Welcome to the fifth discussion of Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton! I’m really interested to see what everyone thinks of the book's ending and if it went the way that you expected.

I'm also looking forward to watching the movie again during the week in preparation for the specific book vs movie discussion next Sunday!

Section summary

Sixth iteration: “System recovery may prove impossible.” – Ian Malcolm

Return

Grant and the children drive back to the visitor centre in the electric cart, with the young velociraptor that Grant tranquilised in the back. Grant wants to show the scientists that the dinosaurs are breeding, and the male velociraptor is proof. As they enter the building, they find it deserted with shattered glass doors and the body of a guard on the floor. Grant is able to contact Sattler via radio and she tells him that the velociraptors are loose and can open doors.

She is at the lodge with Muldoon, Wu, Harding, Malcolm and Hammond, but velociraptors followed Muldoon and Wu there (how did Muldoon get out of the pipe?) and got onto the roof, and are gradually biting through the bars over the skylight. They have chewed through one bar and pull it away from the window, shattering the glass onto the bed (the book notes that hyenas can bite through steel; Crichton may have been referring to this news story). Wu suggests that if Grant could get the power on from the maintenance shed it would help, but Muldoon doesn’t think there is enough time. Malcolm suggests they distract the velociraptors to give him more time. Sattler volunteers to be the bait/distraction. Wu radios Grant and explains to him how to get to the maintenance building, and tells him to leave the kids in the cafeteria.

Sattler goes outside to try to distract the velociraptors, but it takes a while to get their attention. Muldoon helpfully bangs a steel rod against the fence. She opens the gate in the hope they will understand the noise, then steps outside and walks away from the fence. When she’s about 20 feet from the fence three velociraptors attack her, but she manages to evade them and get back inside the fence. The velociraptors continue to charge the fence while Sattler runs back and forth, but Wu and Muldoon notice that they don’t seem to be seriously trying to get her and it is more like a display.

Grant goes to the maintenance shed, and enters through the door that is propped open by Arnold’s shoe. Over the radio, Wu guides Grant to the power switch, and he fires up the generator. The next step is to go back to the control room and restore the systems manually.

Tim and Lex enter the kitchen where they look for ice cream. Lex realises there is a dinosaur out in the cafeteria; Tim looks through the door with the night vision goggles and sees a velociraptor. It can clearly see well enough in the dark to navigate between the tables, and Tim wonders if it is following their scent. Tim pushes Lex under a table behind a waste bin, and grabs some steaks from the fridge to make a sort of trail to distract the velociraptor. He manages to lock it into the fridge, and they run from the kitchen.

As Grant makes his way back to the ladder, he hears Gennaro calling to him from a truck. Gennaro explains that he was hiding from compys, which ran away when Grant approached. He isn’t sure how he got away from the velociraptor that attacked him, but mentions its leg was injured from Muldoon shooting it.

Wu watches the velociraptors making their mock attacks at the fence, and is troubled by their behaviour, as if they’re trying to distract Sattler instead of her distracting them. Harding mentions that the velociraptors have left the skylight, so he opens the door and yells for her to come inside. A velociraptor grabs Wu from above, and starts eating him while he’s still alive. Muldoon slams the door, and the three velociraptors outside the fence run for the visitor centre instead of following Sattler as she runs away. However, two from the roof follow her. She runs towards the end of the lodge, climbs a tree and gets to the roof, but the door is locked. She sprints to the edge of the roof and leaps into the swimming pool. The velociraptors don’t follow her as Harding opens the roof door. One slashes at his chest but he manages to close the door, and Sattler has also got inside through the main door.

Grant and Gennaro see the velociraptors run past them, but they have no choice but to go to the control room. The velociraptors can’t get into the cafeteria, but then jump onto the second floor balcony.

Tim and Lex make it to the control room first though and can enter because the power is off. Lex accidentally stands on someone’s ear, which is by itself on the floor. Tim speaks to Muldoon on the radio, who tells him that none of the adults know how to turn the computers on. Tim decides to attempt it himself, realising that the computer has a touchscreen. Lex pesters him and randomly presses buttons. The monitor shows them a series of views from throughout the park, the bow of a ship, and then the inside of various rooms in the lodge, including one with Malcolm lying on a bed (… is anyone else wondering why the control room has video cameras inside the lodge’s bedrooms, pointing at the beds?) He gets the view back to the ship, and sees that the supply ship is minutes from docking at Puntarenas. Going back to the screen with Malcolm, he sees the velociraptors are close to breaking through the bars and into the room.

The Grid

Tim goes through the various menus on the computer while Lex whines at him and Muldoon asks him about his progress over the radio. Lex alerts him to more velociraptors in the hallway, and they leave the control room, but the door locks behind them because Tim had somehow reactivated the door locks. They see the velociraptors jumping onto the balcony from ground level. They take a security card from a dead security guard but can’t go back to the control room as the velociraptors have seen them. They go through the nearest door instead as the velociraptors charge.

Lodge

Malcolm, Sattler and Hammond watch as the velociraptors work on the steel bars. Hammond laments that nobody could have imagined it would turn out this way, and Malcolm points out that not only did he predict it, but he calculated it. He monologues about the futility of humans trying to control nature. Hammond changes the subject, saying “Where did Tim go? He seemed such a responsible boy”, which seems like a really weird thing to say about his own grandson, as if he had never met him before.

Grant and Gennaro are locked out of the visitor centre, but enter through the shattered doors to the main lobby.

Tim and Lex had entered the nursery, and the baby velociraptor they met earlier in the book is excited to see Tim again. Unfortunately the door hadn’t closed properly and the adult velociraptors enter. Tim throws the baby towards them as a distraction, and they eat the baby so I guess it worked, although I suspect Tim thought they would nurture it instead of cannibalising it. Tim and Lex enter the DNA extraction lab and run through it to another corridor and into a room with a blue biohazard sign, where they encounter Grant and Gennaro.

The velociraptors slow down, seemingly surprised by the appearance of more people. Grant tells Gennaro to take the kids somewhere safe, but the door they go through doesn’t have another exit so they are trapped. Grant leads the velociraptors past the computers and away from the others, and lures them into the hatchery’s lab. There, he injects some dinosaur eggs with some conveniently located toxins, then rolls them towards the velociraptors to kill them. One of the velociraptors eats a poisoned egg and starts going into spasm, so the other velociraptors start taking bites. The dying velociraptor is understandably annoyed, and bites the neck of one of the other velociraptors, which disembowels the dying one before eating a poisoned egg, which kills is almost instantly. However, it knocks a tray of eggs onto the floor, so Grant can’t use the poisoned egg trick on the third velociraptor. He calls Sattler on the radio and asks her to talk, then throws the radio away from him. The velociraptor investigates the noise, which gives Grant a chance to inject the poison directly into its tail, killing it. Grant, Gennaro and the kids run back to the control room.

Control

Tim works on the computer again, and Gennaro realises that the auxiliary power is low as happened before, so they need to get the main power switched on. He switches it on in time, electrocuting the velociraptors that were close to breaking through the bars at the lodge.

He calls the ship with the stowaway velociraptors, but they dismiss his warning because he’s very obviously a child and they assume it’s a prank. Gennaro takes over the call and uses some made up legalese to stop them from landing the ship on the mainland.

Seventh iteration: “Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.” – Ian Malcolm

Destroying the World

Hammond comments that “at least disaster is averted” (seemingly forgetting about the multiple deaths that have already occurred) as now the dinosaurs won’t get out and destroy the planet. Malcolm mocks him for thinking he has this kind of power and calls him an egomaniacal idiot, pointing out that we cannot destroy the planet itself, just make it inhospitable for humans – but life will survive our folly.

Under Control

By afternoon, the computer is fully functioning, and the air conditioning is back on. Of the 24 people on the island, eight are confirmed dead and six are missing. They have called the authorities in San José for help, and the Costa Rican National Guard is on its way (the country’s military was actually abolished in 1948) as well as an air ambulance to bring Malcolm to a hospital. On the ship, the crew found the three young velociraptors and killed them.

Tim is getting good with the computer, and runs the computerised dinosaur tally. The total number of animals detected has now dropped to 203, as the dinosaurs are mixing and the carnivores are now hunting the herbivores. On the monitors, they watch a stegosaurus facing off against the juvenile tyrannosaurus (which would never have happened in real life as they’re from different time periods)

Muldoon notes that they have an hour of daylight left if Grant still wants to go and look at the velociraptor nests. He thinks the Costa Rican military will probably bomb the island, perhaps with napalm and/or nerve gas. Gennaro thinks the dinosaurs should all be destroyed, and that they should leave it to the experts. Grant gets annoyed and slams Gennaro against a wall, saying he has been shirking his responsibility.

The group determines that the velociraptor nest is in the south of the island, in some concrete workings around the volcanic steam fields. Using the computer, Tim finds an unmarked storage room containing gas masks and nerve gas grenades. They put a radio collar on the juvenile velociraptor that Grant tranquilised earlier, which Lex has named Clarence. This wild-born velociraptor has the ability to change colour, which according to Muldoon the other velociraptors couldn’t do. Grant finally gets to finish his explanation of the amphibian DNA and how using it probably allowed the dinosaurs to change sex and reproduce.

They follow the collared velociraptor to the volcanic fields, where it disappears behind a rock. The entrance to the nest is a round hole about two feet in diameter; they lower a video camera down with a rope and can hear animal sounds, but can’t see anything. Grant puts on a gas mask and drops into the hole.

Almost Paradigm

Hammond is uncomfortable because Malcolm has slipped into a coma and might die after all. How rude. He tells Harding that he’s going to go for a walk, and thinks afterwards that he doesn’t need to justify himself to Harding who is merely an employee. He decides that even if Gennaro burns the island to the ground, he still has dozens more frozen embryos in two vaults in Palo Alto, and they can just start again on another island.

He concludes that Wu was the wrong person for the job, and was the main cause of the downfall of the park. He also thinks about how Arnold was also the wrong person and had missed important things. Even Ed Regis, Harding and Muldoon get some blame in his head, because it is everyone’s fault except his, although interestingly he doesn’t even think about Nedry. He passes a workman, who nods at him, and Hammond thinks about how they’re all insolent (even though the guy just nodded at him?!) which means that it is also Costa Rica’s fault somehow.

Suddenly, he hears a tyrannosaurus roar frighteningly close by. He sees the workman running for his life, and a shadow he thinks is the tyrannosaurus, so he runs and falls down the hillside. He lands in a small stream, and realises his ankle is broken.

In the control room, Tim and Lex are playing with some controls and playing recorded dinosaur noises over the park loudspeakers (earlier in the book, in the chapter ‘Bungalow’, Harding told Sattler and Gennaro that they sometimes play a recorded tyrannosaur roar to get the sauropods moving when they are blocking the road)

Lying at the bottom of the hill, Hammond hears the roar again and wonders if the tyrannosaurus caught the workman. He hears Lex’s voice over the loudspeaker as she whines about getting a turn at playing dinosaur noises, and Hammond understands what has happened. He regrets bringing the kids to the island as they had been nothing but trouble; he had thought it would get Gennaro on-side somehow. He waits a while, and begins shouting for help.

Malcolm is delirious and tells Harding that everything looks different on the other side, as well as something about paradigm shifts.

Descent

Sattler follows Grant down the hole into the velociraptor nest, and Muldoon forces Gennaro to follow them. He decides to go face-first for some reason. The walls become narrower and narrower as he goes down and he feels like the air is being squeezed out of his lungs, and I honestly don’t understand how none of them got stuck. He lands on a concrete ledge next to Grant and Sattler, and sees dozens of glowing green eyes all around him.

They are able to hide behind a large steel junction box so the velociraptors don’t see them, but I don’t understand why they don’t hear three people crashing through the hole onto the concrete?! There are adults, juveniles and babies mixing in the man-made cavern. Grant says it is a colony with four to six adults, with at least two hatchings. A baby spots them and chitters, but an adult nudges it away. A juvenile rubs against Sattler’s leg and she realises it’s the one they put the radio collar on, and the collar is chafing its neck. She tries to take it off without attracting the attention of an adult, but the Velcro makes a loud noise. Grant gets a gas grenade ready, but Sattler isn’t wearing her mask. She gets the collar off and the juvenile scampers off, and thankfully the adult doesn’t investigate further.

Using the night vision goggles, Grant counts the remains of 14 eggs in the first nest based on the indentations in the mud, nine in the second and 15 in the third. He thinks 34 baby velociraptors were born in total. Sattler counted 33 infants based on their different snout markings, and 22 juveniles. She also observes that the velociraptors are aligning along a northeast-southwest orientation as if they’re lining up for something.

The infants begin squeaking and hopping in excitement, and then all the dinosaurs start running away down the concrete tunnel.

Hammond

Hammond tries to climb the hill on his broken ankle but is having difficulty. The air is hot and humid, and he drank from the stream before starting which was not a good idea. His other leg is burning from the exertion of hopping up the hill. He thought he heard footsteps on the path above several times and tried calling out, but nobody heard him. He has been climbing for more than an hour but is maybe a third of the way up the hill.

As he sits down to rest, he hears squeaking and chittering from approaching compys. He thinks about how they use slow-acting poison to kill crippled animals, which makes him frown. He throws a rock at the line of compys watching him, but they only back away a short distance, as if they know he can’t hurt them. He swipes at them with a branch, then aims a second rock more carefully, hitting one in the chest.

He resumes climbing the hill, but a compy jumps on his back, making him flail and fall back down the hill. As he landed at the bottom of the hill, another compy bits his hand, then another bites his neck as he stands up. He feels the poison spread down his spine, and lies on the hillside as the compys attack.

The Beach

Grant, Sattler, and Gennaro follow the velociraptors, emerging from the tunnel on the beach. The velociraptors line up again in a northeast-southwest formation facing the ocean. A marine freighter is moving north, which must be the sound that drew the dinosaurs out onto the beach. As he thinks about their similarity to birds, Grant wonders if they are trying to migrate.

Approaching Dark

As they discuss the migration idea, helicopters approach the beach through the fog, scattering the velociraptors. They see Muldoon and the children aboard one of them. A soldier asks them to get on the helicopters as there isn’t much time. An officer asks both Grant and Gennaro if they are in charge, and doesn’t bother asking Sattler. As they board, Muldoon tells them that the bombing of the island is about to start, that Harding and some workmen are on another helicopter, and that Hammond and Malcolm are dead.

Grant sees the juvenile tyrannosaurus crouched over a dead hadrosaur, roaring at the helicopters as they pass. They hear explosions behind them as the island is bombed, and Lex starts to cry. Grant sees the hypsilophodonts leaping just before another explosion flares beneath them. He is asked again if he is in charge, and replies that nobody is.

Epilogue: San José

The Costa Rican government puts the survivors up in a nice hotel in San José, and they are free to call whoever they want, but they are not permitted to leave the country. The authorities do not allow the burial of Hammond of Malcolm either. Grant and the others are repeatedly questioned about what happened.

One afternoon, Grant is sitting by the hotel pool when he is approached by Dr Guitierrez, the lizard expert we met back in the First Iteration. He asks Grant if Hammond supported cold weather dinosaur digs because more intact genetic material could be recovered. He also tells him that something else peculiar is happening in the Ismaloya mountains of Costa Rica (these are fictional) – animals are eating crops in a straight line from the coast into the jungle, like a migration. The crops they are eating are agama beans and soy, as well as chickens, which are all rich in lysine. The animals have not yet been found but the mountains are remote. Both men suspect there could be more dinosaurs loose on the mainland. Guitierrez thinks the government will send the children home, but that none of the adults will be going anywhere.

Bookclub Bingo 2023 categories: Sci-fi (grey), Discovery Read, A Book Written in the 1990s, Horror

Trigger warnings: Storygraph users have marked the book with the following trigger warnings: Death, gore, blood, animal death, fatphobia, sexism

Other potentially useful links:

• Discussion schedule
• Marginalia
• The first discussion
• The second discussion
• The third discussion
• The fourth discussion
• Michael Crichton on Wikipedia
• Which animals have the strongest bite?
• Birds Inherited Strong Sense of Smell From Dinosaurs
• Ravens—like humans and apes—can plan for the future
• Video – Fighting Dinosaurs Fossil
• The 5 Mass Extinctions That Have Swept Our Planet

The discussion questions are in the comments below.

Join us for the next discussion on Sunday 23rd July, which will cover the 1993 movie adaptation of Jurassic Park.