Read Jurassic Park and have some thoughts

For context, I didn’t grow up on the Jurassic Park movies, I was a really scared kid and would run away when things like that were on TV. I only watched the original movie last year and decided to read the book a few days ago. Having finished it I have some thoughts.

1. The way the book tackles greed, capitalism, and the corporate lack of regard for life was excellent, it was very believably evil without any mustache twirling nonsense. I liked the way that everyone in the beginning refused to expand their thoughts about the new lizards because truly, saying you think dinosaurs are back after millions of years would get you a one way trip to the grippy sock house. The obstinate way the characters on the island think was so perfect because they had all turned into an echo chamber just confirming what they know the others want to hear. Having no systems in place for emergencies, never imagining that evolution and mindless biology could out smart them. The scene with Hammond and Dr. Wu about Dr. Wu wanting to make the dinosaurs dumber and slower was perfect. The part where Dr. Wu explained that their security measures were inadequate and based on earlier models but Hammond refusing to budge saying it would all be fine.

2. Dr. Sattler is much cooler in the movie. She gets more to do with actively going to look for missing members of the team and being the one to rescue Dr. Malcolm. In the books hardly anyone calls her Dr. Sattler, and she spends a ton of time nursing Dr. Malcolm even though she has no training to do so. One thing that annoyed me about Crichton’s writing is that she snaps at Muldoon for calling her girl when he’s actively trying to help her with the velociraptors. It felt like a parody of women asking not to be called sweetheart, there’s no woman who would bring that up in the middle of a raptor attack. Makes me wonder if Crichton had ever actually met a woman. All the comments about her shorts got old before they even started.

3. Segues into my next point about the kids. Lex is the whiniest kid but Tim is perfect and does not one thing wrong in the entire book. I’ve seen people say that’s exactly how kids would react and she’s so realistic but if that were the case then Tim would have moments like that too but he doesn’t. It seemed to me that Tim is this bright nerdy kid who isn’t favored by his parents like his sister who is perfectly awful. He’s the wonderfully smart always right person who isn’t appreciated like he should be. Made me wonder if he’s supposed to be Crichton’s self insert and Lex is his sister he always hated. I also hate the general idea that boys are the only ones who have intellectual interests like dinosaurs and computers. It was a great change to give the computer interest to Lex in the movie.

4. I didn’t like that the aggressive carnivorous dinosaurs all got male pronouns while the prey all got female pronouns. Says some creepy stuff when you think about it. They’re all female per InGen, they don’t even see a male until almost the end. Also on that note, how did Dr. Grant AND Lex identify that the raptor was male? Genitalia don’t fossilize and what human child would be able to immediately sex an animal that’s been dead for 65 million years?

5. The ending of the book was a giant letdown. The characters really seemed to change when they all got reunited to do the incredibly stupid egg count. In universe, that count made no sense except for Dr. Grant to rag on Gennaro since Hammond had died. Dr. Grant says we need to count the eggs to predict how many raptors there are but 1) eggs break into pieces so how can you exactly say how many you’re looking at, 2) they’ve been on that island for 2 years so multiple hatching seasons have gone by, the eggs from older seasons have biodegraded so how are you going to get an idea of how many animals there are? The raptors spread all over the island while the fences were down, how can they be sure their 37 count was accurate? It’s a big island there could be another nest. Even if they got an exact count, what are they going to do with that information? That doesn’t change the air strike coming, if just two raptors survive they can go and breed somewhere and what does the count do? That part of the book was so stupid that it really ruined my overall experience reading it.

6. Dr. Malcolm monologuing endlessly about chaos sounds really good until you actually picture what that would be like to experience. The content of his monologues was actually very good and important but the sets up for them were very weak and I actually sympathized with Hammond there because what the hell are you saying.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable book but I do think I prefer the movie.