Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton | Audible.com

Why it's essential

Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster of the same name proved that this cautionary tale of ambition, avarice, and the commodification of life was a natural fit for film. In audio, Scott Brick’s cool and unnerving narration of this sci-fi classic will get into your head, under your skin, and may even percolate into your dreams.

Featured in The Audible Essentials Top 100 and The Audible Essentials Top 100 Page-to-Screen Adaptations.

What's Jurassic Park about?

Michael Crichton's chilling speculative fiction novel follows the chaos that erupts on a remote site off of Costa Rica after a showboating entrepreneur's attempt to revive dinosaurs for the purpose of consumer entertainment goes horribly wrong. Billionaire John Hammond brings in a team of experts—including paleontologist Alan Grant, paleobotanist Ellie Sattler, and mathematician Ian Malcolm—alongside his own grandchildren to preview his latest venture: Jurassic Park, a new attraction showcasing living, breathing dinosaurs genetically recreated through DNA preserved in fossilized amber. When the park's security systems go down, the resurrected beasts run wild, and the group must fight to survive if they want to make it off the island alive.

Editor's review

Editor Alanna is a proponent of thoughtful storytelling of all kinds—from vulnerable, author-narrated memoir to works of horror and science fiction that meditate on the human condition.

I, like every other millennial, spent my youth equal parts enamored with and petrified by 1993's big screen adaptation of Jurassic Park. It was a cinematic marvel the likes of which I’d never seen before, brilliant story work bolstered by state-of-the-art animatronics and an impeccable cast. And yet, despite the raptors running rampant on Isla Nublar, there was a stark realism to the story, underpinned by a scientific premise that felt distressingly plausible.

Over the years, I’d watch it again and again and again, until I had memorized every line and singular moment, every bleat of the ill-fated goat, every water glass tremor. There was just one problem—now that I knew the film inside and out, I wanted more. And so, the instant I was old enough to get my preteen hands on a copy of the film’s source material, I did just that. (Spoiler alert: I loved it so, so much that I’d later name my own pet dino—okay, fine, bearded dragon, but close enough—"Crichton” in honor of the late author.)

Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton’s groundbreaking sci-fi standout that had inspired that film is speculative fiction as its very best—whip-smart, taut, and unflinching. Not once does the novel lack for something to say, whether it’s on the ethics of science, technology, and ambition or the resultant disaster from unleashing that which we do not fully comprehend into the world. Upon reading it for the first time, I was instantly struck by the effectiveness of the novel’s blend of minute high-tech, cerebral detail and flashes of graphic body horror, all strung together with a tight, suspenseful narrative. Throughout, there is an urgency to the story, conveying a warning about mankind’s hubris that, even three decades after the novel’s initial publication, we perhaps still fail to heed.

Impressively, what remains sharpest about Crichton’s masterwork aren't the teeth of an apex predator or claws sinking into prey. Instead, it’s the author's incisive musing on unfettered capitalism, the inescapable push-and-pull between chaos and control, and the impact of both on the natural world that cuts right to the bone. John Hammond, the founder of the fictional park, is not naïve about the misgivings—he simply does not care about the risks if they yield significant reward. Motivated only by the potential of profit, he is arguably a more effective antagonist than any of the carnivores lurking in the long grass. After all, the escaped dinosaurs are merely acting on instinct—the real destruction is wreaked by man’s attempts to commodify the natural world.

But that’s not to say the prehistoric threats in Jurassic Park don’t hold their own—the very first chapter, which sees a young girl on vacation with her family viciously attacked by a mysterious birdlike reptile (in reality, the small, bipedal dino Compsognathus), immediately sets a chilling tone that never warms throughout the novel. Whether it’s the relentlessly clever Velociraptor lunging from the darkness to hunt down our heroes or the flare-necked, poison-spewing Dilophosaurus that puts an end to one character's corporate disloyalty, the creatures roaming the park are nothing short of terrifying. Crichton doesn’t skip a single vicious detail either, underscoring not just the ethical implications but the deadly consequences of attempting to manipulate the inherently unpredictable process of evolution and all that is wild.

Hearing this novel in audio for the first time was like experiencing this world, though so familiar and so beloved, anew. Scott Brick brings an exquisite gravitas to the novel, his voice a looming specter of impending disaster. His performance is level, slow and steady, until it reaches a fever pitch, mirroring the suspense that builds with each savage primeval encounter. His performance emphasizes that Crichton’s timeless cautionary tale of man, beast, greed, and chaos is one that doesn’t just ask to be heard—it demands it. And in an era where we’re having conversations eerily similar to those posed in the novel about rapidly emerging technology, the insidious effects of unbridled capitalism, and the impact the combination of the two will soon have on all our lives, Crichton’s vision feels more pressing (and more advisory) than ever before.