Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Of course I’ve already seen Jurassic Park, though admittedly none of the sequels until the series revival Jurassic World. I wouldn’t be a 90s kid if I hadn’t. I have to admit, I haven’t seen it in a while. Long enough that I still remembered the basic general plot, but forget pretty much every detail involved. Reading the novel, threw me right back into the story jogging old memories, while completely enveloping into the plot. I enjoyed the ride.
Jurassic Park is an interesting tale of hubris clashing with science. Those are two things that really need to be kept in check. Jurassic Park for the sake of making things worse, threw in a layer of ignorance to amplify everything that was to truly go wrong. As all these elements collided, we got to experience the chaos that they could cause. Add in the fact that they were dealing with dinosaurs displaced through time and there really was no way things were going to turn out well.
In case you did not know, Jurassic Park is the story of an eccentric billionaire, Hammond, who sets out to secretly a park filled with dinosaurs. When rumblings about what is going on on the island begin to emerge, the US government starts to poke their nose in to what is going on. In an attempt to assuage the fears and looming presence of the park being shut down before it could open, Hammond calls in a number of experts to evaluate the park and temper government anxieties.
The story is told sweeping between a number of perspectives. Personally, I found the dino loving 11-year old boy the most interesting, however a number of them had some really great elements to the story. What ended up being so wonderful was that you really got to see all types of different people. Hammond is ruled by his desire for grandeur as well as greed. Some of the scientists are amazed by what they’ve created. Then those in charge of maintaining control of the animals are far more violently against opening the park. Then there are those who were brought onto the island in it’s final hour that were filled more with curiosity and skepticism than anything. It made for interesting different view points as the story progressed.
The pace of the story I felt was well done. It was never too fast, nor did it ever get too slow. Instead, it followed a rather steady rhythm that while never kept so enraptured I couldn’t put it down, but also never created lulls that made me want to ditch out. I simply found myself riding the story as it got more and more intense until it almost abruptly just ended.
There are a lot of people who don’t enjoy jargon. Jurassic Park is full of it. Crichton never shies away from explaining theories or going into nitty gritty details that most novels would gloss over. Not everyone will enjoy these bits when the story grinds to a halt to explain how something was accomplished or how something works. Personally, I love that sort of thing. As long as it is a complex subject with some depth to it, I love that it makes me thing. When they explain how they found a way to breed the dinosaurs I was entranced. When chaos theory was explained, I enjoyed it. Crichton keeps it interesting enough.
At the end of the day as a novel, it is proving that I truly enjoy how Crichton writes his science fiction thrillers. He never ignores the science part of it which keeps me engaged. I came to like and hate characters, but more importantly it made me think. Good science fiction makes you think.
I have to commend the adaptation because from what I vaguely remember of the movie, it was a rather faithful adaptation. There were certainly changes, but mainly ones that increased tension in the story.
So, I pondered... 
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