Christopher’s Reviews > Jurassic Park > Status Update

There's a section where Arnold and Gennaro are discussing the Malcolm Effect. I don't know if it continues beyond page 248, but Arnold basically says Malcolm and his chaos theory are wrong, but doesn't spell out why it's wrong. In fact his argument--I think he's saying living systems contradict chaos theory--is a pretty good case for why chaos theory is correct here. Living systems are inherently chaotic.

Hammond and Wu taking about Malcolm and how Malcolm is a negative element in this tour because of his skepticism. He was an early critic of the project, so why was he even invited? Did Hammond assume the park was so good that it would convince him? Kind of an idiot plot device.

The mistaken gender pronouns are getting annoying. The book spent some time earlier saying the dinosaurs are all females so breeding can be strictly avoided. But then using he/him/his pronouns are somehow excused. I'm now at the point where they are trying to see the T.Rexes, but they're being addressed as he/him/his. I think it would have made more sense to get it right and refer to females properly.

This is the part where the visitors are shown a presentation of the island. It's followed up for some reason with a discussion of infant mortality on Costa Rica, theorizing that dinosaurs have a causal relationship. Very strange part that strikes me as lazy. Crichton is capable of better. Infant mortality has many possible reasons. Pointing to dinosaur activity is nonsense.

Haven't read Crichton in a long time. He still has quite a flair for morphing science fiction and reality and making them one. His dialoguing is still kind of wooden at this point, too. It is lot of fun to read.

All of a sudden I'm getting a good idea of why a number of friends and family have vacationed in Costa Rica in the last thirty years. Michael Crichton made Costa Rica a popular destination with this book, I imagine.