Spurred to action by an avalanche of fan letters and, of course, Spielberg's growing desire to make another Jurassic blockbuster, Crichton publishes The Lost World in 1995. As the rules of Hollywood dictate, a sequel must be made. The film - based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton - is an instant hit, garnering acclaim for its groundbreaking special effects and ultimately netting over $1 billion at the worldwide box office.

Almost two decades after the release of Jaws, legendary director Steven Spielberg once again changes the landscape of summer blockbusters with Jurassic Park. I love a good ’90s page-turner.Dateline: Summer 1993. It should come as no surprise, I guess, that the guy who invented ER knew how to weave a story. And Jurassic Park definitely did the trick. It really holds up! I read it while I was in the middle of a big move so I needed something that could keep my attention something I could pick up and put down in spare moments, something I could read when I was exhausted or distracted, something kind of gripping. But in 1990, they’re just like “Oh my gosh, this is a faxed x-ray of a real dinosaur and it’s alive and it’s real and how is this possible you can’t fake this!” In 1990, it seems – before we were so inoculated to CGI and Photoshop – we actually believed our own eyes.Īll of this happens in the first 50 pages or so…because after about 50 pages I forgot to pay attention to the old school tech and just got caught up in the story. Now in 2015, it would be so easy to dismiss something like that as an obvious hoax, someone just pulling a prank. The fax is an x-ray of what appears to be a small dinosaur a dinosaur, of course, that has been extinct for…kind of a long time. There’s another pivotal scene early in the book where they make decisions all based on a fax. If you wanted to know what something meant, you not only had to lug out a big ol’ paper dictionary…you kind of had to know what you were looking for in the first place. So later that night a nurse starts flipping through dictionaries…because in those ancient days there was no Google.

He has some bizarre, inexplicable wounds and before he dies, all he says is “raptor.” No one knows what it means…they don’t know if it’s Spanish or English or what. There’s this scene at the beginning of the book where an injured man is brought into a small clinic late one night in Costa Rica. I also noticed everyone saying “the computer age” with bizarre frequency. There is a lot of talk about cloning and super computers. Jurassic Park is full of fax machines and tape recorders and, the height of entertainment: the Walkman. One of the best things about reading a book written in 1990 is the technology.

Jurassic park novel