“Fastest transition in the world: from human to corpse. It doesn’t do to get the two confused, or you’ll never be successful.”

33. Carnosaur – Harry Adam Knight

Before the novel Jurassic Park existed, genetically engineered dinosaurs created from a combination of not quite fossilized DNA and chicken cells (Dr. Alan Grant would be happy about that, I think, as opposed to the gender switching frog DNA) wreaked havoc upon Warchester, Cambridgeshire. They ate a number of dogs and a pony and several misogynistic assholes and one suddenly-misogynist-in-a-crisis against the love of his life reporter was on to it all. Carnosaur is very 80s and very full of jerks to women, but if you can ignore that it’s a rollicking read. To be fair, I’m not sure being rude or having weird expectations of women has changed that much in dinosaur movies, Ellie Sattler in original Jurassic Park not withstanding. I remember seeing some running away from a dinosaur in heels, which is not a pleasant idea. One thing that’s present in Carnosaur that was actually fun was the entire lack of experts present. Very few people escaped or knew what to do because, well, they’re citizens and farmers and reporters, so why would they know what to do? Get ripped to shreds or eaten, that’s the thing to do.

We’ve seen other events, like that time in Ohio when there were big cats on the highway, where private zoos go bad. Even if someone has enough money and land to take care of wild animals for their own amusement, they probably shouldn’t have them. Because, to be fair, wild animals do not exist solely for our amusement and they’re not domesticated for good reason. And if that person with enough money is also completely insane and thinks dinosaurs should be allowed to repopulate the earth and get their “real chance” because being hit by a cataclysmic asteroid wasn’t like, a real extinction, well, that’s when you get things like Carnosaur. Dude’s museum of skeletons sounded cool though. And that kid with the baby Brachiosaur was also sweet, but, he didn’t get to keep it.

 

Salem is good at camouflage and staying very still. No weird newly born dinosaur would ever find him in that coffin shaped loaf pan.