I regret not reading more earlier, especially sci-fi titles with imaginable technology or environment (take for example Invincible by Stanisław Lem or famous New brave world by Aldous Huxley), they show for example that humans are fragile even with technology or effects of eliminating discomfort (like sadness or anger). In Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton the vision focuses on something like Invincible, but add to it “making money” and “altering the environment”.
John Hammond is old and crazy man, yet in still good condition for his old years. He creates the park to purely profit and I think the talk with Dr. Henry Wu proofs it – “the original genetic engineering companies, like Genentech and Cetus, were all started to make pharmaceuticals. New drugs for mankind. Noble, noble purpose. Unfortunately, drugs face all kinds of barriers. FDA testing alone takes five to eight years-if you’re lucky. Even worse, there are forces at work in the marketplace. Suppose you make a miracle drug for cancer or heart disease-as Genentech did. Suppose you now want to charge a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars a dose. You might imagine that is your privilege. After all, you invented the drug, you paid to develop and test it; you should be able to charge whatever you wish. But do you really think that the government will let you do that? No, Henry, they will not. Sick people aren’t going to pay a thousand dollars a dose for needed medication-they won’t be grateful, they’ll be outraged. Blue Cross isn’t going to pay it. They’ll scream highway robbery. So something will happen. Your patent application will be denied. Your permits will be delayed. Something will force you to see reason-and to sell your drug at a lower cost. From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind.” But also funds a dinosaur cloning, never listens what Dr. Ian Malcom (the person who was against creating park with dinosaurs from the beginning) has to say, even better – He despites him for hating the technology and abominations that Ingen and Biosyn made (These dinosaurs weren’t even pure at first place). After most staff meets his end in the park including the one who cloned the dinosaurs – Dr. Henry Wu – “Wu was yanked bodily out the door, and Muldoon heard Ellie screaming. Muldoon got to the door and looked out and saw that Wu was lying on his back, his body already torn open by the big claw, and the raptor was jerking its head, tugging at Wu’s intestines even though Wu was still alive” time has come to the original creator of the park. After accidentally spraying his ankle, he meets a few procompsognathus, dinos with special saliva that paralises the weak prey, but not kills. “Hammond turned away, and started to climb the hill once more. Holding branches in both hands, he hopped on his left leg, feeling the ache in his thigh. He had not gone more than ten feet when one of the compys jumped onto his back. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the animal away, but lost his balance and slid back down the hillside. As he came to a stop, a second compy sprang forward, and took a tiny nip from his hand. He looked with horror, seeing the blood flow over his fingers. He turned and began to scramble up the hillside again.
Another compy lumped onto his shoulder, and he felt a brief pain as it bit the back of his neck. He shrieked and smacked the animal away. He turned to face the animals, breathing hard, and they stood all around him, hopping up and down and cocking their heads, watching him. From the bite on his neck, he felt warmth flow through his shoulders, down his spine.
Lying on his back on the hillside, he began to feel strangely relaxed, detached from himself. But he realized that nothing was wrong. No error had been made. Malcolm was quite incorrect in his analysis. Hammond lay very still, as still as a child in its crib, and he felt wonderfully peaceful. When the next compy came up and bit his ankle, he made only a halfhearted effort to kick it away. The little animals edged closer. Soon they were chattering all around him, like excited birds. He raised his head as another compy jumped onto his chest, the animal surprisingly light and delicate. Hammond felt only a slight pain, very slight, as the compy bent to chew his neck.” As you can read – He’s still aware what happening and even feels pain. Not being able to do anything, but watching how chicken sized creatures eat you slowly minute after minute gave me nightmares yesterday after reading this. I was once in sleep paralysis, I remember the feeling of being awake, yet not being able to move and then your own dog shows it’s teeth, the death was his own fault for creating the creatures that we know about so little, but not only his fault – Dennis Nedry hacked the system in order to turn power off then abolish the security and steal the embryos worth big money. He endangered the lives of everyone from Lex to Hammond, but at least met his end in dilophosaurus’ jaws. The idea of Jurassic Park was good, but it got into wrong hands (Even Wu wasn’t aware what he created and thanks to him adding the frog DNA dinosaurs bred like crazy), in the park we met a lot of harmless creatures like hypsies (hypsilophodon), hadrosaurs and apatosaurs, they could never be pure, but could be good start to understand biology of ancient creatures, also we could start reviving other animals like hawaiian birds, thylacines or passenger pigeons (Animals that lost their existence thanks to homo sapiens). Sorry if the post was too long…
by Odd-Teach4844
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Anything that I got wrong with the book please send me a notice in the comments.
Also Compies’ behaviour reminds me of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo7XK-tEHl8