Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park (1991) by Michael Crichton – Book Club Associates – Good Condition

There are many sensible uses for cutting-edge genetic science. Recreating several tonnes of extinct carnivorous reptile and putting it behind an electric fence on a tropical island is not generally considered one of them.

In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton takes the perfectly reasonable human desire to see a dinosaur and follows it to its logical conclusion: corporate overconfidence, scientific hubris, computer failure, screaming, running and the rapid discovery that Tyrannosaurus rex is not especially interested in visitor safety regulations.

Billionaire entrepreneur John Hammond has built the ultimate theme park on a remote island, populated not with actors in foam costumes but with genuine genetically engineered dinosaurs. Before the park can open to the public, a small group of experts is invited to inspect the operation and reassure everyone that breeding prehistoric animals for entertainment is entirely under control.

It is not entirely under control.

What follows is a wonderfully efficient collision of science, technology, capitalism and teeth. Security systems fail, fences stop being reassuringly electrical, dinosaurs begin exercising their own ideas about park management, and several highly qualified adults discover that academic expertise offers only limited protection when something weighing six tonnes has decided to chase you.

Crichton mixes thriller pacing with questions about genetic engineering, chaos theory, corporate secrecy and mankind’s enduring inability to leave well enough alone. Beneath all the running from dinosaurs is a rather pointed argument about complex systems: just because you can create something does not mean you understand it, and just because a computer says everything is fine does not mean a velociraptor is not currently testing the door handle.

Published here in a 1991 Book Club Associates edition, this is the novel that became one of the defining science-fiction thrillers of the late twentieth century and later inspired the enormously successful film adaptation. Readers familiar only with the film will find plenty that is recognisable, but the novel is darker, more technical and considerably less sentimental about what happens when humans underestimate animals that have already had 65 million years to think about revenge.

This copy is in Good condition, meaning it has survived several decades without being eaten, trampled, electrocuted or abandoned in a tropical genetics laboratory. It may show the normal signs of previous ownership and age, but remains perfectly suitable for reading, collecting or leaving somewhere prominent as a warning against irresponsible biotechnology.

There is no ISBN, which seems fitting for a book about creatures produced before modern cataloguing systems, publishing metadata and indeed mammals had really got themselves organised.

Ideal for fans of science fiction, thrillers, dinosaurs, Michael Crichton, genetic catastrophes, badly supervised billionaires and stories in which the phrase “we’ve thought of everything” usually means somebody is about to be eaten.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where the books are second-hand, the dinosaurs are regrettably unavailable, and the containment systems have so far held.

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