Hello dino fans, and welcome back (sort of) to Jurassic Park! This is the first discussion of The Lost World by Michael Crichton which was published in 1995, five years after the release of his book Jurassic Park) and two years after the release of Jurassic Park’s phenomenally successful film adaptation).

According to the book’s Wikipedia page (beware of plot spoilers if you decide to read the full Wikipedia page though):

After the publication of Jurassic Park in 1990, Crichton was pressured by fans to write a sequel. Following the success of Jurassic Park's film adaptation in 1993, director Steven Spielberg became interested in making a sequel film. Crichton had never written a sequel to any of his novels before and was initially hesitant to do so. He claimed a sequel was "a very difficult structural problem because it has to be the same but different; if it's really the same, then it's the same—and if it's really different, then it's not a sequel. So it's in some funny intermediate territory". Finally, in March 1994, Crichton claimed there would probably be a sequel novel as well as a film adaptation, stating that he had an idea for the novel's story.

In March 1995, Crichton announced that he was nearly finished writing the novel, with a scheduled release for later that year. At the time, Crichton declined to specify the novel's title or plot. Crichton later stated that the novel's title is an homage to [Arthur Conan] Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name), as well as the 1925 film adaptation of Doyle's novel, also titled The Lost World). Crichton's novel also shares some story similarities with Doyle's novel. The Lost World was the only book sequel Crichton ever wrote.

Spoiler note: The Jurassic Park/Jurassic World movie franchise is very well known so a lot of people will already have existing knowledge of the series, but we don’t want to spoil anything about it for people who have not read/seen these books and films before. Since we have already discussed the Jurassic Park book and the first movie in r/bookclub it is fine to talk about those in the discussions, but please only talk about this book up to the section under discussion, and if you’re bursting to talk about The Lost World movie, make some notes and bring them up when we discuss the book vs movie on 22nd October! Also, please bear in mind r/bookclub's rules on spoilers, and the consequences for posting spoilers.

Everyone has a different perception of what is a spoiler, so here are a few examples of what would be spoilers:

• “Just wait till you see what happens next.”
• “This won't be the last time you meet this character.”
• “Your prediction is correct/incorrect.”
• “You will look back at this theory.”
• “Here is an Easter Egg: ...”
• “You don't know enough to answer that question yet.”
• “How do you first-time-readers feel about this detail that was intentionally not emphasized by the author?”

If you're unsure, it's best to err on the side of caution and use spoiler tags. To indicate a spoiler, enclose the relevant text with the > ! and ! < characters (there is no space in between) e.g. Spoiler McSpoilerface

Section summary

Introduction: “Extinction at the K-T Boundary”

The book opens with a discussion of the increase of scientific interest in extinction during the 20th century, and some of the debate about the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous Period. (Read runner note – younger readers may not realise how recently the scientific community accepted the asteroid impact hypothesis for causing the dinosaur extinction; I am in my late 30s and when I was a child my dinosaur books still included various other potential causes for the extinction event, such as volcanic eruptions, dinosaurs evolving to be too big, or mammals eating dinosaur eggs.)

In 1980, a team led by Luis Alvarez found that rocks from the end of the Cretaceous period contain a concentration of iridium hundreds of times greater than normal, suggesting that there was a large asteroid impact at this time that caused the extinction event (Note – this book calls this layer the K-T boundary, which refers to the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods; however, the geological term ‘Tertiary period’ is considered obsolete and Palaeogene is now used for what was previously called the early Tertiary, so contemporary information about this extinction event calls it the K-Pg boundary.)

At a lecture at the Santa Fe Institute in California in August 1993, four years after the events of the first book, Ian Malcolm (who is alive after all) suggests that complex animals become extinct due to their behaviour as they stop adapting to their environment. He thinks that humans are so interested in extinction research because we may repeat these events by causing our own extinction.

Prologue: “Life at the Edge of Chaos”

Malcolm is now 40, and a severe injury during a trip to Costa Rica has disrupted his career. He had been reported dead in several newscasts, but he’s back in his “next iteration”. He now walks with a cane. His talk, called “Life at the Edge of Chaos”, is an analysis of chaos theory as it applies to evolution. He notes that complex systems live on the edge of chaos, and need to find a balance point between enough innovation to keep them vibrant but also enough stability to present anarchy.

During his lecture, Malcolm is interrupted by a palaeontologist called Richard Levine. He knows Levine by reputation, and most people find him “pompous and arrogant” (I know this book came out well before Maroon 5 was a thing, but I’m picturing him as Adam Levine especially because he also comes across as super arrogant). Anyway, Adam Richard Levine disagrees that Malcolm’s behavioural thesis is untestable, and implies there may be live dinosaurs somewhere on earth.

Malcolm says Levine is referring to the Lost World evolutionary scenario (seemingly a fictional scenario, as googling it just brings up results related to this book; presumably this is an allusion to The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. However, other evolutionary theories mentioned here, such as the Field of Bullets, the Red Queen and Black Noise are not fictional. The Game of Life is a mathematical evolution game while the Gambler’s Ruin seems to be a statistical concept).

Malcolm goes on to call Levine delusional, and continues his lecture while Levine takes notes.

The Lost World Hypothesis

After his lecture, Malcolm meets his friend Sarah Harding for lunch (I don’t think she has any connection to Harding the dinosaur veterinarian from the first book, or if there is a connection it has not been mentioned). She is a field biologist who has been working in Kenya, studying predators such as lions and hyenas. Harding had helped nurse Malcolm back to health when he came back to the US from Costa Rica, and there was some unspecified romance between them, but then she went back to Africa and now they are just friends.

They discuss Malcolm’s lecture, and Harding tells him that Levine is a pain in the ass with inherited wealth from a popular series of dolls. Levine pops up and invites himself to lunch with them, and mentions persistent rumours of dinosaurs in Costa Rica. Malcolm points out there is no hard evidence for this, but Levine wants to put together an expedition to look for the reported sightings. Cost is not an issue for Levine due to his substantial generational wealth, so I guess he doesn’t need to apply for funding which must be nice.

Levine tells them that he has heard rumours that a company called InGen genetically engineered some dinosaurs on an island in Costa Rica a few years ago, but something went wrong and some people were killed and the dinosaurs destroyed. He thinks nobody will talk about it because of nondisclosure agreements, but he has heard that Malcolm, Alan Grant and a bunch of other people were there. Levine asked Grant about it at a conference in China, but Grant told him it was absurd. Malcolm denies having met Grant, and says InGen’s dinosaurs are a myth.

Harding suspects that these rumours are true, but doesn’t tell Levine this – when Malcolm was in hospital he often talked in his sleep about dinosaurs and seemed fearful. The medical staff thought it was a drug-induced fantasy, but Harding thought he was reliving some terrifying experiences. Malcolm had denied it and was evasive though, so she hadn’t pushed it.

Malcolm had been denying the speculation for a few years, as he was bound by a nondisclosure agreement, and InGen also paid his medical bills. The facility in Costa Rica was destroyed and InGen hired a well-known Stanford professor and TV personality called George Baselton to say he had visited island and that no extinct animals had existed there, frequently snorting “Sabre-toothed tigers, indeed!” InGen had since gone bankrupt and its assets had been sold off.

Levine is pleased to hear that the InGen rumours were a myth, as he thinks that means any dinosaurs in Costa Rica must be real dinosaurs that have survived in isolation since the Cretaceous period. He is outfitting an expedition to go there, and Malcolm agrees to take part if any dinosaurs show up again, although he thinks this will never happen. Harding heads back to Africa, and over the next 18 months she hears the occasional update about Levine’s progress or from Doc Thorne, who is building vehicles for the expedition.

First Configuration: “In the conservative region far from the chaotic edge, individual elements coalesce slowly, showing no clear pattern.” – Ian Malcolm

Aberrant Forms

We meet Marty Guitierrez, a lizard expert who was a minor character in Jurassic Park, again as he flies in a helicopter with Levine over the jungle of Costa Rica. They had been fellow graduate students at Yale years before. Another strange animal carcass had been found by campers on a remote beach, and they want to examine the remains before the government destroys them.

Levine is annoyed that the carcass is surrounded by footprints, and that the carcass may have been disturbed by the country’s Public Health Service. The helicopter pilot prevents Levine from taking any photos. Guitierrez argues with the pilot about this in Spanish while Levine examines the carcass. It is pretty decomposed already but Levine can see it not a mammal and that its skin was originally green with some darker streaks. It has some similarities to lizards but it is larger than any known lizards and its hind legs are more powerful, suggesting it walked upright. He also notes a deep gash on the animal’s thigh and realises something, but we don’t find out what because Guitierrez interrupts his thoughts. Guitierrez thinks the animal is an extremely large iguana but Levine disagrees, saying it is definitely not a lizard. He then notices something on the thigh and asks Guitierrez for his knife.

A second helicopter lands on the beach and men with flamethrowers approach the carcass, shouting at them to get back from it. Levine tries to stop them destroying the carcass but they ignore him, setting it on fire.

San José

Levine has a beer at San José airport while he waits for his flight back to the US. Guitierrez is with him and tries to make small talk about Levine’s fancy field gear, but Levine blames Guitierrez for not stopping the government workers from destroying the carcass and asks him wtf is going on. Guitierrez tells him that aberrant forms have been turning up on the coast occasionally for several years, and a group was found up in the mountains near a remote agricultural station growing soybeans (presumably these are the same ones he told Grant about in Jurassic Park’s epilogue). The assumption is that the animals need the amino acid lysine in their diets for some reason and are drawn to lysine-rich foods.

The government has been destroying any aberrant forms they find, and don’t want anyone to find out about them in case it affects tourism. Costa Rica is known for its healthcare system, and its epidemiologists have been tracking some new type of encephalitis along the coast which may be related to the mysterious animals. It mainly affects rural farmers or others who are around animals and livestock. However no causative agent has been found for the encephalitis, as it is not viral or bacterial. Guitierrez says the government has searched every square inch of the country, including offshore islands such as Isla Nublar, which was previously leased by InGen. He mentions other islands such as Isla Talamanca, which has a Club Med resort; Isla Sorna, which is leased by a German mining company; and Isla Morazan, which is privately owned by a wealthy Costa Rican family.

There has also been outside interest from mysterious people, such as a team of botanists who claimed to be from Berkeley but actually weren’t, and a couple of Swiss geologists who claimed to be studying volcanic activity on offshore islands but were actually from a genetics company called Biosyn – which of course is the company that paid Denis Nedry to steal dinosaur embryos from InGen in the last book. Guitierrez adds that Biosyn’s head of research is an unsavoury fellow called Lewis Dodgson, and after Dodgson test marketed a genetically engineered potato without permission, the company had to hire George Baselton to fix its image. He also says people say that Biosyn is the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists.

An announcement calls Levine’s flight, and the men say goodbye to each other.

Departure

As Levine heads to the departure lounge, he thinks about calling his secretary to let her know he will be on the flight, and considers calling Malcolm too. He looks at the bank of payphones, which are all being used, and realises that one of the people using a phone is the helicopter pilot that flew him and Guitierrez to the beach. Levine pretends to be adjusting his backpack and listens to the pilot, who is facing the other way and has not noticed he is eavesdropping. The pilot is speaking to George Baselton, and mentions that Levine doesn’t know anything and that he prevented him from taking photos. He mentions an island, but says he does not know which one it is.

Levine uses his satellite phone to call Malcolm and leaves a message about the carcass, giving him details such as the location and that he thinks it was an ornitholestes. He also mentions a deep gash on the lateral femur, which is extremely disturbing, but he does not elaborate as to why he thinks this. He is going to send Malcolm a sample he managed to obtain, adding that something new is happening.

Palo Alto

Ed James meets Lewis Dodgson and George Baselton at a Marie Callender diner at 2am. He has been gathering information for them, and Dodgson always schedules their meetings in the middle of the night. James has been following several scientists around, but he doesn’t understand why as they all seem to be doing pretty dull things; this includes Ellie Sattler, and James thinks that sitting through one of her palaeobotany lectures about pollen grains is not worth US$500 per day (according to an inflation calculator, US$500 in 1995 is worth US$1,007.30 in 2023; I would probably sit through a lecture on prehistoric pollen if you paid me a thousand dollars).

James gives files and photographs to Dodgson and Baselton, about subjects including Grant and Sattler, and deceased characters from Jurassic Park such as Donald Gennaro (who apparently died of dysentery on a business trip), Denis Nedry and John Hammond. He mentions that Hammond’s grandchildren live back east with their mother, and that Tim is now in college and Lex is in prep school.

InGen filed for Chapter 11 protection after Hammond’s death and its assets are being sold off. Baselton asks if that includes “Site B”, but James doesn’t know what he means; they don’t explain, but Baselton says if he hears anything about Site B, they want to know.

James mentions that Malcolm has taken up a visiting lectureship at Berkeley’s biology department, and that he seems to have lost contact with Levine; he heard that they argued about Levine’s planned expedition. Levine has ordered special vehicles from a company called Mobile Field Systems, which is run by a man called Jack Thorne and outfits vehicles for scientists doing field research. Levine was arrested for speeding near a junior high, and was made to teach a class at the school as well as having his car impounded and his licence taken away. He adds that Levine was in Costa Rica for a short trip and was due back early that morning, but never boarded the plane. Dodgson is fuming that James lost track of Levine, and orders him to find him immediately.

Berkeley

Malcolm receives a DHL delivery from Levine, which contains the sample from Costa Rica. Malcolm has been working on walking without the aid of his cane, as talking frequently with Levine has reignited his enthusiasm for the Lost World hypothesis and he wants to be able to walk unaided in case he visits an island in the future.

The package contains a stainless-steel cylinder marked with biohazard markings. Inside, there is a chunk of flesh around two inches square, which has some green pebbled skin a has small green plastic tag attached to it. He asks his assistant, Beverly, to contact Elizabeth Gelman at the zoo about the specimen and to tell her it is confidential. There is also a note in the package, which says “I was right and you were wrong.” Malcolm asks Beverly to contact Levine too as he needs to speak to him asap.

The Lost World

Levine is still in Costa Rica, climbing an island’s rocky cliff above the sea with a guide called Diego. At the top, they find the island contains primary forest, undisturbed by the hand of man. They hear distant calls which sound a bit like birds, but deeper and more resonant. Diego lights a cigarette, which is against Levine’s instructions, but Diego is unconcerned by the “bird” calls. Levine assembles a Lindstradt rifle that was specially manufactured for him in Sweden – apparently this is a fictional gun brand made up for the book – and hands it to Diego, and buckles a Lindstradt pistol around his own waist.

The island is the remains of an ancient volcanic crater; seemingly the coast is high cliffs, with a series of ridges leading into the crater in the interior. The jungle is dense, with enormous ferns and a high canopy of trees. Diego speaks, which is also against Levine’s instructions; he had told Diego not to speak on the island, not to use any cologne or smoke cigarettes, and to seal all food tightly in plastic. He had told Diego again and again how important it was that they don’t produce smells or make any sounds, but Diego appears to have paid no attention.

They hear a deep, rumbling, unearthly cry in the forest, which is answered by another cry from somewhere else. Below them, they see the tops of some trees moving as if caused by wind, but the rest of the forest is not moving. This seems to make Diego take Levine’s instructions more seriously.

They find an old overgrown jeep trail, and decide to follow it as it will be easier going than the dense jungle. Diego steps in some animal droppings, which appear to be from a large herbivore. At a stream, they see three-toed footprints in the mud; Levine has seen similar prints at sites like the Purgatoire River in Colorado, but these are in fresh mud rather than in a fossilized shoreline.

Levine also finds a broken pipette, which he thinks is odd because it implies… His train of thought is cut off by the appearance of a small animal which Levine recognises as a small prosauropod called a mussaurus that is about 10cm long. It comes out of the ferns and squeaks at Levine as if it is trying to drive him away (it is actually bigger than portrayed in this book, as the skeletons originally discovered were infants and juveniles; in reality, the adults were up to eight metres long).

Levine is startled to finally see a real dinosaur, even though he expected them to be on the island. The mussaurus ventures out further and sits upright, waving its tiny forearms in the air and squeaking repeatedly at them. Levine puts out his hand, and the dinosaur steps onto his palm and sniffs about. I no longer care that this dinosaur is inaccurate, it sounds absolutely adorable and I hope we see more of it.

Suddenly, the little dinosaur hisses and bolts. Levine smells a foul odour, and remembers that carnivores often hunt by water sources. He turns around in time to see Diego being dragged screaming into the jungle by an unseen animal. The forest erupts in roars, and Levine flees as an animal charges him. Something tears at his backpack and forces him to his knees, and he knows that despite all his planning he is about to die.

School

We meet Kelly Curtis, a seventh-grade student at the junior high where Levine is being made to teach as a punishment for speeding. He is not there that day though, and the students are watching a prerecorded presentation on a TV. Despite her interest in the topic, Kelly is bored as she already knows all the information in the video about the impact craters (the Manson crater in Iowa, the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula) that he is discussing in relation to the K-Pg extinction event.

Kelly and her friend R.B. ‘Arby’ Benton are working for Levine, and we learn that they are both intelligent but not popular with the other students. Arby is 11 years old and has already skipped two grades, and may skip another; he is a genius, especially with computers. Arby is Black, his parents are doctors in San Jose (presumably the one in California, not the one in Costa Rica) and he wears neat clothes that make him look like a college kid. Kelly is 13 and I’m guessing white since it isn’t specified, and that usually means white in books written by white authors. She seems to be from a poorer family, wearing second-hand clothes that she has to wash and iron herself as her mother is never home.

Arby is fixated on Levine not being there that day when he said he would be; Kelly thinks Arby is used to adults like his parents being reliable, and he is also bothered by changes in plans. Levine had promised to take them on a field trip and at this point in my reading I really thought he meant he was going to take them to Costa Rica. Kelly suggests they go to see Doc Thorne anyway. On their way out, Kelly is taunted by a group of mean girls while the hall monitor ignores it, and Arby tells her to forget what the girls say.

There is a man waiting in a car nearby, pretending to read a newspaper; he has been there on and off for around two months, monitoring Levine’s movements (presumably it is Ed James). Shortly after Levine began teaching there, he made Kelly and Arby his assistants and said they would be doing tasks like carrying equipment, photocopying documents and collecting homework. Instead of this, however, he sent them on errands and told them to avoid the man in the car. The kids quickly deduced that Levine was doing secret research and that he didn’t want anyone to find out about it, so getting them to do the errands meant the man following him wouldn’t notice.

Tag

Malcolm visits Elizabeth Gelman at San Francisco Zoo to talk about Levine’s sample. He has to wait until she feeds the baby animals in the nursery, including a snow leopard cub called Dorje who rolls onto her back to be petted and then bites Malcolm’s hand when he tries to stroke her belly. Malcolm clearly doesn’t have a cat, or he would have known about danger belly. (Do you want to know how cute snow leopard cubs are? Well here are some videos.)

Gelman says there has been a lot of interest in the sample from the other staff, and asks if it is from Costa Rica as she has also heard rumours about unknown animals showing up there. She goes through the results of her examination, which includes an unusual arrangement of epidermal cells; the chromatophores are dense and can open and close, meaning the animal could change colour. It also has femoral scent glands, indicating the animal was male.

Deeper into the sample, the smooth muscle fibres of the subcutaneous layers are not characteristic of lizards. In fact, everything about the slides is wrong for lizards or any other reptiles, suggesting it was warm blooded, possibly avian, but there are no feathers. The blood has nucleated red cells, which is characteristic of birds, and has a highly unusual immune system. She asks if Malcolm can get more samples, and mentions that Site B is embossed on the sample’s tag. The tag itself is unusual; it is not a type the zoo has seen before, despite being familiar with all the brands, and it is made of strong and durable plastic called Duralon. It is pitted, as if by acidic fumes, and is hollow, containing circuitry – it is a radio tag, so someone clearly tagged and raised the creature, which is what has everyone upset.

Malcolm denies knowing anything about it, and Gelman accurses him of lying. He takes the sample back and says he will explain soon over dinner. She asks him how it died, noting that there were foreign cells from another animal on the skin, suggesting it had been fighting. Malcolm says there were signs of a fight, and the animal had been wounded. Gelman also notes that the arterial vessels showed signs of chronic stress, and asks why a tagged animal would have such a stressful life. Outside, Malcolm tries to call Levine from a payphone but there is no answer.

Thorne

Kelly and Arby arrive at Thorne Mobile Field Systems, and Jack Thorne lets them in. Workers are modifying several vehicles in the workshop – they include a Ford Explorer being fitted with solar panels and two RV trailers, one of which is outfitted with living quarters for four people and the other of which is set up as a mobile laboratory. Thorne is overseeing the modifications and chiding the workers for not following the plans. The trailer is also having an IUD put in, and I’m not joking when I say I spent ages googling what it meant in this context before giving up, and then finding out in the next paragraph that it is Levine’s term – ‘Internal Ursine Deterrent’ – for an anti-bear system that will run 10,000 volts of electricity across the outside of the trailer to deter them.

The kids say Levine didn’t teach their class that day, and Thorne says he was supposed to be there that day too to go over final revisions before the vehicles were field tested. We find out that Levine had invited the kids to go on the field test, not to Costa Rica, which is a bit better. Eddie Carr, one of the workers, nearly drops a large metal cage on them; the cage part of a high observation platform and is made of thick titanium alloy, but is so light it can be lifted with one hand.

Thorne uses a custom satellite phone to call Levine, which is super secret and made with restricted technology developed for the CIA. He mentions that if he doesn’t get through he will try Sarah Harding, and Kelly is super impressed as she is one of her heroes – apparently Harding is also from a poor background and got scholarships to university, and now she is a 33-year-old badass rebel who lives alone in Africa and once walked 20 miles through the savannah alone, chasing away lions with rocks. Kelly thinks about how beautiful and independent Sarah Harding is, with her strong muscular body that is rugged yet glamorous, and I’m starting to wonder if Kelly is attracted to Sarah Harding or if it is just that Michael Crichton is attracted to Sarah Harding.

Levine finally answers the phone, but doesn’t appear to be able to hear them as he doesn’t know which button to press. He says he is on the island and needs them to send help. The line starts to break up, but they hear that someone is dead and that something vicious has him surrounded, as well as something about an injury. The line dies, probably because the phone battery went. Thorne is pale, and says they need to find Levine right away.

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

Trigger warnings: Storygraph users have marked the book with the following trigger warnings: Death, Violence, Gore, Animal death, Blood, Cursing

Other potentially useful links:

• The Lost World discussion schedule
• The Lost World marginalia
• Michael Crichton on Wikipedia
• History of evolutionary thought
• Timeline of Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event research
• Did extraterrestrial collisions capable of causing widespread extinctions pound the earth not once, but twice — or even several times?
• The 5 mass extinction events that shaped the history of Earth — and the 6th that's happening now

The discussion questions are in the comments below.

Join us for the second book discussion on Sunday 24th September, when we talk about the Second and Third Configurations.