Jurassic Park Summary
Author: Michael Crichton
This page offers our Jurassic Park summary (Michael Crichton's book). It opens with an overview of the book, and follows with a concise chapter-by-chapter summary.
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Overview
In a curious case of wildlife disturbance, children in Costa Rica have been subjected to attacks from an unidentified species of three-toed lizards. On examining a sample of the creature at a Columbia University lab, renowned paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, recognizes it as a dinosaur. Dr. Grant and his research partner, Dr. Ellie Sattler, are summoned to Isla Nublar, a Costa Rican island, by a bioengineering company, InGen, seeking their expertise. The island, the property of InGen’s owner, John Hammond, serves as a unique zoo, Jurassic Park, filled with cloned dinosaurs and is driven by advanced automated systems and machinery. However, concerns arise about the safety of this zoological park.
Despite the excitement of a dinosaur park, the underlying risks cannot be ignored. Ian Malcolm, a mathematician acting as a consultant for InGen, predicts disaster through the lens of chaos theory. Adding to the potential perils, Dennis Nedry, the architect of the park's computer network, is secretly collaborating with Biosyn Corporation, a rival company, intending to steal dinosaur embryos. This act leads to the park’s security system shutdown, and nearly all other systems malfunction. The result is catastrophic as dinosaurs escape, and Nedry, lost and unable to deliver the stolen embryos, is killed by a dinosaur.
The park descends into chaos when a power outage leaves visitors, including Grant, Malcolm, Hammond's grandchildren Tim and Lex, stranded in their electric tour cars. The dormant electric fences around the dinosaur paddocks fail, leading to a t-rex breaking out, consuming a park employee, and gravely injuring Malcolm. As Grant and the children navigate the park on foot, they discover signs of dinosaur breeding, contradicting the assertion that all dinosaurs in the park are female. The situation further spirals when the velociraptors, small but deadly dinosaurs, break loose, resulting in more deaths. The survivors manage to reactivate the electric fences and repel the velociraptors while the Costa Rican National Guard performs a rescue operation, subsequently destroying the island. As the ordeal concludes, Grant comes across information about unidentified lizards spotted on the mainland, marking an uncertain future.
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