I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this, but I totally loved it! In fact, it's probably among the most enjoyable, yet in many ways most unsettling, science-fiction that I've read. Thirty years later, the book still gives you a chill for making you ever more aware of the literally unimaginably vast number of variables that need to be taken into consideration as soon as we start (or continue) to make a more far-reaching use of what may be the most powerful technology of our time, genetic engineering.

The general setting should be familiar to most people. International Genetic Technologies (InGen) is a company which found a way to clone dinosaurs, by extracting their DNA from blood-sucking insects fossilized in amber. InGen's CEO, John Hammond, has the vision of a zoo-like theme park in which visitors (who are willing to pay the steep admission fees) are able to see the long-extinct giants. However, the scheduled tour through the park doesn't turn out to be as smooth a ride as Hammond expected it to be (who saw that coming?). Smaller and larger malfunctions of the complex machinery culminate in a massive catastrophe, so that soon tyrannosaurus rexes, velociraptors, and other dangerous dinosaurs are running lose in the park.

At that time, various characters are in the park. Ahead of the big opening, Hammond invites an array of experts in relevant fields, including paleontologist Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, and mathematician Ian Malcolm, to give their blessings as to the park's proper functioning. Traveling with them is Donald Gennaro, a lawyer who represents the investors and who is rather pessimistic about the project as a whole. The managerial staff is proud on how few people are required to run the park (at least before the visitors are allowed in), so there is only Henry Wu (responsible for the bioengineering itself), John Arnold (the main technician), Robert Muldoon (functioning as an animal keeper), software developer Dennis Nedry, and veterinarian Gerry Harding. Finally, there are Hammond's grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy, and Ed Regis, who is usually responsible for the publicity work.

I really loved all these characters. Sure, they all are instances of familiar tropes, but they work so perfectly within the given setting. For one thing, there is John Hammond. Superficially, he may be an honest dinosaur enthusiast, but it isn't long before it becomes totally obvious how relentlessly and irresponsibly he is in pursuing his aims. He is also pushing around people without much of a clue about the complexities involved with the issues at hand, which of course adds another security risk. While in the beginning he is somewhat droll, in the course of the story you will come to hate him so much - not the least because you will almost certainly see him as a symbol of some of the most frightening dangers behind current developments.

Malcom is hilariously eccentric, constantly annoying everyone (the reader included) about his smartass chaos theory, making his "I told you so" echo through the entire book. Grant is the appealing figure. He completely lives for his work, but turns out to be quite likable when taking care of the children. Ellie, however, has little more than the bare minimum of qualities that the other sex is supposed to have in this sort of novels. Of the minor characters, I liked Muldoon the best. Readers of Spider-Man may know him as Kraven the Hunter, the badass who is able to read animal excrements like other people read books. For instance, he finds a watch that proves to him that at least one of the children is alive (because it is almost impossible to rip of a watch without ripping of the and as well, so that the child must have taken it down; and because it is broken, so the attack already happened).

I'm aware that movies of the 80s and 90s always had to have children, but I didn't know that this applied to novels, too. However, the children here are great additions, especially Tim. He is almost a Mary Sue character, knowing everything about dinosaurs and what to do in hairy situations, and even being able to do very elaborate technical stuff. Lex is the exact opposite. You almost get the feeling as if his childhood left Crichton with some sort of latent disgust for girls, making her this stupid and weepy character who doesn't do anything other than moaning about being hungry, acting like an idiot, and annoy the shit out of other people. I can totally see why in the movie adaptation they decided to at least make her the computer expert.

One thing that impressed me immensely was how visually the story is told. The cinematographic descriptions, spot-on dialogues, and breathtaking action really make this quite a unique experience. The one scene with the tyrannosaurus is awesome and the much smarter raptors are genuinely terrifying. Of course, you cannot be sure how much comes down to having seen its movie adaptation five times or more, but I cannot think of any other book that evoked such detailed mental images of what is going on at every single moment.

Moreover, the park itself forms a fascinating microcosm. You get a clear picture of what is where, which dinosaurs there are, what problems the park has to overcome (some actually quite detailed, like cleaning work and possible diseases). Its functioning is depicted in such a nuanced manner that it becomes evident that Crichton really tried to think through what it would take to make such a project work. With an elaborate technical system and fail-save mechanisms (such as a particular substance that dinosaurs need to be fed to survive) they may be excused to think that the park really is safe (well, they are not).

Sure, some mistakes are a bit on the nose. With doors protected by card-scanners that just open up in case of electricity failure, no observations at night, cars that can only go forward, poisonous plants near the dinosaurs, and a set maximum of how many animals a recognition software is able to detect, many readers will feel that the park was doomed from the beginning. But of course this is the point. Moreover, you can totally see how in the minds of those responsible these security deficiencies are relevant only when pushing almost impossible thought-experiments to all unlikely consequences. However, everyone has heard of massive mistakes in construction projects (like collapsing bridges or buildings without toilets), and as soon as unlikely scenarios become real, minor details (such as the placement of a tree, this is what raptors in the book use to get inside a building) may have disastrous implications.

Another reason why the park feels almost real are the detailed descriptions of characters interacting with its computer system. There are numerous tables and source code which make this feel genuinely scientific. Moreover, it makes use of the proper terminology, discussing concepts like objects in object-oriented programming and going through the command history and explaining the effects of these instructions. More importantly, there is a genuine sense of excitement when trying to figure out how a program works while raptors are closing in (probably what software developers working on Cyberpunk 2077 must have felt over Christmas).

Throughout the book, there are philosophical musings on chaos theory (a branch of mathematics focusing on the study of dynamical systems and which emphasizes the importance of initial conditions of these systems), power, science (more specifically, a law of scientific progress and its relation to autonomy and morality), reason, or the control over nature. There are also discussions of interesting epistemological issues and questions of what is real and natural. These issues become pressing as soon as you realize that information on behavior is not in a narrower encoded in DNA (let alone in the bones that you may dig up in the desert). So it's very difficult to form assumptions about the dinosaur's historical behavior against which the clones' behavior could be tested for "accuracy". Moreover, there is the question of how far the dinosaurs can be considered real when their DNA is a fix-up of ancient as well as modern animals. Finally, there are also the expectations of what dinosaurs should act like, historically accurate or not, and you may reasonably ask if this should play a role, too.

So, Jurassic Park is up there with Dune or Ender's Game when it comes to the most recommendable science-fiction books for readers who want to get into the genre. As for me, I'm not sure if I'm much interested in the second book, but this one firmly established Michael Crichton a position on my list of authors to look out for.

Rating: 5/5