The recap
On a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica, the billionaire John Hammond has built the most audacious attraction on earth: a wildlife park stocked with living dinosaurs, cloned from ancient DNA recovered from blood-sucking insects trapped in amber. Before the gates open to paying visitors, nervous investors demand an inspection, so Hammond flies in a small party of experts, among them the paleontologist Alan Grant, the paleobotanist Ellie Sattler and the sardonic mathematician Ian Malcolm, together with his own two grandchildren. Malcolm, a chaos theorist, is convinced that a system this complex cannot stay under control for long. Crichton writes with the brisk authority of a science journalist, folding genetics, computer networks and paleontology into a story that builds like a storm front. It is a monster thriller with real ideas inside it, a sharp warning about corporate hubris and scientific power, and it is darker, stranger and more argumentative than the famous film it inspired.
Why read it
For anyone who loves a fast, clever techno-thriller with real science in it. Fans of the films will find a tougher, more unsettling story waiting on the page.
Fun facts
- 01
Crichton first developed the idea as a screenplay before reworking it into a novel.
- 02
Steven Spielberg and Universal secured the film rights before the book was even published, reportedly for $1.5 million.
- 03
Chip Kidd's first-edition cover, a silhouette of the T. rex skeleton AMNH 5027 at New York's American Museum of Natural History, became the logo of the entire film franchise.
- 04
Spielberg's 1993 adaptation launched one of the biggest franchises in movie history.
- 05
Its 1995 follow-up, The Lost World, is the only sequel Crichton ever wrote.
