The Lost World (Jurassic Park, #2)

by Michael Crichton

“What I wish to propose is that complex animals become extinct not because of a change in their physical adaptation to their environment, but because of their behavior.

Malcolm had, in fact, been reported dead in several newscasts. “I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country,” he later said, “but it turned out I was only slightly dead.

lol

complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call ‘the edge of chaos.’ We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy.

“You’re talking about a Lost World,” Malcolm said, and heads in the room nodded knowingly. Scientists at the Institute had developed a shorthand for referring to common evolutionary scenarios. They spoke of the Field of Bullets, the Gambler’s Ruin, the Game of Life, the Lost World, the Red Queen, and Black Noise. These were well-defined ways of thinking about evolution. But they were all—

badass names

The two men started down the sloping hillside, away from the cliff. Almost immediately, their clothes were soaked from the wet foliage. They had no views; they were surrounded on all sides by dense jungle, and could see only a few yards ahead. The fronds of the ferns were enormous, as long and broad as a man’s body, the plants twenty feet tall, with rough spiky stalks. And high above the ferns, a great canopy of trees blocked most of the sunlight. They moved in darkness, silently, on damp, spongy earth.

Levine’s two-bedroom apartment was decorated in a vaguely Asian style, with rich wooden cabinets, and expensive antiques. But the apartment was spotlessly clean, and most of the antiques were housed in plastic cases. Everything was neatly labeled. They walked slowly into the room. “Does he live here?” Kelly said. She found it hard to believe. The apartment seemed so impersonal to her, almost inhuman. And her own apartment was such a mess all the time.… “Yeah, he does,” Thorne said, pocketing the key. “It always looks like this. It’s why he can never live with a woman. He can’t stand to have anybody touch anything.”

noting for fanfic purposes… I MEANNNN

In an increasingly urban world of concrete skyscrapers, wild animals were romanticized, classified as noble or ignoble, heroes or villains. And in this media-driven world, hyenas were simply not photogenic enough to be admirable. Long since cast as the laughing villains of the African plain, they were hardly thought worth a systematic study until Harding had begun her own research.

Unless we have a genuinely created animal. Consider—an animal that is extinct, and is brought back to life, is for all practical purposes not an animal at all. It can’t have any rights. It’s already extinct. So if it exists, it can only be something we have made. We made it, we patent it, we own it. And it is a perfect research testbed.

these animals are totally exploitable. We can do anything we want with them.”

“Why would anyone ever come here?” he said. Malcolm, leaning on his cane, smiled. “To get away from it all, Eddie. Don’t you ever want to get away from it all?”

The lobby was small and unimpressive. A reception counter directly ahead was once covered with gray fabric, now overgrown with a dark, lichen-like growth. On the wall behind was a row of chrome letters that said “We Make The Future,” but the words were obscured by a tangle of vines. Mushrooms and fungi sprouted from the carpet.

“You’d need the whole strand.” “That’s right,” Malcolm said. “And the man who figured out how to get it was a venture capitalist named John Hammond. He reasoned that, when dinosaurs were alive, insects probably bit them, and sucked their blood, just as insects do today. And some of those insects would afterward land on a branch, and be trapped in sticky sap. And some of that sap would harden into amber. Hammond decided that, if you drilled into insects preserved in amber, and extracted the stomach contents, you would eventually get some dino-DNA.” “And did he?” “Yes. He did. And he started InGen, to develop this discovery. Hammond was a hustler, and his true talent was raising money. He figured out how to

“So he decided to make a tourist attraction. He planned to recover the cost of the dinosaurs by putting them in a kind of zoo or theme park, where he would charge admission.”

“This island,” Malcolm said, “is Hammond’s dirty little secret. It’s the dark side of his park.”

So in fact, Hammond must have been growing thousands of dinosaur embryos to get a single live birth. That implied a giant industrial operation, not the spotless little laboratory we were shown.”

“An assembly line,” he said. “But it looks untouched,

not an assembly line 😭😭😭 how are yall gonna develop new technology and then use old ass production methods 😭😭😭 no wonder you flopped

“Because,” Malcolm said, “this island presents a unique opportunity to study the greatest mystery in the history of our planet: extinction.”

“In evolutionary theory, this is called the Red Queen phenomenon,” Malcolm said. “Because in Alice in Wonderland the Red Queen tells Alice she has to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. That’s the way evolutionary spirals seem. All the organisms are evolving at a furious pace just to stay in the same balance. To stay where they are.”

But then, she reflected, Ian did have strange friends. They were always showing up unexpectedly at his apartment—the Japanese calligrapher, the Indonesian gamalan troupe, the Las Vegas juggler in a shiny bolero jacket, that weird French astrologer who thought the earth was hollow.… And then there were his mathematician friends. They were really crazy. Or so they seemed to Sarah. They were so wild-eyed, so wrapped up in their proofs. Pages and pages of proofs, sometimes hundreds of pages. It was all too abstract for her.

“It’s a small company,”

HEEEHHHHEE

There was an awkward silence. Dodgson cleared his throat. “I’m confused,” he said. “Who exactly did you tell you were coming here?” “Nobody,” she said. “I just jumped on the next plane and came.”

oh you stupid bitch

And for Levine and Malcolm, the difference in their approach had surfaced early, back in the Santa Fe days. Both men were interested in extinction, but Malcolm approached the subject broadly, from a purely mathematical standpoint. His detachment, his inexorable formulas, had fascinated Levine, and the two men began an informal exchange over frequent lunches: Levine taught Malcolm paleontology; Malcolm taught Levine nonlinear mathematics. They began to draw some tentative conclusions which both found exciting. But they also began to disagree. More than once they were asked to leave the restaurant; then they would go out into the heat of Guadelupe Street, and walk back toward the river, still shouting at each other, while approaching tourists hurried to the other side of the street.

In the end, their differences came down to personalities. Malcolm considered Levine pedantic and fussy, preoccupied with petty details. Levine never saw the big picture. He never looked at the consequences of his actions. For his own part, Levine did not hesitate to call Malcolm imperious and detached, indifferent to details. “God is in the details,” Levine once reminded him. “Maybe your God,” Malcolm shot back. “Not mine. Mine is in the process.”

In the end, it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer.

He bent his head, stared down at himself. His shirt, his trousers were torn in a hundred places. Blood dribbled from a hundred tiny wounds down his clothes. He felt a wave of dizziness and put his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath, and watched his blood drip onto the leaf-strewn ground.

compys

He said, “You’re very strong.” “But still feminine,” she said, grimly.

uh... what? he nevr implied otherwise... almost seems misogynistic to write this in the first place

“I’m fine,” Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. “I’m just sad that the experiment is over. And it was such a good experiment, too. So elegant. So unique. Darwin never knew.”

Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.” “Yes? Why is that?” “Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death.

That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity.

and when she looked back down again, Arby was gone. Gone.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO

He heard them down on the ground, snarling. He heard the sharp crunch of bones. The boy had never made a sound. Cold sweat broke out all over his body.

the onl poc character? c'mon y'all IT SHOULD'VE BEEN KELLY

Then he heard Arby shout, “Back! Get back!”

OH THANK YOU GAAWD

“Order collapses in simultaneous regions. Survival is now unlikely for individuals and groups.”

“What are you doing?” Malcolm said, alarmed. “We’re getting out of here,” she said, as she moved to the door. Malcolm sighed. “It’s so nice to have a man around the house,” he said.

LMFAOOOOOO

“What are they?” she asked. “Chameleons of unparalleled skill, obviously. Although I’m not sure one is entirely justified in referring to them as chameleons, since technically chameleons have only the ability—” “What are they?” Sarah said impatiently. “Actually, I’d say they’re Carnotaurus sastrei. Type specimen’s from Patagonia. Three meters in height, with distinctive heads—you notice the short, bulldog snouts, and the pair of large horns above the eyes? Almost like wings—”

“How is Arby?” he asked. “He’ll be okay.” “Does he need any morphine?” Malcolm asked. “No, I don’t think so.” “Good,” Malcolm said. He stretched out his arm, rolling up the sleeve.

LMFAOOOO he's gonna be so out of it

“All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.”

The third came right alongside his face, and with a single snap bit into his cheek. Dodgson howled. He saw the baby eating the flesh of his own face. His blood was dripping down its jaws. The baby threw its head back and swallowed the cheek, and then turned, opened its jaws again, and closed over Dodgson’s neck.

PURRRRRRR YUMMY

“Prions,” Harding said, “are the simplest disease-causing entities known, even simpler than viruses. They’re just protein fragments. They’re so simple, they can’t even invade a body—they have to be passively ingested. But once eaten, they cause disease: scrapie, in sheep; mad-cow disease; and kuru, a brain disease in human beings. And the dinosaurs developed a prion-disease called DX, from a bad batch of sheep protein extract. The lab battled it for years, trying to get rid of it.”

“Human beings are so destructive,” Malcolm said. “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”