Avvincente, avventuroso e ricco di spunti di riflessione.
Uno dei migliori libri di Crichton.

Not bad in places...other times it's sort of a "puleez" book. Again Crichton has one that could have been better. The best I suppose I can say is..it wasn't as lame as the movie. So full of PC political rhetoric it seemed to me that any story got lost.




************ Spoilers below Line ***********




The "Amy" character is just too sweet for words...I had to take insulin. I love animals, really I do, not setting up a joke here about eating meat. (Though I do eat meat). But I love animals and I know that Gorillas are not actually predators (Chimpanzees are,but that's another discussion)... BUT, the sign language using Gorilla and of course the secret of the "bad things" as Amy calls the aggressive gorillas (that they were made evil by evil humans) and the whole technology and advancement and the companies who build it are ALWAYS EVIL theme was for me just to much of a head slapper. Personally I enjoy having a flush toilet, using my computer, living in a dwelling that has heat in the winter and cooling in the summer, watching TV, listening to music whenever I like, having light at my fingertips when I want to read a book at night and all the other evil advances that have gotten us out of the jungle expanded our life spans to more than 30 or 40 years and so on. AND I believe it's possible to have those things without destroying nature and don't think all technological groups are out to destroy nature.

The book is in other words at times silly...though not as silly as the movie with Amy's "talking backpack"... Oh come on please.

I wonder if by now there's an entire tribe of Gorillas who "speak" sign language.

'The more experience and insight I obtain into human nature, the more convinced do o become that the greater portion of a man is purely animal'-Henry Morton Stanley,1887.
INTRO.
Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator's projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent.Covering nearly twelve million square miles,Africa is almost as large as North America and Europe combined. It is nearly twice the size of South America. As we mistake its dimensions,we also mistake its essential nature: the Dark Continent is mostly hot desert and open grassy plains.
STARTING WORDS: Dawn came to the Congo rain forest.
ENDING WORDS: The projected intersection point now marked a field of black quatermain lava with an average depth of eight hundred meters-nearly half a mile-over the Lost City of Zinj.

The first book I read by Michael Crichton is Disclosure and I fell in love with the author immediately.Congo is an interesting book and is about Amy (a female gorilla) and exploration or expedition of Africa,Congo is an interestingly told story, its unputdownable,a page Turner with a little mix of archeology, anthropology. Congo enlightened me on mineral deposits and its mining.
If you have not read this book then you need to.

I would give 1/2 a star if I could. He gets that simply because he managed to get words on paper. I have never hated a book so much in my life. I was actually angry at it throughout, but kept going hoping it would get better. I thought it was ridiculous, had bad character development and a boring plot. I can't believe they even THOUGHT to make it a movie, but am not surprised that stunk as well. It is a credit to Mr. Chrichton, however, that it made me realize how good his other books have been. This seems like a toss off.

Congo was written in 1980 by Michael Crichton. With a few, very minor details (such as gushing over how awesome it is to have a comuter with 256K memory) this is a tale that reads very well to this day.

In 1979, due to the increasing demands of the computer industry there were a large number of companies that were seeking to find industrial grade diamonds, as opposed to the jewelry type of diamonds. Specifically they were looking for Type IIb boron-coated blue diamonds used to build a variety of chips and circuit boards. Unfortunately, the place to find these diamonds is in the Congo. Specifically in the drainage basin of the Congo River, close to Zaire.

The company in the story (ERTS) sends in a site team that records some success in possibly finding a good mining source for these diamonds. This could potentially be worth billions. But, the last transmission from the team was very strange. It showed a destroyed camp and a grainy, unfocused image of what seemed like either a man or a primate of some sort. But no one is sure what it is exactly, until someone clears up the image and finds what looks like a gray furred gorilla. The problem is no gorilla has ever exhibited the behavior of the one in the image and there are no gray furred gorillas. So the second ERTS field team is put in touch with Dr. Elliott of U.C. Berkeley, a leading Primatologist. Dr. Elliot works with a juvenile female gorilla named Amy. Amy is able to communicate through Sign Language. Dr. Elliott, Amy and Dr. Ross (the ERTS lead) travel to Africa to first recruit their guide- a skilled guide/mercenary known as Capt. Munro.
As the story develops, we go through a variety of trouble from competing firms, civil wars, rebels, cannibals and hostile tribes. Yet, as the story develops we find that there might be something to these rumors of "something" in the deep jungle. It seems that a long time ago there was a fabled lost city-Zinj. Yet something or someone killed the last 8 man team sent in. Now the ERTS team must use Amy and Dr. Elliott's expertise to try to figure out what was on that video tape and what killed the last team. I will not spoil the story for you and this is one that is worth reading yourself to find out what is going on.

As usual, Crichton is able to seamlessly blend in science and action and great characters to create a wonderfully engrossing story. Full of fascinating information such as a a historical background of exploration in the Congo region, to the variety of primates and tribes that abound in the region, as well as fascinating details about how Primate Research, especially focusing on gorillas, works. I had no idea about some of the ways in which Primatologists interpreted and communicated with gorillas. The story is fast paced and the characters of Capt Munro, Amy and Dr. Elliott steal the show.

While this isn't quite the novel that Jurassic Park or Lost World was, this is still a great read. Crichton is engaging and as always-he knows his stuff. From biology and ecology to primatology and geology. This is science presented in easy to understand terms, but is no less fascinating for that reason. If you are looking for a book that's 1 part action adventure, 1 part science information and 1 part murder mystery-then this is for you. Of course, if you are a Crichton fan you will enjoy this one quite a bit. Just ignore the computer terms used-this is from 1980 and it is safe to say that numbers like 128k and 256K do not engender gasps of astonishment anymore. If they do, it is for the opposite reason than what was expressed in 1980.

People are right the movie is shite.

Crichton suffers from information diarrhoea.
All the scientific discussion of 'ohm conductivity in boron diamonds' was unnecessary.
Big big monkey goes on lackluster rampage
3.0/5.0

While trying to rate this book, I have a heart emoji over one shoulder and a snoozing emoji over the other waging war. So, I'll compromise and give this book 4 stars.

The bad first: I know Crichton books come with their fair share of science. Normally I don't mind, I actually enjoy it. However, this one has a LOT of technical stuff, 1979 tech stuff, for about the first 40% of the book. There were times that my eyes just glazed over and I admit, there were a few paragraphs I had to skip over.

Now the good: This was a very good story. A group of unique individuals head to the Congo in Africa for a variety of reasons, all selfish on their parts. And as with the movie, my favorite is Amy, a gorilla that has been living with Peter, a primate researcher in California, who nursed her back to health as an infant and has been studying her ever since. I fell absolutely in love with her and loved the relationship she has with Peter, the way she interacts with him, the rest of the crew, and the other gorillas in Africa.

The movie adaptation is one of my all-time favorites and this is probably one of the only times that I can honestly say I liked the movie better. But, in the book, you get to know Amy a lot better than you can in the movie and for that reason, would recommend this to fans of the movie.

Michael Crichton books all start off with this huge technological hook and are excellent at grabbing you by your ear and dragging you along, but somewhere along the way he fizzles. It's like he has this great idea, but can't figure out a way for his protagonists to create a successful ending. Andromeda Strain, the virus floats off into space--woo hoo. Sphere--the whole adventure was imaginary, woo hoo. Congo, earthquake wipes out all the lovely evidence and negates the whole adventure...boo hoo. Ocassionally MC will get it right, but even with Juraissic Park, where the characters manage to escape with their lives--the ending is still ambivalent. Nothing was truly resolved. Quit being so wishy-washy MC and give us an ending we can sink our teeth into!

This is a fantastic book. Interesting from start to finish, and at a faster pace than the more famous Jurassic Park, written by the same author.

I found this adventure particularly interesting for its application of animal behavior science crossed with African geography, history and culture. It’s better to go into this story with the basics, and to experience it for yourself.

I highly recommend audible for this one. 5 stars.

"Stop eating my sesame cake!"

The movie was a little cheesy, but so was the book, lol. They were both good cheesy fun. I don't remember either very clearly now, but from what I do recall, the movie was pretty faithful to the book.

It's still entertaining because it's Crichton but this is one of his lesser works.

When a telecom team searching for industrial diamonds in the Congo* disappears, another team, led by a memorably sharp-edged woman, is dispatched. Along for the ride is a primate researcher and his sign-language speaking female gorilla, whom he plans to release into the wild. It turns out there's crazy shit involving a lost city, Crichton's talent for making technobabble accessible, hostile mercenaries, and other surprises I will not unsurprise for you.

(*Since this takes place in the Virunga region, I'm assuming they mean what is now the DRC when they say Congo.)

Btw, the movie adaptation from the 90's did some hacking away at the female lead to make her more likable, including changing her motive for volunteering, which made her a little less interesting but more tolerable to a mass audience, I'm sure. More importantly, the adapters seemed to miss a key point of the story involving why the gorilla guardians of Zinj are not like ordinary gorillas.

an outdated sci-fi is never a good written sci-fi. as an IT expert it was such a pain reading through false promises of technology and some how bold yet compeletly wrong & dumb visions of future.
of course as usual with Crichton, he just can't seem to finish his books properly, so yes, another totally underwhelming ending. strongly not recommended for reading.