A little update before I get into the book: I’m still working on the retrospective post I was going to make today. I got a little carried away reading and commenting on your own work is hard. I’ll have it done by tomorrow, but for today, please enjoy my first impressions of Jurassic Park.

I’ve read about four chapters and I love this book already. Crichton’s style is straightforward and easy to read quickly, but also chock full of pertinent details. In the introduction he builds suspense by giving a brief overview of the progress of the genetic engineering industry, highlighting the ways in which it will change the face of the Earth, and also the ways in which it has changed us. Science has become industrialized, profit driven, and every geneticist is in on it. Without anyone interested in the science for science’ sake, there’s nobody left to keep it in check. He uses this overview to introduce several fictitious companies, though much of the intro is also factual information. At the end of the intro, he reveals that InGen, one of the fictitious companies, had a shocking incident off the coast of Costa Rica that went largely unnoticed by the public, directly caused by the corruption of the genetic engineering industry.

Crichton uses third person, and so far, has done lots of head hopping between chapters. He purposefully keeps the big dinos ‘off-screen,’ but doesn’t shy away from showing you the results of human encounters, even in the very first scene. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll remember the intro scene where the raptor in the cage gets ahold of one of the workers. There are a couple of similar scenes that setup the same kind of suspense. The chapters are short and punchy to start with, giving you the perspective of (I think) minor characters, victims of the attacks, without revealing too much about the dinos themselves. I love how he uses this head hopping to show the scale of the spreading corruption of the genetic engineering industry through just a couple of widely dispersed scenes. He utilizes them so well in fact, that I was hooked immediately, and I already want to know how it ends.

The initial dino attacks set up such a powerful, lingering dread in the reader as Alan Grant and Ellie Satler happily accept an invitation to a new resort right off the coast of Costa Rica …

This is easily one of the most gripping introductions I’ve ever read. I’m really going to have to dig into how he does this because I would love to be able to do it myself, and he makes it seem so simple! I’ve barely started on this book and I already know I won’t be able to put it down. I’ll probably have the full review out sooner than later.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley