Brilliant example of the 1980s-90s popular techno thriller fiction. Jurassic Park is a tech novel. So many issues it touches on are issues in the biotech industry even now over 30 years later. 

I’ve seen Jurassic Park the movie a few times over the years, so I couldn’t help but compare the movie & the novel as I read along. Now, having seen the movie first, & thus having had no reflex to say “book is better” I can safely say that the book is better. The action is much more twisty-turny than in the movie; there's a lot more moving parts & I can totally see why the movie simplified the plot. 

The description of the fictional InGen & Hammond sounded like it was copied by Theranos & Holmes in real life. I really enjoyed the Hammond character a lot more than the one from the movie. He really is the villain of the story & the movie's changing the antagonist role from him to Newman + the dinosaurs themselves kind of mirrors Hammond's effort in the book to create a family theme park out of genetically engineered dinosaurs. Casting Wayne Knight as Nedry was inspired. He was one of the few characters in the movie who really matched their depictions from the book (Although, when my parents saw the movie in a Marin County theater back in the 90s, Nedry’s appearance on the screen was greeted by murmurs of “Newman!” from throughout the audience). Of course, the characterization was kind of a secondary concern in this story, where the main focus was the dangers of unregulated biotech, capitalism, neocolonialism, & cloned dinosaurs. 

The "White Hunter" Muldoon wanting to be armed with LAW missiles (presumably the M72 LAW?) makes me think of Tremors, the (real-life) Emu War, & the general plausibility of use of military weapons against fictional megafauna. According to Dr. Wu, Muldoon and others are concerned that the Dinosaurs are "too fast" or quick to be controlled in the event they get loose on the island for the tranquilizer guns, tazers, etc to handle. The idea of using what's essentially a bazooka to hit a speeding dinosaur is hilarious! It makes me think of the survivalist character in Tremors getting all tricked out with anti-tank weaponry for Tremors 2 but then declaring that if he had been provided with more relevant information, he would have chosen weapons that are "fully automatic, preferably belt-fed!" 

I wondered which military arrives at the end to rescue everybody. Costa Rica, where Jurassic Park is set, famously has no military, and has possessed no armed aircraft since at least 1948. The soldiers didn’t seem to be characterized as American, so I like to imagine they were rescued by the Sandinistas, or maybe Manuel Noriega sent some helicopters to help the Costa Ricans shortly before being deposed by George Bush. Either way, the movie should have ended with some exploding jungle footage reused from Apocalypse Now. 

Can’t wait to read the Lost World!