Jurassic Park the Novel was written by Michael Crichton, best-selling author of various other books, such as the Andromeda Strain, in 1989. The novel was later made into a movie of the same name in 1993, and a sequel, The Lost World was written in 1994.
Plot
The narrative begins by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on Isla Nublar, the main setting for the story. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student Ellie Sattler are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond (founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen) for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on an island 120 miles west off the coast of Costa Rica.
Recent events have spooked Hammond's considerable investors, so, to placate them, he means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic, but Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainably simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system.
Upon arrival the park is revealed to contain cloned dinosaurs, which have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA (found in mosquitos that sucked Saurian blood and were then trapped and preserved in amber). Gaps in the genetic code have been filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control the population, all specimens on the island are bred to be female as well as lysine-deficient. Hammond proudly showcases InGen's advances in genetic engineering and shows his guests through the island's vast array of automated systems.
Countering Malcolm's dire predictions with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds an eggshell, which seems to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design (the population graphs proudly introduced earlier were naturally distributed, reflecting a breeding population, rather than displaying the distinct pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display).
Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations, in that motion detectors were set to search only for the expected number of creatures in the park and not for any higher number. The park's controllers are reluctant to admit that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathus forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population.
In the midst of this, the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's archrival, Biosyn. By activating a backdoor he wrote into the system, Nedry manages to shut down the park's security systems and quickly steal 30 frozen embryos (2 of each kind). He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at the auxiliary dock deep in the park. But his plan goes awry: during a sudden tropical storm Nedry becomes lost and stops his stolen Jeep at a dead end. He exits the Jeep to determine his location. A Dilophosaurus approaches him from afar, blinds him with its poisonous saliva, and then kills him. Nedry's plan called for him to secretly deliver the embryos and return to the park's control room within fifteen minutes, but, without him to quietly patch the system, the park's security is left off, leaving the electrified fences deactivated. Without the barriers to contain them, dinosaurs begin to escape. The adult Tyrannosaurus rex attacks the guests on tour, destroying the vehicles, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park. During the attack, Ed Regis runs and hides from the adult Tyrannosaur. He falls down a hillside and is eventually killed by the juvenile Tyrannosaurus.
Ian Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident but is soon found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, in between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive.
The park's upper management — engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond — struggle to return power to the park, while the veterinarian, Dr. Harding, takes care of the very injured Malcolm. For a time they manage to get the park largely back in order. But a series of errors on their part plunge the park into greater disarray. The viciously intelligent Velociraptors, referred to by characters as "raptors", finally escape. They soon kill Wu and Arnold, and injure Muldoon, Gennaro, and Harding. Finally, Grant and the children slowly make their way back to the central compound, carrying news that several young raptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were on board the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland.
Grant is then able to turn the power back on, while Ellie distracts the Velociraptors so that they won't get to him. After escaping from several Velociraptors, Grant, Gennaro, Tim, and Lex are able to make it to the control room, where Tim is able to contact the Anne B and tell them to return. The survivors are then able to organize themselves and eventually secure their own lives. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B has discovered and killed the raptor stowaways.
Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset, but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island, they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Finally Grant, Sattler, Muldoon, and Gennaro set out into the park to find the wild raptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious in this pursuit, they emerge unharmed. Meanwhile, Hammond, while taking a walk around the park, decides to salvage and restore the park to its original state, but gets injured, then killed and eaten by a pack of compys. Concerning the dinosaurs' breeding, it is eventually revealed that the frog DNA used to fill gaps in certain strands enabled some of the dinosaurs to change sex, as some species of frogs can do.
In the end the island is suddenly and violently razed by the fictional Costa Rican Air Force (in reality, Costa Rica has no air force, nor any armed forces). It is stated that Malcolm dies and his burial is not permitted (although he is retconned to have survived in the sequel The Lost World). Survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Guitierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica, and has found a Procompsognathus corpse. Guitierrez informs Grants that an unknown pack of animals has been eating crops rich in lysine (the molecule the animals were designed to be deficient in) and killing livestock as they migrate toward the Costa Rican jungle. He also informs Grant that none of them, with the possible exception of Tim and Lex, are going to be leaving any time soon.
Characters
- Dr\ant- Paleontologist who participated in the test run of Jurassic Park. John Hammond convinces Grant and his coworker Dr. Ellie Sattler to take a tour of this preserve and later to endorse the park itself. Grant found himself becoming the father figure and hero for Lex and Tim. He developed a better understanding, not just of children, but also of the consequences of interfering with nature.
- Dr. Elizabeth "Ellie" Sattler- She is Dr. Alan Grant's graduate student, and joined him on the tour of InGen's dinosaur preserve. She is engaged to a doctor.
- Ian Malcolm- Mathamatician who participated in the testing of Jurassic Park. He specializes in the study of the chaos theory and refers to himself as a "chaotician". Malcolm is John Hammond's primary critic, accurately predicting the instability of Hammond's creation. Malcolm is seriously injured in the first book, and is even presumed dead - but in the second book, The Lost World, he returns alive, but crippled. Malcolm is an eccentric character who dresses entirely in black; he is described as having the mannerisms of a rock star in the original Jurassic Park, but is sobered by his experiences there and returns as a more measured man in The Lost World.
- John Hammond- Hammond is the creator of Jurassic Park and founder of InGen. He is likened to Walt Disney and his Disneyland. He is depicted as a mean-spirited CEO, solely interested in profit and (fatally) lacking interest in the technicalities of genetic engineering. Hammond is killed by compys; therefore, he does not appear in the novel The Lost World.
- Lewis Dodgson- A Biosyn agent, He plays a much larger role in the second book, The Lost World. He was seen breifly in a meeting with Dennis Nedry. Dodgson's name was created from the combination of a famous Victorian author's pen name (Lewis Carroll) and his real last name (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson).
- John Arnold- Arnold, ran the main control center from within the visitor's center. After Dennis Nedry turned off the power to the park, Arnold volunteered to go outside and restore it, subsequently falling prey to a Velociraptor.
- Robert Muldoon- Hammond's alcoholic game warden from his nature reserve in Kenya. Muldoon was in charge of guarding the Velociraptors before they escaped from their cage. Muldoon survives and leaves the island after having shot many dinosaurs with a rocket launcher, putting a "needle" (tranquilizer dart)into the larger of the two t-rexs which eventually caused it's death by drowning, burying Ed Regis' remains, and locating Dennis Nedry's half-eaten corpse.
- Dennis Nedry- Nedry worked for John Hammond and was in charge of networking Jurassic Park's computers. Nedry didn't know what InGen was actually doing, and was ordered to program without many details. Eventually Lewis Dodgson found out that Nedry was in discomfort and offers him $750,000 to steal the dinosaur embyros. Nedry is poisoned and subsequently killed by a Dilophosaurus.
- Henry Wu- Wu was the chief geneticist in Jurassic Park and head of the team that created the dinosaurs. He proposes genetically altering further Saurian creations to make them more manageable, something that Hammond opposes. Eventually he is killed by Velociraptors.
- Ed Regis- A Public Relations manager for InGen who was present during Dr. Grant's visit to the park, and acted as a tour guide. He was killed by a juvenille T-Rex.
- Donald Gennaro- Gennaro was the lawyer that accompanied the first group to Isla Nublar. Gennaro survives, but is mentioned as having died of dysentery sometime in between the first novel and its sequel, The Lost World. He is physically fit, young, intelligent and occasionally brave.
- Lex Murphy- Lex is Tim Murphy's younger sister and John Hammond's granddaughter. She is a sporty young girl who loves baseball and is relatively outgoing.
- Tim Murphy- Tim is Lex's older brother and John Hammond's grandson. He is very intelligent for his age and is easily annoyed by his younger sister.
- Gerry Harding- Jurassic Park's chief veterinarian. It is not made clear whether he is related to Sarah Harding but there are several hints. Michael Crichton himself later revealed that this was the case.
- Marty Guitierrez- A doctor from the United States who moved to Costa Rica to practice. He is the one who identifies the compys and at the end tells Grant that some dinosaurs may have escaped.
Dinosaurs
The following dinosaurs were featured in Jurassic Park.
- Apatosaurus( Camarasaurus in some editions )
- Tyrannosaurus rex
- Velociraptor
- Othnielia
- Microceratops (Callovosaurus in some editions)
- Cearadactylus
- Dilophosaurus
- Compsognathus (Called Procompsognathus in the book)
- Styracosaurus
- Stegosaurus
- Euplocephalus
- Hypsilophodon
- Maiasaura
- Parasaurolophus
- Hadrosaurus
- Triceratops