Tag Archives: Malcom

Revisiting Crichton’s Lost World After 29 Years

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Today, September 8th 2024 will mark 29 years since the novel The Lost World: Jurassic Park was published back in 1995. By this point in the middle of the nineties, Michael Crichton had already become a household name from the massive success of his original Jurassic Park novel (1990), as well as the iconic movie adaptation directed by Stephen Spielberg also titled Jurassic Park (1993).

Though perhaps not quite as successful as the original, The Lost World still held down an impressive 8 weeks on the best seller list (vs the original novel’s 12 weeks), and was subsequently turned into another iconic film.

Great. But by Now, Isn’t it Just Some Old Fossil?

Obviously, a lot has happened in almost 30 years since this book hit the shelves. We’ve experienced a third ‘Jurassic Park‘ film, as well a series reboot, Jurassic World, which also had a sequel, and a third movie which purportedly closed out the Jurassic franchise with Jurassic World Dominion.

(Spoiler: A fourth movie Jurassic World: Rebirth will release July 2nd 2025. Check Variety for the deets on what we know so far about the new JW film .

Of course much has changed in our understanding of paleontology as well. For example, Prehistoric Planet: Freshwater shows crowd favorite, the terrifying Velociraptor, as a more accurate chicken-sized pack hunter with feathers as opposed to the six-foot scaled and tiger-striped monstrosities we read about in this sequel (which are probably more accurate to the Utah Raptor, written about in Robert Bakker’s Raptor Red.

There is perhaps a legitimate argument to be made that, given all that has passed since this book came out — both in the fictive world of the franchise, and the real world of paleontology. Is this old fossil even relevant in 2024?

“The essence of verification is multiple lines of reasoning that converge at a single point”

To answer that, perhaps it would be good to discuss a few things, some good, others bad, which I experienced while reading this classic.

The Good

Despite any arguments of this book having ‘aged’, Crichton is still an incredibly engaging story teller. His approach is similar to what I noted in the original novel, with a kind of slow build in which the main characters solve a mystery, the solution to which sets the real action of the story in motion (this seems to be a common trope for Crichton). Perhaps this mode is too slow for modern readers, but I hardly noticed it myself.

Then of course there are the dinosaurs themselves. Accurate or not, they are COMPELLING. We see many favorites through the course of this novel like Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Velociraptor; Compsognathus (compy) and Triceratops . Pachycephalosaurus was (I think) a new comer that was not in the first novel. So was Carnotaurus.

The Interesting

The inclusion of Carnotaurus was especially interesting as it was given some adaptations which I believe there is probably zero scientific basis for, in 1995 or today. If you’ve watched the Indominus Rex become essentially transparent in Jurassic World, it seems that was an idea for which the foundations were laid in this book (though interestingly not in The Lost World movie).

This poetic license stands out even more considering Crichton appears to have tried to correct some of the imagination he displayed in his original novel surrounding T-Rex visual acuity. There is a scene in which the more villainous characters in the novel visit a T-Rex nest and are discovered by the tyrant lizards. The characters stand still, attempting the trick Alan Grant accomplished at the park. One is eaten almost immediately and the rest must flee for their lives. Of course Malcom has a quip about reading bad science, but still the entire thing seemed odd.

Another interesting part of this book was Dr. Levine, a sort of impatient rich/arrogant scientist who they embark on their journey to rescue in the first place. He’s a pretty large part of the story, and to my knowledge, just not in the movie at all. I was not expecting this.

Also, there is a scene in which a group of velociraptors hunt some triceratops and in particular, there is a briefly described fight between an individual of each species. It has me thinking about the Fighting Dinosaurs Fossil found in the Djadokhta Formation in Mongolia. That prehistoric battle took place between a velociraptor, and a Protoceratops, but its discovery in 1971 would have meant that it was probably a pretty well known fossil by the time Crichton’s book was written. The scene functions on a practical level to advance certain points of the plot, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the way it unfolds was a small homage to this famous fossil.

The Bad

Despite what I’ve written above, and my ability to look aside when almost any egregious portion of the text rears its head — due to my love of the subject matter and firmly framed rose-colored glasses — a couple pills in this book were still a bit hard to swallow.

First up, I didn’t really feel like Malcom’s survival from book one was explained satisfactorily. It’s essentially: News of Malcom’s treatment was so suppressed and kept quiet that many assumed, and reported, that he was dead . . . and that’s pretty much all there is to say about it. Felt a bit cheap.

My second quibble is equally subjective. Reading Easy Go, and even the first JP novel, you get the sense that Crichton’s female characters, and modern expectations of female characters, don’t really align. The Lost World felt like Crichton was trying to close that gap all at once.

Sarah Harding is ultra- strong, attractive, independent, and feminist. In some scenes she literally carries Malcom around like a rag doll. It’s all very “Action Girl” and while Mary Sue type characters like this are not inherently bad, Harding’s characterization in TLW generally left me feeling like Crichton still did not understand the assignment.

In Easy Go, the MC named Pierce judges the love interest, Lisa, as competent because she lights a cigarette “like a man.” In TWL it felt to me like Crichton was attempting to write a woman of importance into his story, but (still) only qualifying that importance by what she could do “like a man.”

Give ‘The Lost World’ a read?

Ultimately, I would say yes. There may be some inaccuracies in paleontology, and the pacing and characterization of his female lead may present some problems for modern readers, but the thrill of the being on an island in the presence of dinosaurs (even if some are trying to eat you), still feels quite potent in this novel.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a quote from Malcom (always Malcom) which stood out to me as being incredibly relevant to today despite having been written nearly 30 years ago:

“. . . if the notion of life at the edge of chaos is true, then major change pushes animals closer to the edge. It destabilizes all sorts of behavior. And when the environment goes back to normal, it’s not really a return to normal. In evolutionary terms, it’s another big change, and it’s just too much to keep up with . . .” pg 193.

Ooof. If that isn’t the most post-covid mood, then I don’t know what is hahah.

That’s all I have today. Has anyone read this one before? What’s your favorite dinosaur!? Please let me know in the comments. I’m looking forward to talking about this one!

Rereading Jurassic Park After a Decade . . .

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This June has been a wonderful month. A dinosaur filled month.

I’ve studied up on paleontology with Darren Naish’s Dinopedia, got to see some dinos in my favorite settings with Prehistoric Planet Ep. 2: Deserts, and then finally saw the most recent ‘Jurassic’ film TWICE(!), Jurassic World Dominion.

But I’ve only got time this month for one more Dino-centric post and I thought it might be fun to go back to the beginning with a reflective review of Michael Crichton’s original Jurassic Park novel.

For a lot of people, this is the thing that started it all. The thing that, in Naish’s view:

“. . . did more to introduce the public to the “modern view” of dinosaurs — the Dinosaur Renaissance view — than any other effort.”

Naish, Darren; Dinopedia: A Brief Compendium of Dinosaur Lore. (2021)

In the days of my youth . . .

I’m pretty sure that it was the film which first fascinated me as a child (I was only 3 months old when the book came out) but without this book, there never would have been a film (although Naish says there was a screenplay in 1983 so perhaps it still would have been).

This book seems to be another book lost to the record of not having GoodReads before 2011 (see Rereading Dune After a Decade), but if memory serves this was a book I was supposed to read in my senior year of high school (big year for me as a SFF reader it seems), but the teacher decided he was tired of teaching that particular Crichton novel and decided we should read Sphere instead (side note: I got very sick that year and tried to read Sphere with a 104 degree fever so I wouldn’t have to catch up when I got back to school. Needless to say, I hallucinated several parts of that book and it was absolutely terrifying. Perhaps it’s good that did not happen with JP).

Heartbroken, I think I ended up complaining to my dad and he presented me with his old copy, assumedly from 1995, if I tracked down the right edition, when the movie came out and he first read it.

No surprise, I was completely enthralled. I remember thinking Malcom was even cooler than he was in the movie, and probably thought I’d try to become a Chaotician if such things existed until I remembered that would literally just be a mathematician and I DID NOT like math during those times (I suppose math and I get along these days but I’m still not very practiced at it). Ironically, I don’t think reading this book kindled any desire in young me to become a paleontologist.

And Now?

Now that I’m older, and upon a second read, I think my opinion of the book has become a little more nuanced.

Actor Sam Neill (Alan Grant) has been quoted as saying today’s moviegoers would no longer accept Jurassic Park‘s slow-burn action pacing. In much the same way, the structure of Crichton’s masterpiece does not read at all like modern thriller. The opening pages are more or less a thesis on the state of (then) modern genetics research which reads more like a wikipedia article than a novel. It takes many chapters (in essence several prologues) to even meet any of our main characters with a kind of unfolding mystery that eventually leads us to the park.

My writer brain attributes this to the shear amount of situations Crichton needs to set up so he can dump exposition about dinosaurs on us without seeming to. Essentially, he’s worldbuilding, which is kind of strange to think about because we already know where we’re trying to get to, which is Jurassic Park, the name of the novel. However, certainly back in the early 90’s when this book first came out, a combined amusement park and zoo centered around genetically reincarnated dinosaurs must have seemed a pretty strange and (ahem) novel idea. We do not have that luxury of ignorance of what the novel is going to be about. We’ve known what this novel was about since about the time we were born.

Eventually the action does begin though, and when it does, it is thrilling in the extreme. Crichton really knows how to make his characters work for their survival and this novel was a great example of that. There were enough differences between the novel and the film that nobody who survived one, would be guaranteed to survive the other (slight spoiler: two character deaths in particular were baffling to me especially because one has a very prominent role in the sequel The Lost World! I’m tempted to dive into the next one just to see how he survived).

Again my writer brain derived quite a bit of enjoyment picking apart the differences between the novel and the film (both subtle and blatant) and pondering why certain changes were made and how they added to, or took away from the dramatic effect.

Of course, the part I loved the most about the whole thing was the dinosaurs themselves! Nearly every dinosaur description and behavior written into this book should be taken with a grain of salt (again take a look at Naish’s Dinopedia for the major mistakes). Some of this is because we’ve learned so much since this book came out, and some of it is choices Crichton made for dramatic effect, but either way, the dinosaurs are just sooo coooool.

Also, there was a considerable amount of things he got right which was also great to read.

Finally, now that I’m older, and I have learned a little bit more about the subjects featured in this awesome book, it was really cool to see just HOW MUCH research Crichton did to write this book. Of course the dinosaurs themselves, but also other little things like Dr. Alan Grant being a hadrosaur expert, and centering his career around studying their nests, which was a reference to Jack Horner, a real paleontologist who studied hadrosaur nests and consulted on the JP film when it came out.

I’d be remiss if I did not admit that there were other awkward parts in the in the novel besides the pacing which made it feel a bit dated. I caught a few objectifications of Dr. Ellie Sattler though certainly he has come a long way since novels like Easy Go.

Also, a chapter near the end entitled “Destroying the World” in which Malcom explains to Hammond the many different paradigm shifts our earth has encountered. How currently most organisms need oxygen to survive when three billion years ago plants producing oxygen actually created a crisis for contemporary organism for which it was a poison much like we consider fluorine.

When Hammond brings up that the ozone layer is getting thinner, Malcom suggests that: “Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.”

Eventually he ends the segment with:

“Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet — or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”

Crichton, Michael; Jurassic Park pg. 369 (1995)

Now it seems to me, that the point he is trying to make here is exactly the type of point Maclom would make which is: Life will find a way.

Even if that life is not human beings. That we should be less worried about “the planet” and more worried about ourselves. At least that is the way I WANT to read this chapter.

However, I’ve heard some things about Crichton being a climate change denier (check out his talk a Cal Tech in 2003 called Aliens Cause Global Warming). Apparently his opinions on climate change are made very clear in the “Afterward” of State of Fear, a novel which I own and enjoyed but apparently did not read thoroughly enough. I’m sure at some point there will be a follow up.

So Did it Hold Up?

In my opinion, yes. Jurassic Park is still a great novel despite the way times have changed around it. I think that some of the paleontology has matured since 1990, as well as some of our social attitudes, and modern readers may struggle with the pacing at the beginning, but ultimately, I think this one still thrills to read. Highly recommend.

That’s all I have for this time around. Has anyone read this? What were your favorite parts? What is your favorite dino? Would love to talk about this one!

Until next time . . .