Not really sure I can say much that hasn't already been said about this book, but I absolutely loved this. I hadn't read any Crichton in over 20 years, and I had forgotten what a masterful storyteller he was. The science, the tension, the action, and the characters are all wonderfully done here. And if you think you have seen the movie 100 times and already know the story you should still read this. I liked the characterization choices and the ending much more interesting here. 100 percent recommend.

4.5 ❤️

Ha estado genial

En realidad 4,3

La historia de dinosaurios más famosa del planeta la elegí como mi próxima lectura porque prácticamente sentía que era mi deber, como fan de Jurassic Park, leer las obras originales de su creador. Otra razón importante es que —como ya lo he repetido en varias ocasiones— tengo amnesia para recordar la trama de las películas que vi cuando era niño. Esa característica puede tomarse como un defecto, pero yo lo valoro como habilidad por la oportunidad que me brinda de revivir un contenido que sé que me va a gustar pero no recuerdo el por qué. Así que lleno de confianza pero también de curiosidad comencé a leer este libro y la experiencia fue genial.

Parque Jurásico es una clara representación de los problemas que tienen los científicos cuando realizan experimentos revolucionarios, no pensando en el progreso de la humanidad, sino en sus ansias personales de reconocimiento. Es una novela que claramente tiene como trama principal lo relacionado a los dinosaurios pero lo realmente valioso es la crítica del autor hacia aquellos practicantes de la ciencia que carecen de ética profesional y deciden arriesgar vidas, ecosistemas e incluso el mundo entero solo por jugar a ser dioses. Su conocimiento los envuelve en una burbuja tan grande de arrogancia que resultan sesgados de sus propios errores, de su propia ignorancia. Creen tenerlo todo tan controlado que cuando el caos y el arte de la probabilidad afecta sus planes perfectos entonces el desconcierto los ataca en todo su esplendor. Quizás Parque Jurásico sea tan solo una novela, pero cuántas veces hemos sido testigos del mal uso de la ciencia en nuestro mundo real. La ciencia es hermosa y valiosísima y es gracias a ella que tenemos la oportunidad de tener estabilidad en la sociedad actual, pero la ciencia es un poder, y como todo poder, siempre estaremos expuestos al cataclismo dependiendo de la locura que posean las personas que tengan en su momento aquellos poderes. Incluso de un simple experimento irresponsable puede surgir la destrucción, por lo que claramente, la invitación del autor, es a que la enseñanza de principios y ética profesional tenga la máxima prioridad para todo aquel que desee aprender sobre ciencia. Ojalá que historias como Parqué Jurásico nunca lleguen a vivirse en la vida real por culpa de personas irresponsables. ¡Ojalá!

Uno de los aspectos que más he disfrutado de la obra sin duda ha sido la prosa porque fue genial el ritmo que Michael fue capaz de imprimir en cada una de las páginas. Usando historias paralelas y llevándolas al ritmo adecuado logró crear un hilo muy atractivo desde los primeros capítulos. Michael supo jugar perfectamente con la intensidad de la novela haciéndola por momento lenta para generar intriga, pero también rápida para que imagináramos mejor el peligro al que se enfrentaban los personajes. Además —así no hubiéramos visto nunca una película de Jurassic Park—hace comprender al lector desde el comienzo que ese paraíso utópico de dinosaurios en algún momento va a salirse de control. Y nosotros, como lectores, seguimos leyendo con interés esperando ese evento que desencadene toda la tragedia; leemos ansiando la reacción de los personajes que se regodean de sus medidas perfectas de seguridad cuando se sientan amenazados de verdad; leemos con la curiosidad de conocer las explicaciones de cómo los dinosaurios se saldrán con la suya y tomarán el control. Eso sí, las escenas de acción donde los personajes huyen, se enfrentan y mueren contra los dinosaurios se disfrutan más en las películas porque en el libro no se viven con la misma intensidad. Pero en términos generales la prosa es muy buena y la estructura es idónea para disfrutar de la experiencia.

La mayoría de los personajes de la novela son seres muy obsesionados con los dinosaurios. Está bien que les gusten y es comprensible sus ambiciones relacionadas a estos seres: Dinero, fama, descubrimientos, etc., pero tal vez su obsesión es un poco enferma, en mi opinión. Crear y alimentar un ser, tan peligroso para tu propia vida, es completamente absurdo: un riesgo completamente innecesario. Entiendo los sentimientos de Hammond —creador del parque— y de Wu —genetista— de usar sus recursos financieros y conocimientos relacionados a la genética para hacer historia, pero el «hambre de gloria» les destruyó por completo la cordura. Como lectores, si pensamos en una situación hipotética similar a la de la trama, por más que nos esforcemos no lograremos imaginar un futuro plausible en el que sus ideas puedan existir sin afectar siquiera un ecosistema. Su proyecto equivale a jugar a ser dioses alterando la esencia de la naturaleza. ¿Cómo alguien tan inteligente puede llegar a tomar decisiones tan irracionales? Es bastante ilógico. Son personas estudiadas pero se comportan como niños que no aceptan la realidad de la vida. Y los demás personajes, que no tuvieron que ver directamente con el proyecto, visitan el parque con una extraña tranquilidad como si fueran de paseo por un zoológico de animales inofensivos. Nadie ha visto un dinosaurio, nadie conoce sus hábitos. ¿Cómo es posible que todos actúen con tanta naturalidad? Es rarísimo... En mi opinión, la irresponsabilidad de sus personajes son el defecto del libro. Puede que el autor los haya diseñado de esta forma para que su crítica tenga más resonancia. O sea, si personajes “expertos” y “estudiados” se comportan así, ¿qué podríamos esperar de otro tipo de personas que tengan contacto con estos seres? Sin embargo, creo que al autor si se le pasó un poquito la raya con el nivel de irresponsabilidad de sus personajes.

La excepción, claro está, es Ian Malcolm. Un personaje con un humor sardónico que me ha fascinado que se caracteriza por ser el único en predecir la catástrofe que estaba por venir. Su explicación de la teoría del caos y otros temas me ha encantado. Claramente, mi personaje favorito. Lo sorprendente es que a pesar de sus explicaciones y advertencias todos lo ignoran como si fuera un chamán que estuviera vaticinando que va a llover. A pesar de que me ha encantado el libro sigo atónito por el extraño comportamiento de todos los personajes: tan relajados, tan optimistas, y eso que son expertos en la materia... ¡Rarísimo!

Otro mensaje importante y que me ha parecido bonito en la obra es el relacionado a la libertad. Los que habitamos este mundo somos seres vivos, no máquinas. Y como seres vivos anhelamos buscar nuestro propio camino sin sentirnos atrapados y eligiendo el lugar donde deseamos vivir. Todos los seres vivos anhelamos un lugar seguro donde podamos dormir, comer y reproducirnos con suma tranquilidad. A nadie le gusta estar tras una reja o una jaula, a nadie le gusta vivir la vida que otros esperan que tengamos. Percibir esa rebeldía en estos dinosaurios, creados artificialmente para servir a otros, es uno de los detalles más hermosos de Parque Jurásico. Es la muestra de que todo ser vivo anhela su propia libertad y está dispuesto a luchar usando su agresividad, fuerza e inteligencia como herramienta de supervivencia. Cuando ser libre es una necesidad, el ser vivo implicado en cautiverio buscará mil maneras de salirse con la suya y huir. Ser libre hace parte de nuestro instinto, hace parte de nuestra esencia. ¡Qué belleza de mensaje Michael Crichton nos regala en esta novela!

En resumen, una obra donde me parece más importante la invitación del autor a reflexionar sobre el uso de la ciencia en el mundo real que el argumento y los personajes propiamente dichos. Independientemente de que hayamos visto o no las películas de Jurassic Park, siento que vale la pena leer esta obra para comprender un poquito mejor la filosofía del autor y para recordar la aventura y los peligros que se viven en esta expedición. Mi calificación sería de cinco estrellas, pero teniendo en cuenta mi disgusto por la irrealidad de los personajes, he decidido bajarle un poco a la puntuación y dejarlo en 4,3.

So I went to one of those Dinosaur parks once. It was great fun. You sit on a bench drinking overpriced coffee that tastes like gravy for some reason and you watch little kids creep up to a huge plastic Dinosaur until it ROARS at them. Some run away laughing, some run with their eyes wide and their jaws clenched as though they have just seen a Monkey swallow a hand grenade and some just being to cry - that's the best (I'm horrible, I know)

Well Jurassic Park is full of real Dinosaurs... Of course it is, everyone knows that - if you didn't ? How's that rock you been living under.....

The book starts off brilliantly... A girls arm gets chewed up and a baby has it's face eaten - that's how you grab a readers attention.. Mentions of the island gave me chills, I just wanted them to get there and the chills come again when the characters see the Dinosaurs BUT for some reason they really didn't get that hyped - there's nothing like Sam Neils face in the movie... And that cool John Williams music of course...

The whole info side of the story begins and I have to say I enjoyed it a little more than the movie, it just felt a little more balanced.....

Then the tour begins and this is where the fun sits right? Well, sort of. It's on the edge of the seat peril one minute and then the next we a reading seemingly endless register of dinosaurs and more dinosaurs and then peril and then egg counts and egg DNA codes and its kind of too balanced..... But, I still kind of loved it. Either you will be taken in 100 percent or you might read half and then just watch the movie....

“The hooting was louder as [he] scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could feel it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath.

But he couldn’t see.

He couldn’t see anything, and his terror was extreme.

He stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming.

And then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and [he] stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out…”
-tMichael Crichton, Jurassic Park

There are certain books you read when you are young that you remember forever, because they are the first time you are introduced to certain truths – both beautiful and terrible – about the world in which we live. Robert Cormier’s young adult bus-hijacking novel After the First Death taught me a lesson about the relativity of “good” and “evil,” and also that people could pee on themselves when they were really frightened. Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse provided an unforgettable – to my twelve-year-old self, at least – account of the workings of a nuclear bomb. In Night Over Water, Ken Follett gave me all the information about the mechanics of sex that I ever needed to know. Seriously. Ever.

And Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park? That’s where I learned about disembowelment.

***

Now residing in the shadow of its classic film version – and an ever-expanding list of intellectual properties, which include four sequels, a television show, and video games – it was fun to return to this novel I first read as a kid, to see how squarely it fits into the techno-thriller category that I inhaled growing up in the nineties. Like many other titles of that era, it demonstrated passion for emerging technologies while also sounding a warning about them.

At first glance, Jurassic Park is the textbook definition of high concept, a story that can easily be summarized in a couple of sentences: Dinosaurs are brought by to life to populate a theme park. They run amok.

Of course, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

When Jurassic Park begins, we are in Costa Rica, which has been experiencing a strange rash of animal attacks. Paleontologist Alan Grant and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler are called in to investigate the seemingly far-fetched notion that the attacks are being carried out by a species of dinosaur. Before they can get to work, billionaire John Hammond brings them to Isla Nubar, where he has created a “biological preserve” in which the main attraction are cloned dinosaurs.

Hired by Hammond as consultants, Grant and Sattler are joined by mathematician/chaotician Ian Malcom, who has a lot of interesting ideas about complex systems, and what that means for the park’s long-term viability. Joining this ad hoc tour group is Tim and Lex, Hammond’s grandchildren. What no one knows is that a disgruntled employee is about to conduct a bit of corporate espionage that will put everyone in grave danger.

***

Jurassic Park is not a character study. Crichton – at least in my experience – has always been better at cool ideas and nifty plot execution than creating fully-rounded individuals to act upon his stage.

Everyone here is presented pretty boldly, without much depth or shading. Alan is the hero, Dennis Nedry – the aforementioned disgruntled employee – is the villain. The kids – mainly Lex – are annoying. Strike that. Lex is so annoying I can’t even.

That said, the people in Jurassic Park are memorable, even without Steven Spielberg’s well-cast film version cluttering my head. I had forgotten a lot about this book when I picked it up after twenty years, but I still hadn’t forgotten Muldoon, the big game hunter, or the blithe, cluelessly-striving Hammond emitting the unmistakable odor of Dr. Frankenstein.

The star of this show is Ian Malcom, who is so important to Crichton that Crichton quotes him at the beginning of each chapter (called “iterations”). It is Malcom who – after a couple plot twists – is put in the position of presenting Crichton’s bigger ideas, a Greek chorus of one.

And yes, even though this novel has a graphic disembowelment – among other disturbing deaths – it actually has a lot to say.

***

Jurassic Park is filled with Crichton’s pretensions. Unlike most fiction, its pages contain charts, graphs, and simulated computer screens. Furthermore, as I noted above, Crichton is so taken with Malcom that he has him deliver pre-chapter epigraphs. Beyond that, Malcom’s monologues go on for pages, delivering Crichton’s message in a way that borders on the pedantic:

We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare decade after the bomb, we began to have genetic power. And genetic power is far more potent than atomic power. And it will be in everyone’s hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators. And that will force everyone to ask the same question – What should I do with my power? – which is the very question science says it cannot answer.

One of the big thematic differences between Jurassic Park the book and Jurassic Park the (original) movie is the way this issue is handled. Spielberg definitely weaves it into his version, but mostly via Goldblum’s marvelous line-readings. But his heart isn’t in it. Ultimately, Crichton’s source-material pessimism about science is overwhelmed by Spielberg’s utterly Spielbergian awe at the results (heavily underscored by John Williams’s stirring theme).

Thirty years old now, Jurassic Park still feels fresh. Crichton’s anxieties about genetic tweaking obviously prefigures a lot of medical-ethical concerns – genetic confidentiality; genetic discrimination; genetics-based decision-making – that we are going to have to face within the next few years. Despite valid concerns, science is going to plunge forward, while everyone struggles to catch up.

Of course, the distrust in science voiced by Malcom can have serious side effects, and it’s interesting to review Jurassic Park in light of an ongoing worldwide pandemic, the end of which has been delayed by large-scale refusals to vaccinate. It says something about Crichton’s dino-rampage epic that you could choose it for your book club today and have an interesting conversation.

***

Jurassic Park is a bit like Jaws in that it has been pretty thoroughly overwhelmed by its cinematic spawn. Unlike Jaws, however, Crichton’s book is actually pretty good. You can enjoy it on a visceral level, an intellectual level, or both. Like Malcom, you can ponder our plight, living in the midst of an unstable system headed for collapse, or you can turn off your brain and observe a man getting chewed alive by Procompsognathus.

I figured that it was time to read the original Jurassic Park, as I recently went to see the fourth movie, Jurassic World. Basically, JW follows the same pattern as previous movies—people create dinosaurs, dinosaurs get loose, much running & screaming ensues. Still it was worth every penny just for the scene in which the Mosasaur leaps out of a pool in a SeaWorld like setting.

In many ways, this novel, which started the whole franchise, is better than the corresponding Jurassic Park movie—the science is more obvious and better and the plot is a bit more complex. However, for characterization, the movie probably gives the viewer more sympathy for those doing the running & screaming. The novel does include an awful lot of computer programming diagrams & jargon—probably trendy at the time of its publication, but a bit dated now.

Crichton seems to have much the same message in mind as Mary Shelley did when she wrote Frankenstein—science often seems to out-strip humanity’s moral development and just because we are able to do something doesn’t mean we should do it. Where Shelley left it for the reader to develop this thesis on their own, Crichton gets down right preachy, hitting the reader over the head with this message repeatedly (as articulated by the mathematician). And this whole idea that nature can’t be contained and that it’s hubristic of people to try—this seems to me to be a very “city folk” way of looking at the world. Ask anyone who grew up on a farm, complete with livestock, and we will tell you that there is no such thing as a fool-proof fence! Try to out-smart a pig—it’s not as easy a task as you might think. I’ve ended up using reverse psychology (open two gates, chase them towards the gate you don’t want the pigs to go out). Ever try getting a large beast like a cow or a horse to do something they don’t want to do? Good luck! You will need many people in order to accomplish the task. The horse may do what you want if you have a very good working relationship with it (I think about each year here in Calgary at Stampede time when some brave soul takes a horse up the Calgary Tower and attempts to get it to stand on the glass floored part of the observation deck—I wouldn’t do it and neither will any sensible horse!) Farmers and ranchers know their limits—they have no illusions of control when it comes to animals. I also know a substantial number of zoo keepers and they have a keen respect for their charges and know that zoo animals have plenty of time to contemplate the weak spots in their enclosures and that they are willing to test those weak spots when all the zoo staff have gone home for the evening. If it’s hard to convince a cow to do something, it can be downright dangerous to ask an elephant to do something it has an aversion to. While zoo keepers know these things, it often seems that zoo administration is clueless about animal behaviour & intelligence. When things go wrong (e.g. when an animal escapes), it is often because administration and/or architects discount the warnings of animal care staff. When Calgary Zoo opened a new building, the Colobus monkeys climbed right out of their supposedly-secure new enclosure and were found in the rafters the next morning. Modifications, previously suggested by zoo keepers and disregarded, were put into place.

And seriously, how many city folk can’t even get their dogs to be obedient?

So, a very good novel with good suspense and a fun premise (who wouldn’t want to go to a safe version of Jurassic Park?), but I am knocking off a star because I was smart enough to see the message without being beaten about the head & ears with it!

5 ⭐️s

It’s hard to separate certain pieces of art from the pop culture stranglehold it has on our minds and preconceptions. This is definitely true for Jurassic Park, but it’s also true that if you sift through its cultural ubiquity, there is just a really, really good book underneath. This is my second read (my first came in 1991), and I was shocked by how much I enjoyed this novel

n  Why You Should Or Shouldn’t Read Itn

Because it’s damn good, and much different from the movies. You get much deeper into the scientific aspects, so you must enter into it with that knowledge, but I absolutely loved that about it, and thus I thoroughly enjoyed the book as a whole. It’s a great blend of scientific exploration, adventure and horror

n  Themesn

Human greed and desire for power accumulation run amok

n  One Thing I’ll walk away withn

Confidence that no movie has ever been better than the book it was based off of. Prove me wrong

n  

n❝ Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science.❞
-------------- Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

❝ All the Dinosaurs feared the T-Rex❞
------ Wade Wilson, Deadpool (2016)