Reviewed by Ross Pavlac
SPOILER ALERT: this review will reveal key plot twists. Do not read this
review if you want to be surprised by the book.
Last chance -- go away if you don't want the book spoiled!
Okay, are they gone?
Good.
The big surprise of "The Lost World" is that there is no big surprise. It
suffers from all of the worst problems of sequels, greatest of all being
that it reruns the plot of the original, with the same character types as
in the original (even if some of them are allegedly different people this
time around.)
The plot is spun off by Richard Levine, a paleontologist who is associated
with Ian Malcom, the mathematician in the original story (who was obsessed
with chaos theory, as you may recall). He discovers that the original
Jurassic Park island was the showpiece for the finished products of genetic
engineering. The raw R&D work was being done on a neighboring island, and
there are indications that when everything fell apart, the island was simply
abandoned by Jurassic Park Corp., leaving a bunch of dinosaurs behind. He
goes to investigate, bringing with him only one guide and little in the way
of weapons. Within minutes, he runs into trouble and Ian Malcom and some
friends (including the obligatory child stowaways) are on their way to
rescue him. Also converging on the island are the bad guys from the earlier
book (the ones who bought the computer programmer), agents of a rival
genetic engineering firm who hope to get all kinds of freebie merchandise
without having to do R&D.
The problem of course, is that much of the merchandise is carnivorous and
hungry. And here comes the major flaw of the book, which will have many
of you screaming and flinging it against the wall. Think for a minute...if
you were about to go to a remote island and you had reason to believe that
there were one or more carnivorous dinosaurs running around loose, what
would you do? Would you go with a small group? Nooooooo. Would you go
with only a few (admittedly high powered) rifles and little in the way of
pistols and no grenades or knives? Hoo-hah! I would only go if I could be
armed to the teeth with everything in the way of implements of destruction I
could carry. But none of these dimwits do. In particular, Ian Malcom
ought to know better, as he is a survivor of the previous book -- he knows
DARN WELL what velociraptors can do! Sheesh -- even back in the days of
King Kong, they knew enough to go armed to the teeth!
If you can deal with the above, it must be admitted that Crichton is one
heck of a story teller. For those who like reading about dinosaurs and
can suspend disbelief re the dimbulbs not bringing sufficient firepower,
it's a heckuva read in terms of entertainment value. Only when you are done
will you put the book down and say,"Hey, wait just a minute...the entire
plot consisted of a buncha people getting onto the island and spending most
of the book alternating between warm and fuzzy scenes with herbivorous
dinosaurs and scenes of various characters getting eaten by carnivorous
dinosaurs! -- That was all there was!"
You may also notice that Crichton was obviously writing the book with one
hand on the keyboard preparing the film script proposal. Many scenes are
quite vivid, and done in such a way that you KNOW he had a particular
special effects scene in mind for the movie version.
Like the previous work, the science is there, but it is a pretty thin
veneer. Once again Malcom makes improper use of chaos theory, which
Crichton seems obsessed with but does not understand. Some additional
problems in re-engineering dinosaurs from DNA recovered from amber
surface as important plot elements.
The new developments in dino-engineering make an even further
mockery of the title, which was ripped off from the far better work
by Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes), which was made
into one of the finest movies of the silent era. Doyle's lost world
was a stable biosphere that was just remote and undiscovered.
Crichton's is anything but stable, particularly given his
fascination with chaos theory.
There is a fascinating discussion of evolution at one point, in which
Crichton says what few evolutionists will admit in public -- that while
evolution is ASSUMED by most scientists, no one really knows how evolution
works. Crichton cites some of the major problems in evolutionary theory --
a rare refreshing moment for such a pro-science kinda guy. They include (a)
the time problem -- chance does not have enough time to do what needs to be
done by random processes -- "Life appeared very fast." (b) coordination
problem -- in order for certain features to be useful, they must evolve
simultaneously, but the features are useless unless fully developed (e.g.,
bat ears and sound apparatus and flying). (c) Some creatures do not evolve,
although their environment has undergone dramatic change (e.g., sharks,
opossums). Despite this, Crichton will not allow certain possibilities to
be considered. One of the characters, after hearing this explanation then
asks if the development process might have been, ah, directed by some kind
of higher intelligent force (to use a euphemism.). The instant hot retort:
"That's Creationism and it's wrong. Just plain wrong." Nice to hear he's so
open-minded.
Copyright (c) 1995 by Ross Pavlac. All rights reserved.
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