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(More customer reviews)Although all three of the "Jurassic Park" movies were visually spectacular, and although Crichton's "Lost World" followup was a good novel, in my opinion you have to go here, to the original "Jurassic Park" novel, to experience the true greatness of this story.
Probably just about everybody knows the basic premise - scientists clone dinosaurs to create a massive theme park on a tropical island, and everything goes terribly awry. What may have been forgotten in the years since its initial release is that this is one of the most thrilling, imagination-igniting, adventurous and frighteningly Believable (an aspect which didn't quite make it through to the film versions; most of the ethical questions, pro and con, also struggled to be heard in the movies) novels ever written. In quoting early on actual tinkerings with the biological makeup of living things for man's scientific curiosity and potential profit, the book made it seem not only plausible that this could happen, but that, if this was in Any Way possible that it could happen, that someday, somehow, somebody is actually going to go and do something like this. Not necesarily a dinosaur theme park (although who knows?) but some kind of cloning/genetic engineering scheme on this gargantuan scale. And this book was written Before humanity started cloning sheep, cats, dogs and whatever else strikes its fancy (with huge rates of failure in terms of deformities and early deaths that just get swept under the rug), before the longtime specter of genetically engineering 'designer children' started to become feasible, and, if I have my dates right, before it was known that if somebody wanted to go ahead and attempt this we don't even need to go through amber-trapped insects for prehistoric DNA; we already have reasonably well-preserved, non-fossilized dinosaur marrow. And the scientific community has been openly talking for years now about cloning mammoths from fresh specimens that were frozen in the last ice age.
To get off the subject of the book's plausibility and its connection to current real-life states of affairs in ethical and scientific circumstances, and get back to the book's own merits, this is one of Crichton's alltime gems. Vivid desciptions of everything that make you feel like you're there, deeper and better characterization than in some of his earlier works, and some of the most amazing chase scenes and 'first appearance' of the monster' type scenes ever written, with more implied 'what if's and (that the author wisely doesn't than you can shake a Sauropod tail at. It's also worth noting that not all of the dinosaurs are ferocious; some are non-threatening, even charmingly oafish.
Captivating from the get-go; hand a copy of this to a person who's never willingly (that means school assignments excluded) read a full novel and you might get a book-lover for life. Other recommended Crichton titles: "The Andromeda Strain", "Sphere" and especially "Congo" (his other crowning achievement). Also recommended in the dinosaur novel genre: "Raptor Red" by Robert T. Bakker, taking place in the Cretaceous. "Balook" by Piers Anthony is another great book, involving prehistoric mammals instead of dinosaurs, and offering one of the few reasonable theoretical arguements in favor of cloning I've ever encountered.
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