alexdg1's Full Review: Michael Crichton - The Lost World: A Novel
If you like Michael Crichton's 1995 science fiction/thriller The Lost World, you can thank director Steven Spielberg for the novel's very existence.
Or, conversely, you can blame Spielberg if you don't like this second iteration of the man-vs.-cloned dinosaur theme first explored in Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park, the former physician's literary blending of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, a 1912 novel whose title was "borrowed" in this first (and only) literary sequel penned by the author of The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Sphere, and Disclosure.
Basking in the glow of the box office success of the 1993 film based on Jurassic Park, Spielberg asked Crichton if he could write a second techothriller-cautionary tale about the cloned dinosaurs from Isla Nublar's fatally-flawed theme park, Jurassic Park. After all, the film had grossed over $900,000,000 world-wide, and many of its fans wanted a sequel.
Perhaps it would have been better if Crichton, who had never written a "continuing story" novel before, had stuck to his initial "No, Steven, I really don't think it's a good idea to do a sequel," but eventually he gave in, maybe to please his friend, or maybe he was seduced by the visions of a big payday, or - more than likely - both.
The Lost World picks up the story some six years after the "InGen Incident" in which various of the main characters of the first novel (including Ian Malcolm) were killed and the ill-fated Jurassic Park and its dinosaurs destroyed by the Costa Rican military. This, of course, was Crichton's way of precluding a sequel...but of course, the storyteller's art finds a way to get around this.
Here, it seems that rumors of Malcolm's death were greatly exaggerated, and after a long period of rehabilitation and a failed relationship with Sarah Harding, the eccentric mathematician and chaos theorist is in Costa Rica, once again investigating possible sightings of creatures which may be surviving dinos from Jurassic Park. Stymied by the Costa Rican government's "destruction of evidence" - whenever a possible dinosaur corpse is discovered, the army swoops in and obliterates it with flamethrowers. Aided by his colleague, Dr. Richard Levine, Malcolm is sure that more dinos have survived, but if the Park was destroyed and quarantined, where are these new animals coming from?
But Malcolm's investigation into an InGen facility code-named Site B is given a "kick start" when an eager-to-get--there Levine rushes alone into the jungles of the mysterious Isla Sorna, a neighboring island some 80 miles away from Isla Nublar. (In the film, Isla Nublar is "the showroom," while Isla Sorna is the "factory floor.) It's on Isla Sorna where InGen had its real cloning facilities, and the dinosaurs which were bred in total secrecy have survived, thrived, and about to find a way to break beyond the limits of the island.
Crichton is not content with this already complicated situation and adds (or reprises) the industrial espionage/get rich quick scheme by Lewis Dodgson from InGen's rival BioSyn company, which wants to get its corporate hands on the dinos and exploit them for every dollar possible. Feckless and greedy to the max, Dodgson accompanies Malcolm's ex Sarah and a team of poachers onto Isla Sorna, hoping to race Malcolm and his group (tech wiz Eddie Carr, engineer Jack "Doc" Thorne, and, echoing the Lex and Tim duo of kids from the first story, two young stowaways, Arby Benton and Kelly Curtis) to the dino nests and steal some eggs.
The novel, of course, features variations on the themes of greed-induced betrayal, deadly encounters between humans and various carnivorous dinosaur species, and the Frankenstein-inspired "Thou shalt not meddle with the power of Creation" subtheme from Jurassic Park.
First-time readers of The Lost World will probably like the novel if (a) they obliterate any memory of the 1997 film version and (b) they keep in mind that book is a sequel to the original novel and ignores the Crichton-David Koepp film adaptation altogether. Otherwise, the book will be confusing and the eager reader who loves the films will be disappointed when he or she reads through the novel's 400-plus pages in search of their favorite bits from the film and find only one or two familiar set-piece sequences.
Stylistically, The Lost World follows the format of the first book pretty closely, switching back and forth from "fiction as fact" passages and scientific "explanations" to pure action adventure narrative, which is one of Crichton's trademark literary techniques. To readers already familiar with the author's novels, this is not an unwelcome trick and
lends "credibility" to a somewhat incredible scenario. To others, the digressions slow down the pace of the story and take away from the narrative's visceral power and appeal.
However, readers who aren't Crichton fans and just like the Jurassic Park movies will probably find The Lost World less than what they bargained for, especially when they notice the vast differences between the storyline and the set of characters in both versions. The villains of the novel, while motivated by greed, are not even the same characters seen in Spielberg's film.
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