Folio Books: review of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park

by Michael Crichton

Ballantine Books, 1990

400 pages, US$5.99

I've read this twice and couldn't put it down either time. I greatly preferred the book to the movie. The science (DNA, genetic engineering and chaos theory) is reasonably accurate and brilliantly explained (a juror, I think it was in the OJ trial, said that he had learnt everything he knew about DNA in here). The story hovers somewhere between science fiction and science fact. The scenario of a theme park of dinosaurs, genetically engineered from ancient DNA and wildly out of control, is plausible but pleasantly unlikely, making a great, scary, escapist suspense thriller. But what about the subtext? Crichton traces in the introduction the radical shift that has occurred in science since 1976, from sharing scientific information for the good of mankind to secrecy for commercial gain. In the first two thirds of the introduction (which is based on fact) he voices his concerns about the runaway commercialization of biotechnology. Can genetically-engineered organisms accidentally escape from the lab? Of course they can. The story is not so very far-fetched if you substitute some kind of deadly bacteria for the velociraptors of Jurassic Park.

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M.A., August 15, 1997, modified Dec 7, 97