The Side Quest Book Club Podcast

In this episode of The Side Quest Book Club Podcast, hosts Slava and Jonathan dive into Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton. They explore the novel’s core themes—hubris, chaos theory, and the illusion of control in science—while unpacking its character development and layered storytelling. The discussion also covers Crichton’s background, the lasting success of the Jurassic Park franchise, and the narrative techniques that make the book a defining classic of modern science fiction.

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(00:00) Jurassic Park — Episode Introduction
(02:59) Michael Crichton: Author Background
(05:53) Jurassic Park Premise Overview
(09:00) Franchise Success & Cultural Impact
(11:47) Nostalgia Factor & Lasting Appeal
(14:48) Key Characters & Core Themes
(17:50) Foreshadowing & Story Setup
(20:46) Technology, Ethics & Science
(23:35) Final Thoughts on the Opening Chapters
(29:24) “The Taste of Survival” Breakdown
(29:57) Narrative Perspective Choices
(32:40) Character Depth & Reader Engagement
(34:53) Subplots & Plot Structure
(38:31) The Illusion of Control in Jurassic Park
(50:35) Chaos Theory & Consequences

Creators and Guests

Host
Jonathan
Host
Slava
Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

SLAVA (00:00.75)
coming to you from the endless library, where every book is read and every spoiler discussed. Join us as we dig into the lives of fictional people who cannot defend themselves.

Before the dinosaurs escaped, before the chaos began, Crichton had to build the park. And today we're digging into how he did that. To quote the book or the movie or both, your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think whether they should. I think I'm getting the quote a little wrong, but that's where we're at today on Jurassic Park. Part one, Slava, give us a rundown of author and plot. Let's get into it.

In summary, Jurassic Park is a science fiction thriller novel written by Michael Crichton. It was first published in 1990 and it chronicles a story of an eccentric genetic CEO who builds an amusement park containing live dinosaurs cloned from ancient DNA. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing. The book was followed by a sequel in 1995, The Lost World. Jurassic Park

has been adapted into one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. There's like the IP is great like there's a movie coming out or came out just now People are shitting on it, but there's a movie out 17 years after his death. Yeah, of course. It's the Internet

That surprises me. Really? Yeah.

JONATHAN (01:17.848)
People shit on everything.

Just that it's one of the most, like, I guess I don't know what that phrase means. Is it like compared to like 10 other IPs? Is it three? Is it top three? So sorry, keep going.

Well, the first movie it released in 93 and then the entire franchise go into 22. That's grossed over 5 billion worldwide. And there's a new movie that just came out as the recording of this episode. Jump change. 5 billion. It's not as big as Avatar or Titanic, but for what it is, it is a successful franchise. When people say of all time, meaning there is a scale for that, right? They're in that scale.

There's probably 10, 20, 50 movies compared to the hundreds and thousands or even hundreds of thousands that come out. There's some that stand out, stand apart. So I think that's what that means. That's what it means to me for sure. But it's a successful franchise. There's a movie that's coming out and what we're going to be covering it's the audio book version and the 2015 mass market edition of the novel by Ballantine books. So for those who are reading.

or have read those are the versions we were using. The author of this book, as already mentioned, is Michael Creighton. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College and received his MD from Harvard Medical School. And for those who care about this kind of stuff and are nerds, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, researching public policy. So his works are not just pulled out of thin air.

SLAVA (02:59.406)
They're definitely fiction, but I think he's writing them to not only tell a story, but going to share his views with the world. He had an immense interest in computer modeling that went back for years before writing Jurassic Park. He also has done multiple discriminant analysis of Egyptian crania carried out on an IBM 7090 computer at Harvard. So he has studied this stuff.

intensely. Crichton's first bestseller, The Andromeda Strain, was published when he was still a medical student. He later worked full-time on film and writing and has become one of the most popular writers in the world, selling over 200 million books. And his books have been translated into 38 languages. When he talked about Jurassic Park, this is in his own words, he said, I wrote a screenplay about cloning up pterodactyl

fossil DNA in 1983. But the story wasn't convincing. I worked on it for several years, trying to make it more credible. Finally, I decided on a theme park setting and wrote a novel from the point of view of a young boy who was present when the dinosaur escaped. I sent the book to the usual people who read my first draft. Over the years, I've come to rely on five or six people who read my drafts. They were all in agreement. They hated Jurassic Park. I got angry reactions such as

Why would you write a book like this? But when I asked them to explain exactly why they hated it, they couldn't put their finger on it. They just hated it. Hated every bit of it. I wrote another draft. They hated that one too. Just the strongest one before. Whatever I had done in latest draft, it hadn't helped. I wrote another draft, but the results remained the same. Finally, one of the readers said that they were irritated with the story because they wanted it from the POV of an adult.

not a kid point of view. said, I want to be in this story. So I rewrote it as an adult story. And then everybody liked it. That's where we got Jurassic Park from. But the summary of the Jurassic Park, introduces its premise with a warning about the corruption of modern science. It is unchecked based on profit and unparalleled in human history in its achievements. Molecular biology is particularly dangerous and profitable field.

SLAVA (05:26.732)
which has seen massive growth in recent years. This is kind of in-world summary. is not necessarily what's happening in the real world, but to some degree it could be. In an attempt to get ahead of its rivals, InGen, a company run by the eccentric John Hammond, fools investors into funding the creation of an amusement park containing real live dinosaurs. So right from the beginning in the opening scene, there's a man who has been violently attacked.

He is rushed from a helicopter to the local medical clinic in Costa Rica. I-Gen employee Ed Regis gets off the plane with the injured victim but refuses to admit he was attacked by dinosaurs. The victim vomits blood, has a seizure, dying on the floor of the clinic. This scene foreshadows the horrors to come. A few days later, reports emerge about lizards attacking infants in their cribs, but they are no ordinary lizards, and the symptoms that result from their bites are severe. The lizards

are never officially connected to the park, but it is heavily implied that they originated there and are in dinosaurs. also have Dr. Grant, a paleontologist, and Ellie Sattler, another paleontologist. They are on an expedition in North Montana when they receive a visit from John Hammond. He requests they come and see his marvelous park, assuring them they will appreciate what he had created. He also summons

Ian Malcolm, a mathematician who specializes in chaos theory and believes the park is destined to fall into ruin. He invites his grandchildren and other various characters who will meet along the way. The visitors arrive and begin the tour enthralled by the dinosaurs they see. Nedry is a rogue employee who forces a power shutdown in the park so he can steal and sell some dinosaur embryos. With the power in the park shut down, the electric track powered Land Cruisers become stuck

on the track outside the T-Rex enclosure. Meanwhile, Sattler is with Harding following some small dinosaurs in the gas-powered Jeep. They hear Muldoon, one of the park employees, on the radio asking for the vehicle to return to the lodge. Muldoon takes Gernaro, another character she'll meet, and goes out looking for survivors, but only finds Malcolm. Malcolm's theory, called the Malcolm Effect, is coming true before their eyes. KS.

SLAVA (07:49.418)
is inevitable. Grant and the children have heard disasters several times, including a stampede, herds of carnivores, engaged in mating rituals. And that's going to come into play probably in the next part, because they're supposed to be girl dinosaurs, but somehow more dinosaurs are being born. Later on in the book, Grant, the children, Sattler, Muldoon and Gennaro all survived the chaos of Jurassic Park. They managed to call the mainland for help.

and helicopters arrive to take them home after they have the privilege of witnessing some of the velociraptors attempting to migrate. They watch as the Costa Rican military bombs the island, everything on it. None of them are allowed to leave the island as both Costa Rica and the US have various uses for them, so they are put in a hotel in San Jose. Several weeks later, Grant gets a visit from a mysterious American man who tells him

that there are reports of strange lizards migrating across the land. So, we are thrust into the chaotic world where, lo and behold, eccentric CEOs are causing havoc. How apropos.

So just like today's world. Yeah. So while you were reading that, I did a quick search because I wanted to know about IPs and where Jurassic Park fell because I was so surprised. I did a top 10 search, didn't hit. I did a top 25, barely squeezed in. So Jurassic Park is like 24th top IP at about 6 billion according to recent results. And it's stuck right between Game of Thrones and Naruto, the enemy.

below James Bond, but above

SLAVA (09:31.308)
Thank God for that.

I would have massive... What's the word for it? The opposite of that. If Twilight beat Jurassic Park, I would have the opposite of an orgasm.

of orgasm.

JONATHAN (09:48.014)
man, that's funny. What do you think the top three IPs are for like estimated revenue? Quick side quest here.

Marvel is one of them. Probably can be a cartoon. I would say Marvel. would say, what's that one? My goodness. I can't even think of any. I don't watch movies that often anymore. So Marvel.

is the top three. It's not just movies. It's all any sort of media franchise.

wow. You know, I'm gonna just give up on the second two. I Marvel is one of the top three. Am I right on that at least? Marvel is seventh.

tunes.

JONATHAN (10:29.368)
Top four, actually. Pokemon is number one, over 100 billion. Hello Kitty is number two, at 80 to 90 billion. Winnie the Pooh is 75 billion. Mickey Mouse and Friends is 70 billion. And the fifth one, which I'm surprised you didn't say, thinking about Marvel, Star Wars.

Goodness, yeah. My brain just went blank. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. I suppose. I'm okay with all that because I frankly don't care.

It just surprises me. You know, to your comment like, well, it's probably not a cartoon. It absolutely is a cartoon for the top three. So.

Yeah, another one I forgot that just came to me, Harry Potter. Where is that? Eleventh. Eleventh.

Mario 9th Disney Princesses 8th

SLAVA (11:16.47)
and this is just media IPs. This is not movie specific or anything. Okay, that kind of makes sense.

It's not movie specific, it's manga, anime, film, comics, book, video game, character brand is what Hello Kitty is categorized as according to this quick cursory research TV show. Scooby-Doo's 47, still staying strong.

And I suppose how you slice it up. Do you say the top 10 are what's considered successful? Do you say the top 25 are what's successful?

These are billion dollar brands. think they're all quite successful. Top 50 is still in the two billion range for the bottom one.

billion dollar brand, Avatar is 49th. The Chronicles of Rylakuma, I don't know how to say that. I'm sure it's a Japanese brand. It says animation slash brand. It's over two billion, but it's less documented and that's the 50th.

SLAVA (12:06.36)
No clue.

SLAVA (12:15.138)
Or what? Fast and the Furious.

You know, don't see that on here. Again, cursory research, not fully objective. Lord of the Rings the 17th, Toy Story 15th, Frozen 14th, Gundam 13th.

Ooh, I like that. Jurassic Park is where we're at. We're watching dinosaurs and watching them kill people. When I first read this book, I was 13 years old and it blew my little mind. I enjoyed this book immensely. I reread it twice since then and I enjoyed it still as an adult. To me, it kind of stands the test of time personally, not in any general sense.

But back to it.

JONATHAN (12:40.546)
Yes.

SLAVA (12:59.604)
So when I read it as a kid, enjoyed it. I read it probably a couple of years ago. Then I reread it for this podcast. Yeah. There's something about it that again, personally stands the test of time. There's other books like that for me, and it's probably nostalgic more than anything, but it, I know I mentioned that numerous times, Needful Things, are two King books. Crichton's The Firm, although I liked the movie better, is a parenthetical note.

Crichton's The Firm, Crichton's Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Sphere, something about these stories just continues to resonate with me.

What is it for you? What's the hook?

The hook is a simple story and you're able to immerse yourself in the world quite easily. I think what Crichton is hinting at and the vehicle he uses to tell a story is Mads Huberus will be his demise allies. And Hammond, as much as a gregarious fun grandpa he is, he's kind of an ass. He's kind of a big ass. Yeah.

Kind of? Not kind of, he just is.

SLAVA (14:04.91)
Sure, he's a big old ass of a CEO and he values probably his ego, his image and not attempting, attaining whatever he is trying to attain above those things, above everything else.

Do you feel like we got a full breakdown of what his motivation was for building the park? Cause the only thing that I can think of is he's like, I'm doing this for the kids. I'm doing this for the kids. And the mix of his hubris, right? Like because I can, I will. And then his justification was, I'm doing it for the kids. Cause he goes off on that rant. I want to say part six, sorry, I'm getting ahead of us. Or iteration six is he talks like to.

can't remember which character he's sitting with, you know, the kids are gonna love it. This is for the kids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like.

I think that's when he's talking to... what's her name? Statler?

Is it Gennaro? Maybe.

SLAVA (15:04.99)
No, I think he's talking to... what's the woman's name? Ellie. Ellie Statler. He's talking to her because they're kind of secluded away from everybody else and she's now telling him, hey, asshole, Ian was right. And I'm paraphrasing immensely what happened in that scene. But if I'm remembering it correctly, that's when he's...

They're having ice cream? Because that's the scene that I'm thinking of. But I thought it was a male character. I thought it was Gennaro. Nettori... Well, I'm getting us into iteration six, so sorry. Bring us back.

It could be a male thought it was Junaar. It could be.

SLAVA (15:40.578)
So I think to finish the answer to your question, the things I said, that's why coming back to this book, numerous times has always been enjoyable because I also agree that man's hubris will be our downfall. And the story is fun because you get to see it from an adult perspective. You get to see it a little bit from the kid's perspective. I don't know why his beta readers hated the young kid POV.

Maybe it did suck, whatever. It doesn't matter. But whatever we have now is what we have. And it's Jurassic Park from the perspective of two paleontologists, mostly, and a mathematician. And it's just a fun story. Watching the movie as a kid later when it came out, I enjoyed that too. I'm not really making any comparisons here and I won't because not the point of our episode today. For me, it's just a fun story. I enjoyed the way it's told.

I enjoy Crichton's writing. I think if we have recovered the sphere, there's better writing there. It just out pulls you into the world. It's just good writing for a popular book like mass published. It's great stuff in my opinion.

SLAVA (17:00.236)
Well, you made it this far. Why not go a step further? Rate the show. It helps more than you think.

So Slava, this is curious to me. I just kind of gave a brief overview of the top 50 IPs, know, cursory research, but there's a pattern in this top 50 as I was skimming through it. And a lot of these intellectual properties, IPs, have a start with child or teen focused content. So what's fascinating to me is that his beta readers were like, I don't want kid content. But a lot of these multi-billion dollar companies,

are kid focused IPs or start that way. And so like this idea, I think emerges, which is nostalgia fuels recurring because they start with kid stuff. buy it. get into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Scooby-Doo, Ghostbusters, whatever. Hello Kitty, right? Pokemon. And then when you're an adult, you're like, Oh, I have income now and now I'm going to go spend it. So I don't have a question here necessarily as much as it's an observation that

revenue.

JONATHAN (18:05.912)
child and teen focused content does well to create billion dollar brands.

That makes sense. And I think Spielberg's adaptation of this book did give the kids a lot more play. Well, don't think I remember it giving the kids a lot more play. It's still a story about adults building a park and then other adults telling them they're crazy. There's less background information given on the kids. They're just there, but we see them more. Yeah, here's some kids. We see them more and they get more screen time and we see.

Kids

SLAVA (18:40.194)
them maybe just because there it's a visual thing we see them more in the movie they get more play in some sense in the book they're still around with grant and there's you know a bonding that happens between the kids and grant because grant is kind of i think a little bit afraid of kids or maybe he loves kids i'm mixing the movie and the the book a little bit but the kids and grant get more play

in a different way in the book than they do in the movie.

I think that Grant in the book is more empathetic and emotional to the kids. In the movie, he strikes me as more like, kids, they're weirder than dinosaurs, to your point. But in the book, he's asking the young boy, he's like, hey, tell me about your parents. Hey, they just got divorced. Do you like the new guy? He's okay, I guess. And he's trying to connect with them as opposed to like,

Yes.

JONATHAN (19:42.348)
I don't remember seeing that in the movie.

Right, he kinda... Right, they kinda grow on him in the movie because of the situation they're put in. So they're forced to grow. Do you mean the No, the movie. Okay. They grow on him in the movie, whereas in the book, to your point, he's more empathetic to them and there's less... less that he has to overcome as he does in the movie. There's almost virtually nothing that he overcomes, he's just there.

trying to help the kids, try to save the kids and asking the questions that you alluded to.

Yeah. I don't remember this line in the movie where he talks about, I have a, I'm a widower, right? His wife died, but in the book, his wife died, which is what I think is a clear pathway where he understands the sorrow of humanity, the difficulty of life, and the forced processing that's required when change happens to you in terms of like your family dynamic, you know, losing a family member, whether it's through divorce or through death.

And so I believe it's that attachment and history that he has that gives him the opportunity again in the book to connect with the kids and not have to overcome as much in the movie or sorry in the book versus the movie.

SLAVA (21:01.934)
Yeah. How do you think the story is set up? Cause we have prologue where Dr. Roberta Carter, Bobby sits in a clinic and then all of a sudden this helicopter comes down as a downpour and they rushed this guy in and he obviously looks like he's been mauled by an animal. Sure. She knows what animal attacks look like. All that unfolds. She in the back of her mind knows something is up and then we're

quickly taken to a family on a vacation and your usual, you know, banter between husband and wife and the kid is there and the kid gets attacked and then everybody's like, it's just a lizard. Yeah, it's a foamy saliva, but something's happening to her skin. It's probably this lizard. What is it? What do they call them? The striped basilisks lizard. And everything is kind of dismissed, but you as the reader, you already know. It's about a little bit.

We know something's up.

You see it coming, but it's this little, it's not a foreshadowing of this little glimpse into how big the problem of the park is because these things not only are attacking people on the park premises, they're also attacking random little kids in houses and a kid gets attacked on a secluded beach. Yes, it is. So there's this little glimpse of Hammond has screwed up and then you see Hammond and his...

eccentricities and all the stuff that he does. Then they get to the part, you know, there's a guy betraying Hammond. So you already know something's going to happen on this idiot and he's going to cause something to exacerbate the issue. pretty quickly, the fences are down. You know, and the fecal matter hits the proverbial fan. Yeah. So how do you like the introduction?

JONATHAN (22:52.834)
The introduction is great. It sets up this book, which is a thriller. I would also say that, you know, something you've mentioned in the past is the zeitgeist lets us know about the book, even if we've never read it before. So like, this is my first read through and I know what's going to happen, right? Like you're in school, the Titanic sinks, you hear the movie came out. What do you think is going to happen at the end? Well, you know, it sinks. So really the journey is how did we get to this point? You know, so we know that there's going to be dino attacks. We know that it's going to be.

traumatic event for the characters that's going to take place. And so we read it with expectation and wonder how this came to be and things that attribute ease into the world or however you said it earlier where it's like, it's easy to get into the story and the world and believe it. I think it's the short punchy chapters. It's the sense of inevitability that Crichton creates in his prologue, right?

hey, these things are happening, the doctor's questioning, this person looks like they got mauled, they're not admitting it. We see the, you know, a kind of out of left field mise en scene where this family is going over here because we don't see them again, right? You know, hey, the wife thinks she's too fat, the husband thinks she looks great, she wanted to go somewhere else, but it was really just for plastic surgery. And then like kid gets eaten basically, and then, you know, or bit, right? And then,

And then we hear about that incident a few other times, but the family, not so much, right? So he achieves what he wants with the scene and then moves on, but it's short. It's punchy. feels cinematic. haven't gotten to rewatch Jurassic Park in a while. I wanted to do it before we recorded time didn't allow for that, but having read it now, I'm to go back and rewatch it, the original and see what the translation was like from book to movie, because I really liked Spielberg a lot.

He to me is an inspiration into why I got into filmmaking in the first place with Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His origin story too, as a quick side quest here is Spielberg walked on set, took an empty office and was just around. And he was just so immersed and ingrained with how stories are told that between the learning he had and the advice that he gave to the sets and these filmmakers,

JONATHAN (25:17.09)
by the time they realized he wasn't supposed to be there, because that wasn't his office, they were like, well, let's just hire him. Right? So I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically how he got his start, which nowadays you and I couldn't just walk on set and take an empty office. That's not going to be allowed. But this was like the seventies and eighties where time was different. Right? So to circle back to your question of like, what did I think of the prologue? I think it's a great setup. And I think that this is part of the difficulty that you and I have had in the past, maybe more me.

is when books don't set up well, I get frustrated because now it's a swog. And the question I'm always asking is like, well, what do the characters want? And for a thriller, we don't get that question answered till like mid book, in my opinion, for this book in particular. Rather, we get the setup of, there's something looming. It's this sense of inevitability, which doesn't answer the question that I've complained about in the past of, well, what do the characters want? But rather says something's going on in the world.

and it's a big problem or it's about to blow up, right? Which gets me hooked in. So.

Absolutely. Cause how Crayon introduces the reader to the foibles of, you know, advancing technology specifically here in the realm of biotechnology, he's saying something by telling the story and the nature of what is to come is foreshadowed in the prologue and in the first part, like the first iteration, right? So a family on vacation experiences a lizard attack.

whites are so severe that nobody can believe they came from dinosaurs or well forget dinosaurs. Nobody can believe they actually came from a lizard. You're like, so there's this lizard. this not, you know, somebody says, Oh, Alice Levin says, Hey, it might be a dinosaur. she's like, everybody's like, Oh, you're silly and dumb. Dinosaur don't exist. They're, they're extinct. But to build on your point, what I want to say is Creighton introduces the pieces to the mystery.

SLAVA (27:20.47)
And we kind of know the mystery in some sense. It's dinosaurs are going to run amok in this park and things are going to happen that are bad. But it's introduced or it's revealed. The introduction is already there in the title maybe, but it's revealed. The mystery is revealed gradually. And you as the reader, at least as a first time reader, you get to formulate theories about what may be happening, how it's happening.

Let me rephrase again, because we know what's happening, but how it's happening, we get to formulate theories and how he uses the fractal curve that's credited to Ian Malcolm in the book, how he uses that to show the readers every tragic detail that leads to the destruction of this park or the coming undone, like how it comes undone, the undoing of all of Hammond's

great achievements or attempted achievements. So that is fun. A quick aside for folks who don't know, in this book, a fractal is a geometric structure and it's used for modeling natural and economic phenomena. So being the guy who he is and having the education that he has, this wasn't just pulled out of his rear, right? Or he actually knows what he's doing. So using real world models,

Yeah, I can say that. Using real-world models, he puts that into the mouth of a character and uses that as a way to reveal that mystery. All the while, the reader is trying to formulate their own. And maybe that's a better answer to your original question, why the story is so appealing to me, is the way it unfolds is not only interesting, it's not only captivating all those other words.

But for the story that he's trying to tell, this is not a distant planet with warring, you know, lords and princes. This is, hey, this is Earth. It's a scientific story. It's based on, perceivably, real science. So using real world models, here fractals, that doesn't bog the reader down, it doesn't confuse the reader, but it peels back the onion to the core, and the core is a T-Rex eating a 10-year-old.

SLAVA (29:39.98)
Which doesn't happen, by the way, Fierce. That's not a spoiler. He eats other people, but not the kids.

They don't taste as good. It's more of a snack than a meal.

It's kind of like H-Stake.

Cause if you just take a butchered and slab that thing on a grill without any seasonings or anything, it's not going to taste as good as a well seasoned aged steak that has time to kind of, I forget the scientific term for it, but sit there and mature. That's not the real term for it. This is guy who likes cooking should know this, but

Yeah, he should. French laundry and all. Something that stuck out to me with the book is so the, the narration is written third person limited with a rotating perspective. And the more that we read, the more that I prefer the rotating perspective. And I actually think that there's evidence though I couldn't present any to you currently that many readers like the rotating perspective.

JONATHAN (30:43.276)
Because I feel like more and more of these style narrations come to be because we're going, I'm seeing Legolas's perspective. I'm seeing Aragon's perspective. I'm seeing Frodo's. And we go, this is like a full picture of the story itself happening from different people who are suffering from different aspects, but they still are trying to overcome the same thing. In Jurassic Park here, it's we're trying to survive, right?

And I guess I'm kind of having an epiphany here. You've razzed on me before, like, well, the characters are trying to survive. It's like, that's great. It's not enough for me. But in this book, it's more than enough. It's interesting. And I think it's the rotating perspective. What was the book we read recently that had the survival stuff that I complained a little bit about? Apocalypse. Right. No rotating perspective.

No, no, no, no, no, The girl with all the gifts.

Girl with all the gifts. No rotating perspective. Not really. We have four characters, and I guess that's not fair because it does rotate to the perspectives.

Yeah, and then you get what you wanted in that second half of the book. first half of the book you were complaining about because you didn't get that. You don't get, at least in Jonathan's estimation, you don't get...

JONATHAN (32:05.08)
What do the characters want besides survival? Yeah. And, you know, maybe picking apart my argument here a little bit, it's not just what do they want besides survival because these people wanted the same thing, right? I think it's that the characters were flat compared to something like Crichton's characters, where like the kids, parents are going through divorce. You know, we learned that Grant was it? Trying to remember. Yeah, Grant, his, his wife died, right? We know that Hammond is this basic billionaire.

What do they want? Yeah.

JONATHAN (32:33.102)
who wanted to make this park for the kids. And I couldn't tell you, but this is kind of where SideQuest came from as a show. It's like, well, how do we pick apart stories in a way that makes them interesting? Well, what if we just try to understand them better? And so we've got Girl with All the Gifts and we've got Jurassic Park and they're both survival stories, but I like one more than the other. And maybe if you have questions for me about this.

It'll help me kind of like pick it apart and then maybe the audience will be able to walk through it too. Or if you can identify it without me having to pick it apart of like, why do you think that I was more engaged with Jurassic Park than with Girl with all the Gifts? If they're both survival stories and thrillers.

I think there's more happening in Jurassic Park. What you just said, divorce, dead wife. In part two, chapter eight, called airport, Dodson, who is a competitor or works for a competitor, finds a Igen employee who's able to be turned into a trader and they meet him in an airport. It's this movie ass kind of scene. He's handed, you know, a shaving cream bottle that's as a fake insert inside and

briefcase of

cash yeah briefcase of cash the man assures Dotson that's not a problem he's ready to go he's gonna give him the embryos the embryos are gonna be fifty thousand dollars per embryo in 1991 money that is a shit ton of money yeah right that's 15 times 50,000 that is a lot of money it's another slice of the plot that is part of that onion peeling that we're gonna go with that analogy I guess for this episode we're like oh

JONATHAN (34:00.828)
yeah.

SLAVA (34:14.913)
Dinosaurs are on this island. They're biting the crap out of kids. It bit a little girl on vacation. The park is having problems because they brought in an employee who's got their innards falling out of them. And you have an Injun employee that's kind of sabote- well not sabotaged, but he does do something that sabotages the park. But he's a traitor. He's going to be given this data, not only data, but actual embryos.

to a competitor who's going to want to build a park somewhere else, I'm assuming, because that's how this crap works. Not only is the peeling back of that onion, of that story interesting and captivating, what might happen gets more and more almost grotesque, right? Because you have this eccentric, stupid billionaire who's doing things that are putting people in danger. You have some of his competitors trying to steal these embryos. You have an employee who's a trader.

The possibility of the event, the thing that we're all looking forward to as readers going like, my gosh, what's going to happen on this island? Just builds and builds and builds before we even know what the real problem is going to be besides dinosaurs running amok. Right? I think that's part of what makes you like this book better than The Girl with All the Gifts because they're in a school that gets overrun.

then they have to escape, then they're in a town, then they are farther away from the town. And although there is tension there, it's not weaved together the way it's weaved together here.

Yeah, on that point, this brings up the question to me, where is the line between a main plot and subplots? And I think you started sharing about that, but for the audience, I want to just like, okay, well, what's the main plot of Jurassic Park? Right? Let's do a quick dissection here. It's that a billionaire is funding a genetic engineered dino park and he's bringing experts in to evaluate it.

JONATHAN (36:22.54)
Right. So when we have a mise en scene, which is setting the scene, it's French for setting the scene, we need to know like, well, the first scenes are going to be the thing that sets the scene to your point, the prologue. Hey, there's a, there's a mauling attack. They lie about it. There's a kid who gets bit by a lizard. They don't know what it is. Right. So, okay. So there's something happening and it's all tied to this billionaire who's funded a, a dino park and the dinosaurs have gotten out or they've gone from Island to mainland bringing the

chaos from its secluded area into main, main world. Right. And then, and I think this is the point you're getting at here is why Jurassic Park's more interesting to me than Girl with the Gifts or kept me intrigued. Right. Like I was, I was bought in, I was hooked. I wanted to know more is there's a weaving of subplots. They were all woven together in a way that kept you engaged and maybe it's the short attention span today. You and I talk regularly about the data and analytics and YouTube and

and TikTok and all the socials and like how people's attention to fans are disintegrating basically, where we won't even get three seconds to something that doesn't catch us, even if it would be something that we would value. So the subplots that I'm seeing in terms of this book to get back on track here is Ian Malcolm, his warnings and chaos theory. That's one subplot. Hammond's delusion of control, another plot, which is, you know, directly tied to the main plot. Nedry's sabotage, which you just brought up a minute ago, that's a subplot and it also builds tension and.

in this thriller, Grant being trapped with the kids and their journey together. And then also Gennaro's redemption, right? Who goes from corporate coward to reluctant participant, basically. I'd say the ways to tell the differences for people, if you're wondering like, well, when I'm reading a book or going through a story, is it the main plot or a subplot? You know, does it drive the narrative? If the answer is yes, that's main plot. Does it affect all the characters? That's a main plot. Can it stand alone?

No, that's the story itself. You know, is there a thematic focus that would be the main plot effectively? I feel like I'm disintegrating here my words, but I'll wrap up here with the resolution happens for the main plot in books if it's done well. So, the story needs to resolve for the story to end. And that would be more evidence for main plot. And then everything else for the most part can mostly be categorized as subplot.

JONATHAN (38:50.51)
Does that feel articulate enough?

think so. I'm tracking with you. I'm agreeing with you. I want to continue this theme of the unfolding mystery. So in the second iteration, we're introduced to two more characters, Ian Malcolm and Donald Gennaro. You mentioned Gennaro just a second ago. So we have that peeling back of the onion, the prologue and the first iteration we already discussed. Now you're in the park.

As a reader, have all that information, all that data already. Something's happened in this park that's not good. Ian Malcolm is kind of the voice of reason here. And he says, you can't predict more than a few seconds to the future. This is on page 83. If you're reading the paperback version, he knew that Hammond's chaotic curiosity. just, we'll be being generous here. If we're just saying Hammond has a curiosity, it's definitely chaotic.

pun intended I guess, Malcolm saying that will lead to massive consequences using that fractal theory, that model and Hammond becomes indignant at Malcolm's observation that again shows you that Hammond is, well you know, to use bar language he's an asshole but he has hubris and he doesn't see past like two minutes in front of his face because he's constantly thinking about the money that he's gonna make.

and Gennaro is also salivating in this section of the book about the money they're going to make. Malcolm's telling them like, hey dude, something's going to happen. And his indignation at Malcolm's observation reveals that Hammond has a vulnerable, weak, angry side. So the problems that we were introduced to in the prologue and with the little girl and the workers, I know why this is happening. This guy's a douche.

SLAVA (40:48.792)
He doesn't really care about his people. He doesn't understand that his scientists don't even know the extent of the problems they caused. Because going back to that point I made earlier, they're all supposed to be girls and they can't lift off the island because we give them antidotes to essentially a poison. No, that works. They're off the fricking island. you get a little bit of glimpse, a little bit more peel back. the problems that I saw.

You know, whatever, two chapters ago, a hundred pages ago, whatever it is, 70 pages ago, this page 83 specifically that I'm talking about, it's because of Hammond. Hammond is the problem. And now the reader knows going forward, Hammond is going to cause more problems. believe that is connected to what I said I enjoyed about the book. It immerses you, it strings you along. I wouldn't call this a slow burn. You get into it pretty quickly.

It's pretty fast paced. Yeah.

Right. But you're strung along at a faster pace than maybe most books. Nothing's very ambiguous or kind of left unresolved for lack of a better term. Even though there's a mystery and it takes a while for the full mystery to be revealed. You know what's going to happen is bad. And the small little revelations that you get there.

They're the hooks, they're constantly through the story, like, what's going to happen next? what's going to happen next? And then again, back to my earlier point again, you start to theorize what might happen as a first time reader, at least. So good on Crichton.

JONATHAN (42:30.382)
other part to that, which I mentioned a little bit ago is this idea of shifting perspectives and you that family, you see them once, that's it. But that adds to the story, the veterinarian, right? Who's like, I don't work on people. And then she's given a person as like the prologue adds to the story. You're like, attacks are happening. You start putting stuff together, like you said, but let's take that thought and then look, zoom out a little bit.

Because the chapters of the book are, the sections of the book are called first iteration, second iteration, third iteration, right? And while I was going through it, I was thinking, huh, that's an interesting way to dissect a book or like, segment your book. Why would you do that? And I started thinking about it. was like, that kind of dehumanizes the story, right? It also makes it very science-based and it's like, well, that lines up pretty well with Jurassic park. So.

When you first read it, did that jump out at you or just me?

I think just you, I think that it's an interesting naming convention, but I never thought beyond it. An iteration, if we're using scientific language, it's a repetition of a mathematical procedure. Right? So you, this iteration, we're applying this, whatever this is, an effort or a way of looking at things, or we're using a conclusion from the first iteration to change the second iteration.

And it's all based on previous results, previous applications. And typically in the perfect world, it means that you obtain successfully or you come closer to a solution. You obtain data successfully that gives you more data to obtain more data. And then finally get a solution to the problem. here, yeah, but here the iteration, it keeps getting worse. The iterations are.

JONATHAN (44:22.38)
which is ham.

JONATHAN (44:28.543)
Yes

Evolving, not evolving. So, yeah.

Yeah, but that stood out to me. it's something that very few authors in modern day use this as a technique where they lay out their books in an abnormal fashion. We've seen this in It, we've seen this in Survivor by Palinchuk, and we've seen this in Jurassic Park here. I want to say we also saw it in Roadside Picnic, but correct me if I'm wrong there, where the layout of the story is

purposefully in a distinct, non-average or normative fashion, right? Like the layout of the story is different. I think even Sanderson has added this to the fantasy genre specifically with his epigraphs and doing the same prologue in every book for Stormlight Archive from a different angle. I think it takes a more mature author, and feel free to push me, push back on this if you think otherwise, because King does it with it where we have, you know,

different chapters or different sections. You know, he has one section that's just all headlines, right? Like that's crazy. know, Jurassic Park here, iterations, and he, he lumps his chapters into like, well, this is one scientific iteration. These things go bad. It devolves iteration two and it gets worse and worse and like proves chaos theory, which I think for the story makes a lot of sense. Maybe that's Crichton's even own philosophy that hubris adds to chaos theory to provoke it to.

JONATHAN (46:01.538)
break at some point, right? I don't know.

That makes sense. I like, I like the way the POVs add to the tension or add to the complexity. That's a better term of the story. Cause here, as the second iteration ends, you have Grant and one of his desires is to get money for his scientific research. Hammond gives him obscene amounts of money. And Stadler is also a paleontologist and this gives her a chance to look at real freaking dinosaurs.

And here the second iteration ends, it's finally fully, openly revealed the Park House's real living dinosaurs. Grant is struck by what he witnesses. He says something like, it reminded Grant, well, not he, the cretin writes, this reminded Grant of oversized giraffes. So Grant is like going through his mind going, my gosh, this is blowing my mind. It's challenging some of my scientific conclusions. Sattler can't hardly contain herself.

There's this mood of excitement and thrill. This is going to be an adventure. But we still, as readers, have this sinister... We don't have anything sinister, but we are keenly aware of something sinister that's going to happen for sure. We know it's going to happen for sure. Grant and Sattler are sort of oblivious, but it's part of those subplots that you talked about. Their intention here is, oh my gosh, I definitely want to be a part of this. I'm going to get a lot of money. I can do my own research.

and he are a real dinosaur. can do even grander research, but Malcolm and Gennaro at the end of this iteration are acutely aware they may be in danger for different reasons. Malcolm, because of his theory, chaos theory, Gennaro, because he is this corporate, know, lackey who needs to check all the boxes and figure out risks and needs to figure out risk analysis. And for different reasons, they're like,

SLAVA (48:01.698)
this might be a bad thing. And Malcolm's definitely like, this is a bad thing. So there's this constant tension and conflict for the reader as you're viewing different POVs. Some of them are positive from the POV of the character, like, this is kind of cool actually. And others are like, no, no, no, no, no, this is bad. And then again, this is a bad thing. And again, as a reader, you're like, yep, and Malcolm, I'm with Malcolm, this is a bad thing.

bad thing.

JONATHAN (48:28.418)
Yeah, do you think, and maybe you have a little more backstory on this than I do in terms of Malcolm himself to dive into the character just for a half second. Do you think Crichton purposefully made it so that we side with Malcolm? Is this his bias, right? Or did it just happen to unfold that way? Like, I don't know, and maybe you can enlighten me in the audience. How many books has Crichton written before Jurassic Park? Right, is this his first published? I don't think it is, but you know.

published was the drameda strain. They did. Yeah, his first book that was published was in 1969. It's called The Terminal Man. Yeah. And then his second book, also 1969, was the drameda strain. That's what it is. Yeah. So Terminal Man. And it's about a guy who suffers from violent seizures, so violent that he often blacks out and they take, when they take hold.

that into a movie too, didn't they?

JONATHAN (49:14.93)
man. Okay. Got it.

SLAVA (49:23.95)
Shortly after severely beating two men during an episode, the police escort Benson to Los Angeles Hospital for treatment. Then Dr. Roger McPherson, head of a prestigious neuropsychiatric research unit, is convinced he can cure Benson with an experimental procedure that would place electrodes deep in his brain, effectively short-circuiting seizures. The surgery is successful, but while Benson is in recovery, he discovers how to trigger the pulses himself.

To make matters worse, his violent impulses have only grown and he soon escapes the hospital with a deadly agenda. That's the hook. So, and then again, back to the point. 1969, again, drama on a strain. 1970, five patients. 1975, the great train robbery. Another great book that I read on as a kid. We have Eaters of the Dead. We have Jasper Johns. We have Congo. Another book I read by him that's great. That's 80. Between 1983.

So he's a well-serviced author prior to Jurassic Park.

Yeah, yes, fear 1987. We got another book called Travels. And then in 1990, Jurassic Park.

So back to my question, is he giving us his bias through Malcolm? Okay, that's my question. But let's keep the episode rolling here. Let's talk about one of the themes. know prior to the episode you and I were briefly discussing the illusion of control. Why don't you give us a quick diatribe on that and let's unpack it.

SLAVA (50:38.135)
I think so.

SLAVA (50:54.754)
I think it's connected to what I said, hubris of man. And when you have the illusion of control, it probably fuels your hubris. If you are a Hammond, because you have money. You can throw it around. You can buy people. You can buy perceivably loyalty, probably in Hammond's mind, which. Completely falls apart because a guy will sell your embryos for $50,000 a pop. So he's not paying him that much or maybe.

He's just an asshole and the guy's like, yeah, screwed. I'll, I'll, I'll sell his stuff. You have him not being able to, I don't want to say control, but understand the science behind everything. Cause he gets the scientists, he pays them the salaries. He goes, go do this thing, but he's not invested in the process. And he doesn't have to be in the weeds with it, but he's so removed that he doesn't know that his scientists have screwed something up where.

All the dinosaurs are in fact not girls and yes they can survive outside the parameter of the park, the premises. They can go to other islands and wreak havoc there. So he is the stereotypical poster boy of a guy who thinks he has control and doesn't.

and the only reason he thinks he has control is money. He can buy it, therefore he has control.

Right, exactly.

SLAVA (52:18.786)
Yeah, that's why Malcolm pushes back and says you can only predict like a few minutes into the future. These are dinosaurs from millions of years ago that are now in a new world. They know nothing about it. Whatever dinosaurs can know, we don't know anything about them besides what we can speculate based on fossils. And now we're here together. The atmosphere is different. The world is different.

And you have no control because of those things. It's not like you just moved a zoo of tropical animals to a temperate zone or temperate animals to a tropical zone. Like, look, it's a giraffe in Montana or look, it's a Bengal tiger in Florida, whatever. Or the opposite. Here you have freaking dinosaurs, things that haven't existed for millions of years. And Hammond can't see that, but Malcolm keeps pushing on it.

and the fact that Hammond won't even entertain what Malcolm has to say and add security measures or say, I haven't thought about this before. Yeah, how do we prevent the problems that Malcolm is saying will happen or could happen? That's the hubris again, because he thinks he's in control and Malcolm is only there because of some legality that he has to have somebody.

You know, be as meticulous and forthright and blunt as Malcolm is. I don't think it's ever clearly stated in the book, but that's my assumption. He needs somebody that's not a yes man to be there. Malcolm is that guy. And instead of taking Malcolm seriously, he's just like, screw you guy. You're ruining my dream of dinosaurs for the kids.

Right. you know, here you talk about that. These are the things that come to mind is Hammond has this illusion of control, which then fuels, he needs scientists to have that control through his money, which fuels the scientists in their hubris to do what he's asked. And it trickles downstream where he's like, all right, I'm going to fund the science with his money and his hubris to go, Hey, we can make this, you know, we can make dinosaurs real again.

JONATHAN (54:29.506)
And he thinks that he has control to your point simply because he has money. But the thing is he's outsourcing his control because he doesn't know the science. He's so removed again, to your point that he doesn't understand when the scientist is like, Hey, we need to do iteration four of the Dinos to make them more docile. And he's like, no, these are real. needed to be real. And this is actually like kind of zooming out a little bit. This is a question about art as well, where it's like, do you...

make the art as authentic as possible? Or do you curate it to fit into the audience's categories of being the most engaging, beautiful, insert your adjective here, as possible, but that requires often dumbing it down or making it child-friendly. The New York Times, I think we've talked about this once or twice in the past, New York Times for many years had their...

average reading level be seventh grade. You know, now it's gone down to like fifth grade, which, you know, do what you want with that information in terms of what that means about society. But do you curate it like the scientist asked, like we need to make a new iteration where the dinos are less aggressive and less themselves. To Hammond's preference, you know, they need to be quote unquote real, but he doesn't even know what that means. I think he finds out in this book, but.

Yeah. But even that, know, on, uh, I forget, it's in the late one hundreds of the pages. Malcolm says, Hey, dinosaurs and humans, these humans, us humans, this iteration of humans have never lived together. And they just, then they talk about an attack that happened and it happened like within seconds and grant us to kind of take it in the back. And the conversation that they have is, well, lions are not natural man eaters.

They have become man eaters because of the intersection of man and lions. Lions eat people today and they've eaten people for thousands of years, but they only do that because of the intersection of humans and lions. Lions by themselves would not go like, hey, I'm going to go swim to that island. hear there's some humans there. So the same thing here. We're introduced to dinosaurs. They're like a month old. They're not going to go,

SLAVA (56:52.632)
Here I am, I self aware. That bipedal thing looks delicious. But because the bipedal thing and the dinosaur who is trying to survive and only knows instincts and is hungry or is threatened, that's why they attack. And Hammond refuses, refuses to even entertain the thought that this might be a problem. And if they succeed in making them more tame, now here's where my response to your point is, if they succeed to make them more tame, it's just gonna take a little longer for them to start attacking again.

JONATHAN (57:27.224)
feeds into chaos theory that eventually something will break because complex systems break to simplify Malcolm's thoughts on that.

Yeah, and as we end part three, or the third iteration, the chaos that Malcolm predicted, it emerges. It doesn't even, like you can't say, now we see more. Like boom, here it is. And from the time Malcolm was introduced to us as readers, he's been correct about everything. And he continues to hammer this point. The chaos theory is what is helping him project the problems that are coming. It's what he considers the

How do I say this? He adheres, let me say it this way, he adheres to chaos theory in his predictions of what he considers an unpredictable environment for the reasons we just went over. So not only is this a problem because this is the first time in how many years that humans have interacted with dinosaurs, you also have an amusement park and all the problems and issues that come with that, this is also a zoo. This is also in the middle of the ocean. This is also fraught with...

Hammond's hubris have not taken things seriously. There's so much going on that should be as bright as the sun. Problems are coming and this should be abandoned. Despite all this, Hammond's confidence has yet to wane. He continues to scoff in the face of trouble and the fact that he's a fool becomes more more clear. Yep.

100%. Well, I think that that, covers a large chunk of a lot of things. Certainly not everything. We have a second episode here for Jurassic Park. No guest episode this rundown because it's summer and people are busy and that's okay. But I like when we get into these themes, we get into how the author wrote the books. We learn more about the authors and we dialogue about moral or ethical quandaries around these topics, especially

JONATHAN (59:31.214)
One of the things I really love is understanding my own preferences for books and kind of honing in on the maturity of authorship, right? Because we both write, we both want to be able to publish some of our own stuff one day. And this is a, maybe not a clean look, but a look at like what are mature authors doing that have taken off versus other authors who are still published. again, like that's a really big step. That's huge. But.

there's a maturity that comes as you continue to be an author. So those are my final thoughts.

I concur. As a resident mathematician and grumpy old guy on this podcast, I concur.

You're a resident mathematician?

I am not. I know basic algebra and then my brain starts to hurt.

JONATHAN (01:00:20.564)
I was about to challenge you. Alright, I'm glad you sat down. Stay humble, in line with the book. Sit down. Be humble.

Thank you, Ian. I was going to say, it's funny that in the book, Ian Malcolm is this balding kind of curmudgeon. And then we have in the movie, he's, you know, the sexy dude, sexy mathematician.

Yes. It's a choice that Spielberg made, I guess. Or his casting director, or both. Probably both.

Anyway, that's all we have for you,

Tune in next time for us to review another theme or two and the second half of the books, which would be the rest of iteration three, four, five, six, and seven, which a lot happens. More limbs, more dino attacks, and more...

SLAVA (01:01:14.762)
I love it.

See you next time.

I have a favorite ask here. If you like what we're doing, the simplest way to support the show is to hit subscribe. In return, we'll keep leveling up, we'll listen to your feedback and read authors that you suggest. And of course, we'll take side quests along the way.