Tuesday, July 17, 2018

The Lost World Audible Audiobook – Unabridged Michael Crichton (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator), Books on Tape (Publisher) (Books on Tape)



Here's how to write a Michael Crichton best seller in five easy steps: 
Text:

1. Pick a hot-button subject like genetic engineering ("Jurassic Park"), sexual harassment ("Disclosure") or Japan's threat to America ("Rising Sun") and use it to lend your novel a glossy veneer of topicality.

2. Cast the novel with some really detestable villains (like the lying, scheming, man-eating Meredith Johnson in "Disclosure") and some really nice, appealing heroes (like Meredith's poor, well-meaning victim, Tom Sanders) so inattentive readers will automatically know whom to root for.

3. End each chapter on a scary, cliff-hanging note to make sure that readers will keep reading, regardless of the characters' vapidity.

4. Include lots of frantic chase scenes or race-against-the-clock scenes that will translate graphically to the screen.

5. Put plenty of technical, pseudo-specialist talk (about computers, medicine, biology or chaos theory) into your characters' mouths to give readers the illusion that they're learning something as they quickly flip the pages.

Certainly Mr. Crichton's latest book, "The Lost World," fulfills all these criteria. It should, after all, as it's basically a retelling of his tried-and-true 1990 best seller, "Jurassic Park," and more or less an outline for what will surely be the movie sequel.

The central hero of "The Lost World," improbably enough, is Ian Malcolm, the cynical chaos theorist Mr. Crichton impetuously killed off in the book version of "Jurassic Park." Mr. Crichton makes no attempt to explain the scientist's mysterious reappearance in this book, though it's safe to say that Malcolm's resurrection probably has less to do with DNA recovery and cloning experiments (the process that brought the dinosaurs back from extinction in "Jurassic Park"), than with the simple demands of making and casting a movie sequel.

Now, Malcolm is not only back, but also headed right to the area where the trouble with the genetically cloned dinosaurs began in the first place. In the opening chapters of "The Lost World," we learn that Jurassic Park has been destroyed, that the story of people being killed by dinosaurs has been hushed up and that InGen, the company behind the dinosaur cloning, has gone bust. One of Malcolm's colleagues, a wealthy paleobiologist by the name of Richard Levine, however, has heard rumors that remnants of the dinosaur project survive on a nearby island, and he decides to organize a search party for this "lost world."

Although Malcolm tries to deny all prior knowledge of Jurassic Park, he allows himself to be drawn into Levine's plans. Rounding out their team are Jack Thorne, a former professor of applied engineering who has outfitted Levine with all sorts of high-tech gadgets; Sarah Harding, Malcolm's former girlfriend, who happens to be an expert on animal behavior, and two children, Arby and Kelly, who stow away on the trip. In other words, a virtual reconstitution of the team of good guys who starred in "Jurassic Park."

Pitted against Malcolm and company is the evil Lewis Dodgson, who started all the trouble in "Jurassic Park" by paying one of the park's employees to steal some dinosaur embryos. Dodgson is still eager to get his hands on some dinosaur babies: unlike the good guys who want to study the dinosaurs for the advancement of science, Dodgson regards them as a simple product that can make him rich. He and his weaselly underlings also set off to find the lost world of the dinosaurs.

Having set up this basic mise en scene, Mr. Crichton proceeds to give the reader a tired rehash of "Jurassic Park," one so predictable and unimaginative that it seems to have been intended to save special-effects technicians the hassle of doing new work on the movie sequel. Once again, we see a hungry tyrannosaur snack on one of the bad guys. Once again, we see some voracious velociraptors chase the good guys around. And once again, we see the good guys escape, thanks to the savvy of the children. As in "Jurassic Park," there are lots of scenes of dinosaurs romping about a scenic island and lots of scenes of man's technology succumbing to the raw force of nature. All, needless to say, without the surprise or ingenuity that made "Jurassic Park" entertaining the first time around.

Mr. Crichton has never exactly been known for his attention to character, and "The Lost World" must surely represent a new low in this area. Take, for instance, Ian Malcolm, who was played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie. Except for complaining about the injuries he suffered in "Jurassic Park," Malcolm makes virtually no reference to his previous visit to dino-land: we are not even given any insight into his feelings about returning to the place where he (nearly) died. Given Malcolm's irreverence, it seems hard to believe that he would abide by "nondisclosure agreements" with InGen or the Costa Rican Government, or that he would feel indebted by InGen's payment of his medical bills. Had he -- or Lewis Dodgson, for that matter -- really needed to make money, they could have simply written a book about their experiences in Jurassic Park, gone on the talk-show circuit and made a fortune.

Instead of even making a half-hearted attempt to turn Malcolm into a reasonable facsimile of a person, Mr. Crichton cynically uses him as a mouthpiece for all sorts of portentous techno-babble about chaos theory, extinction theories and mankind's destructive nature. As for the other characters, they are each given handy labels for easy identification. We know that Sarah is a feminist because she's less afraid of the dinosaurs than the men are. We know that Arby and Kelly are resourceful children because they're better at using computers than the adults are. And we know that Dodgson is an evil opportunist because he goes to a dinosaur nest and tries to steal eggs belonging to a loving pair of tyrannosaurs.

In the past, Mr. Crichton has been credited with inventing the "techno-thriller," a term given new meaning by "The Lost World": namely, a novel with lots of technology, lots of technical talk and not one recognizable human being.

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