Michael Crighton’s Jurassic Park is wildly underrated

Yes, we all know Michael Crightons classic, Jurassic Park, we all know it’s the basis of the classic Steven Spielberg film and subsequent franchise but hear me out.

What some people may not know or were around to experience it, but this book did so much to change the landscape around it.

For starters you have the rendering of Dinosaurs as an aspect of the story. Up until this point , history books, shows and all media were long , long overdue for an update in what scientists had learned and how people perceived them.

Crightons novel scraped together every new discovery and outlook on dinosaurs and fused them together into an eye opening new vision of these creatures we all thought we were familiar with growing up. The change of the landscape and interest around the subject were to put it lightly: seismic. You could say he single handedly kicked open the door to paletology and study of prehistoric animals.

But secondly and to me, as important was his brutal indigtment of commerce driving scientific discovery and its commodification.

The ruminations around corporate conglomerates making sweeping godlike decisions involving nature fermament it in my mind as the true heir of the modern day Prometheus tale, aka Frankenstein.

Chapter after chapter Michael lays down a startlingly realistic thought experiment around the idea of a luxury resort that attempts to harness the raw power of nature in order to serve up a luxury experience for the rich.

To them everything is squeaky clean on paper and yet immediately we see who suffer. A local blue collar worker from the tropical getting torn to shreds by one of the animals and being covered up. Infants suffering and dying from bites of loose small dinosaurs, drives home such a an incredibly accurate portrait of who pays the price the pyramid structure of capitalistic endeavor such as this.

The convergence of technology and science attempting to warp, influence the fabric of nature itself has maybe never been more vividly and correctly displayed.

The hubris of attempting to control breeding , flocking movements sex and lifespans and the unsuitability of it.

The book is almost more prophetic than anything as we’ve only seen more of the his kind of start up culture “fake it til you make” type shenanigans as well as corporate espionage and people seeking to steal one another’s IP to save a few years of research.

It’s startling to see how well the story ages and unlike the film the book is unafraid to lay down the damnation toward the back actors to drive the story.