building and attempts to restore power to the island. Immediately power is restored, and security is restored as well. They call for help and get the help they need to escape the island. All are shaken up and glad to be off of the island. The lesson that remains, never tamper with genetics of animals that have been long extinct. Playing god has its consequences and this was the result.
I love this novel because the author proposes the idea and tests the idea in such a way that educates the reader that recreating dinosaurs is not as easy and overly complicated idea it is. There are too much at risk and too much variables to consider when thinking of recreating dinosaurs. I did do the review, but my thoughts are still the same. I love this novel and the whole science fiction ideas that are executed inside the novel and the way it plays out. I have to say the novel is better than the films but sometimes re-watching the film series is just as good as the books.
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