It is a shame when the movie overshadows the book, but we can make an exception for Spielberg’s adaptation because in its own right, it is an absolute classic. Jurassic Park as a movie was a pioneer in the use of special effects to bring a story to life, and seeing Jurassic Park for the first time as a child, I was scared shitless by the raptors. And to this day, Jurassic Park the movie still remains ageless, still entertaining and matured well.
But Crichton’s original source material was also a pioneer in other ways. Science fiction is often battered down to the same usual themes and tones: a dystopian future, extra-terrestrials, robots, that biological sci-fi is often buried underneath the masses. But in many ways, it can be more terrifying because we are in essence biological beings. Jurassic Park the movie briefly touched on the dangers of messing up with biology in Dr Ian Malcolm’s monologue, which further stakes its claim as a classic. This message is explored more prominently in the book, and is the primary message in the book.
Dr Malcolm is the best character in the book, and the embodiment of the chaos theory which states that unpredictability is the norm, that small minute changes can have exponentially different effects: a drop of water falling in the same position on a wing of a plane will not end up falling on the same path on the surface of the wing. Managing the unknowable is arrogant and often comes with consequences.
But there are other concepts here that are worth exploring, and just easily weaved into the fiction, like a good sci-fi would do. Malcolm’s concepts of fractals, that everything is a smaller version of itself from the smallest scale to the largest, just like a fraction of the top of the mountain is replicated in the the whole mountain. A bit of an outlandish theory, I know, but I’m aware of these self-same recurring patterns in my life and in my own behaviour.
As speculative as the fiction is, it is based on real science and the science plays a key role on how the drama develops. Dinosaurs is an example of a creature, too big for its own good, assured for destruction. The human effort to bring them back to life for the sake of entertainment and profit is surely going to lead into less than desirable outcomes, and we see how that drama develops in the book.
And yes, aside from the discussions of chaos theory there are dinosaurs in this book. Crichton’s writing is vivid and descriptive, we can imagine what the dinosaurs look like in our heads. The anatomy of the dinosaurs are explored thoroughly that we know the purpose of their features. The writing of the dinosaurs are as good as the animatronics in Spieberg’s adaptation, which therefore instills a sense of danger to the characters. We don’t know who’s going to fall to these creatures. Jurassic Park reads like a thriller and I think this helps to help sell the book some, but it is brilliant in its story as it is in its contemplations.
It is also a contemplation on the value of knowledge. Science is based on the knowledge that has come before. Scientists of today are essentially borrowing the knowledge of what has already been discovered by the scientists of yesterday. This “borrowing” comes at little cost being readily available and oftentimes, this piece of knowledge is often used for quick profit without further thought of ethics and consequences. As a result, the borrowed knowledge is taken for granted.
And even though we don’t see any images of the dinosaurs in the book, the novel is still a visual delight. There are diagrams here to show the park’s maintenance system, there are graphs and tables for the reader to analyse and figure out for themselves between the lines, for the developers, there is also code here. I can’t remember seeing code anywhere in a novel, and it is used appropriately here. And even the image of the iterations between each section of the book are images of fractals, with each iteration becoming more and more shapely, yet chaotic.
While it is unlikely that I will re-read the book, I’ve already dog-eared the pages that I want to revisit. It is a delight to read something that is so entertaining can also equally be as intelligent. While many sci-fi novels are heavy on either sci or the fi, Jurassic Park manages to teeter in the sweet spot of both.
