Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is a techno-thriller by Michael Crichton where dinosaurs are cloned from DNA found inside of preserved mosquitoes in order to make them the main attraction at a theme park, but many things end up going wrong. In general, I found the movie to be far superior.

Review

Good

• I enjoyed the science covering genetics, techno-security, and chaos theory even though all the stuff that made their depictions work are impossible.
• Grant and Sattler were both exciting charming characters.
• The story itself, about people ignorantly thinking they can control wild animals and failing is pretty cool.

Bad

• I found Ian Malcolm's character to be insufferable, not just because he was so cocky, but because he was always right. In reality, chaos theory isn't nearly as sound as it's made out to be.
• Unlike the movie, where Lex is the older technology geek and Tim is younger dinosaur geek, in the book, Tim is older, and both the dinosaur and computer geek leaving Lex's only purpose to be whining and getting into trouble.
• I often found it difficult to differentiate between the secondary characters (lawyer, park manager, and game warden). Either I wasn't paying enough attention, or they weren't described well enough for me to get a picture of them in my head. In any event, I was not the least bit bothered by them being eaten by dinosaurs.
• Hammond fails to grasp even the most clearly stated problems given about his park indicating that he is either completely inept, or entirely blind to reason. Either way, it's unrealistic.

Ugly

• Ian Malcolm becomes very heavy-handed near the end of the book talking about how everything Hammond did was immoral and dangerous, but he never gives any valid reasons for why genetic manipulation is so wrong other than the magical bad consequences.

Links

• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic_Park_%28novel%29 - Wikipedia.