Angels & Demons

Angels & Demons is a 2000 bestselling mystery-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published by Pocket Books. The novel introduces the character Robert Langdon, who is also the protagonist of Brown's subsequent 2003 novel, The Da Vinci Code; his 2009 novel, The Lost Symbol; and the 2013 novel Inferno. Angels and Demons shares many stylistic literary elements with its sequel, such as conspiracies of secret societies, a single-day time frame, and the Catholic Church. Ancient history, architecture, and symbolism are also heavily referenced throughout the book.

Angels & Demons introduces the character of Robert Langdon, professor of religious iconology and art history at Harvard University. As the novel begins, he's awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call from Maximilian Kohler, the director of CERN, the world's largest scientific research facility in Geneva, Switzerland. One of their top physicists had been murdered, with his chest branded with the word "Illuminati." Since Langdon is an expert on the ancient secret society known as the Illuminati, he's asked to help solve the murder. A high tech X-33 plane transports Langdon from Massachusetts to Switzerland in a little more than an hour.

The murder victim is Leonardo Vetra. Not only is he one of the world's leading physicists, he's a Catholic priest. He's a priest who has adopted a daughter, Vittoria, who is also a scientist at CERN. This was the largest suspension of disbelief for me, a man who is a priest, a father, and a top physicist, but accepting it sets the rest of the story in motion. Vetra and his daughter were using the world's largest particle accelerator to create antimatter, and then suspend the antimatter properly in canisters so that it doesn't interact with matter. If a canister is removed from the electrical system which keeps the matter and antimatter separated, then backup batteries will serve the same purpose for 24 hours. When those 24 hours expire, the two will collide in an instantaneous explosion of unprecedented power.

Lenoardo Vetra created the antimatter to simulate the Big Bang. In his mind, this would show proof that God exists, being able to create new matter and antimatter in the same way God created the universe. Vetra's murder, though, allows one of the canisters to be stolen. The question of who stole the canister and what they planned to do with it is soon answered. The canister is quickly found on a security camera in Vatican City, with its LEDs counting down the time until the batteries run out. The security camera, however, is nowhere to be found, leaving the canister's whereabouts a mystery too. Langdon and Vittoria Petra are quickly sent off to Rome and Vatican City, to help find the canister and return it to CERN before it explodes at midnight.

Not only does the canister threaten to destroy Vatican City, but with the recent death of the Pope, the cardinals of the Catholic Church are all within the city for the conclave to choose the new pope. They are all about to be locked within the Sistine Chapel where, according to church law, they must remain until a new pope is chosen. They are awaiting the preferiti, the four cardinals from four different European countries who are the preferred candidates to become the new pope. While Langdon and Vittoria are trying to convince the captain of the Swiss Guard and the camerlengo, the Pope's chamberlain who leads the church until the new pope is named, that the antimatter bomb is real, a phone call is received from a man who claims to be from the Illuminati. He has the four cardinals, which he will murder one by one, and then allow the bomb to destroy Vatican City, which houses not only the church hierarchy, but also its possessions and wealth. He has no demands; his only wish is the destruction of the Catholic Church in retribution for the church's treatment of scientists and the Illuminati over the centuries.

Langdon and Vittoria Vetra are in a race against time. They dig through archives and ancient mysteries to find clues, which also requires an extensive background in art history and religious symbology. This makes Robert Langdon the expert tour guide through all this arcane knowledge with his congenial and scholarly fashion, doing his best to educate without seeming superior with his own intelligence. Much like The Da Vinci Code, Langdon understands enough about each mystery to go in search of the missing pieces necessary to solve each puzzle, which leads him to the next one. Vittoria is beautiful, tough, intelligent, and determined to avenge her father's murder and keep the canister from exploding. The two of them are constantly one step behind the Illuminati, and once it's clear that the Swiss Guard and Vatican City have been penetrated by the ancient society, they don't know whom to trust. This leads them through churches, fountains, crypts, forgotten passages, secret passages, and catacombs. Death stalks them at every turn, in one form or another.

So it's time for the comparisons of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code. In some ways, Angels & Demons has a more suspenseful storyline with the antimatter bomb and the race to prevent the destruction of Vatican City. Both share a hired assassin, a tough and beautiful woman as Langdon's sidekick who's mourning the murder of a loved one, and mysteries that require extensive knowledge of art history, religious symbology, and secret societies. Robert Langdon is a protagonist that you can't dislike in any way, with just enough vulnerability to go along with his intelligence and right amount of charm. Angels & Demons is a looser story. It takes longer to get going, each new puzzle takes longer to solve, and too much character background is given for too many characters. While Dan Brown's writing style will never be called literary, he's obviously matured as a writer between the two books. The chapters in The Da Vinci Code are shorter, tighter, and the suspense is never allowed to wane.

The Lost Symbol

The Lost Symbol is a 2009 novel written by American writer Dan Brown.It is a thriller set in Washington, D.C., after the events of The Da Vinci Code, and relies on Freemasonry for both its recurring theme and its major characters.Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, following 2000's Angels & Demons and 2003's The Da Vinci Code

Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who was Dan Brown's protagonist in The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, is back. He's called to Washington, D.C. on the spur of the moment to give a speech in the Capitol Building. The request ostensibly comes from his old friend and mentor, Peter Solomon. Solomon comes from old money and power and is a leader in the Freemasons. Langdon agrees to the request, only to find that the invitation was a hoax. Not only is there no speech to give, but the only evidence of Peter Solomon's presence in the Capitol is his severed hand. It's found in the center of the Capitol Rotunda, tattooed with symbols from the Ancient Mysteries, and the hand is pointing to the ceiling.

This lets Dan Brown do what he does best. It provides him with the opportunity, via Robert Langdon, to explore arcane knowledge of Washington, D.C. and to educate us about the Masons and their influence on the Founding Fathers as well as today's leaders. As Langdon struggles to understand the clues left by the severed hand, he explains the little he does know to Capitol security and the CIA, who treat him in an unfriendly manner. Solving a few of these clues take them to parts of the Capitol that even Langdon never knew about. The game is on and there is only a finite amount of time to find the answers that will save Peter Solomon's life.

The evildoer in The Lost Symbol is a man in search of ultimate power, Mal'akh (the name of an angel in the Hebrew Bible). He has covered almost his entire body with tattoos, undergone self-castration, and devoted himself to studying and mastering all the ancient arts that will allow him to become one with the gods. The Masons believe they protect the Ancient Mysteries, those powerful and mystic secrets that mankind is not mature enough to handle yet. Mal'akh believes the Masonic Pyramid, which will lead to the hiding place of this supernatural force, is in Washington, D.C. If Langdon doesn't help Mal'akh solve all the mysteries and clues that reveal where this treasure trove of power is hidden, then Peter Solomon will die.

A parallel storyline develops with Katherine Solomon, Peter's sister, who is a scientist studying noetics. She has performed experiments that prove thoughts have mass, and as such, can be concentrated to affect the physical world. While Langdon is exploring the Capitol, Mal'akh has time to try to murder Katherine and destroy her laboratory. He's afraid her research will make the supernatural power he craves available to any mere mortal. Eventually, Katherine and Langdon join forces and they're pursued by the CIA. With time always appearing to be running out, Katherine and Langdon dash among some of the most famous buildings in Washington, D.C., giving Langdon a few moments to comment on their history and the symbolic meaning of their paintings, statues, and architectural details.

Anyone who has read and enjoyed The Da Vinci Code will wonder how The Lost Symbol stands up in comparison to the novel that made Dan Brown famous. The answer is not very well. The main difference is pace. The Da Vinci Code began immediately with a corpse and the suspense never flagged until the end. Dan Brown mixed in enough esoteric information, ancient clues, and conspiracy theories to keep the reader hooked as Langdon managed to stay one step ahead of those who wanted to stop him.

The Lost Symbol starts slowly. Peter Solomon's hand isn't discovered until many chapters into the book. There are bursts of thrilling suspense only to have everything slow to a more somnambulist pace as Mal'akh's story is told or Katherine Solomon is working in her lab. These stops and starts are frustrating. Neither Mal'akh nor Katherine ever becomes that interesting. When the novel revolves around Langdon, it moves sharply while Langdon decodes clues and throws out historical information. About halfway through the book, the story takes off, and for 200 pages, you don't want to put the book down. Dan Brown knows how to make a thriller chilling and interesting.

The ending is disappointing. The climax occurs well before the end, and Dan Brown goes on for way too many pages exploring the final mysteries of the Masons in Washington, D.C. Instead of heaving a sigh of contentment as the book is closed, many readers will be left with the reaction, "That's it?" The best part of any Dan Brown book is that he makes you believe that the newly found secrets, the forgotten or hidden histories, and the conspiracies just might be true. At the end of The Lost Symbol, though, you're left not really caring whether they were true or not.

The Lost Symbol is not a bad read and very enjoyable for large parts of it. It doesn't live up to the standard set by The Da Vinci Code, and it would wrong of anybody to expect that. Dan Brown may write clunky prose at times, but you can forgive that when the thriller is running at full tilt. When the plot sags, that same prose grates on your nerves. If you think The Da Vinci Code was overblown and famous for all the wrong reasons, you won't enjoy The Lost Symbol. If you loved The Da Vinci Code, then you will enjoy some of Dan Brown's new novel. Just don't set your expectations too high.

The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective novel written by Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and cryptologist Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a battle between the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility of Jesus having been married to Mary Magdalene.

Robert Langdon is a Harvard Professor of art history and religious symbology. He has spent a lifetime exploring religions and theology and explaining the use of their symbols in art and history. He is a veritable gold mine of information about the Catholic church, pagan religions, and religious mysteries. As The Da Vinci Code begins, he is in Paris to give a speech and to meet with Jacques Saunière, the curator of the Louvre, although he's unaware of why Saunière wants to meet with him. Unfortunately, Saunière is murdered in the Grand Hall of the Louvre and the French police get Langdon out of bed, ostensibly to help them understand the information and symbols Saunière left at the murder scene. Actually, Langdon is their prime suspect and they want to see if he inadvertently gives incriminating information before they arrest him. Trapped within his own gallery, Saunière had enough time to leave clues to his killer and to the information for which he was murdered. Langdon, however, cannot understand the clues left behind and the captain of the French police, Bezu Fache, is certain that they point to Langdon as the killer.

They are interrupted at the murder scene by Sophie Neveu, a police cryptologist who claims to have broken the code of the seemingly random numbers left next to the corpse. Unknown to Bezu Fache, Sophie is also Saunière's granddaughter and she is certain the clues he left behind were meant for her and that Langdon is not only innocent, but the key to helping her understand it all. She manages to help Langdon fake an escape from the Louvre which sends Bezu Fache away long enough so Langdon and she can study the clues left behind by Saunière. The dead body is naked and lying spread-eagle with a circle around it. They realize that Saunière was duplicating Leonardo Da Vinci's famous painting, "The Vitruvian Man." They quickly decipher the information which leads them to different paintings by Da Vinci, and Sophie finds the item left behind for her by her grandfather. She then understands why he didn't want it to fall into the hands of the police. She and Langdon hit the road, one step ahead of the police and the people behind Saunière's murder who want what they've discovered.

All that occurs in the first few short chapters and it sets a pace which never wanes for the rest of the book. Sophie and Langdon manage to barely escape from many dicey situations, but never in an unbelievable way. They continue to solve each ensuing puzzle and riddle they encounter, leading them deeper into more mysteries they must comprehend. Jacques Saunière was much more than just the curator of the Louvre; he raised Sophie after her parents died in an accident and he constantly entertained her with puzzles, riddles, and secret information. Sophie and Langdon soon realize that he was also a member of a secret society called the Priory of Sion, which over the centuries had included men such as Da Vinci, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Isaac Newton. Langdon is more familiar with the Priory, and he tells Sophie the story of their long history and that they purportedly keep hidden documents concerning the truth about the early Catholic church that the church never wants revealed, and that they also allegedly know the hiding spot of the Holy Grail.

Without giving more of the plot away, suffice it to say that everyone in this book is in the hunt for the secrets hidden by the Priory of Sion including the Grail. Some want to protect it, some want to expose it, and some want to destroy it. With the information provided to them by Jacques Saunière, Sophie and Langdon are ahead of everyone else, but police, assassins, and churchmen aren't far behind. The race is on, the tension is high, and the puzzles to be solved seem incomprehensible.

Along the way, Langdon educates Sophie as well as the reader in large amounts of information concerning religions, symbols, history, and the story of the Holy Grail. Dan Brown is crafty enough to have Langdon present this in a way that comes across like a professor (which Langdon is) passing it on to his class without a lot of moralistic overtones. His explanations for clues and tricks hidden within Da Vinci's paintings make you want to go look at them all and see if it's true. His comments about the early church, the origins of the gospels, and the assimilation of pagan rituals and symbols into the church's practices and holy days makes sense when he tells them and they come across as easily understood historical facts, whether true or not. The pages turn quickly as the information is presented, the latest puzzle is solved, and the next escape is done by the skin of their teeth.

The characters in The Da Vinci Code don't play second fiddle to the storyline. Robert Langdon is one of those highly intelligent people who doesn't use it to lord over those with inferior educations. He's even-tempered with a touch of sardonic wit and quick to admit when he doesn't know something. Bezu Fache is the hard-driving police captain, smart, thinking one step ahead, and always aware of the political implications of what he's doing. Silas, believing everything he's doing is for God, is an albino Opus Dei monk who murders by instruction from The Teacher, an unknown man who directs the search for the Priory's secrets. Leigh Teabing is an affluent and eccentric Englishman obsessed with the quest for the Grail and disparaging of most things French. Dan Brown uses each of these characters to poke fun at their own culture and bring realism to the international scenarios necessary when dealing with secret societies, religious conspiracies, and the quest for what might be the ultimate mysteries of Christianity. The character who ties everything together and brings the proper sense of humanity and morality to the story, though, is Sophie Neveu. Dealing with the death of her beloved grandfather, coming to understand more of her past, and being the possessor of information that could change history and religion, she strikes the right tone of strength and vulnerability to make everything else in this novel believable.

The chapters in The Da Vinci Code are short, usually not more than a couple pages. Most of them end with a cliffhanger that immediately catapults you into the next chapter. So grab this book, sit back, and prepare to be entertained and educated. It's well-written, it's intelligent, and best of all, it's fun.

Inferno

Inferno is a 2013 mystery thriller novel by renowned American author Dan Brown and the fourth book in his Robert Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.

Harvard University professor Robert Langdon wakes up in a hospital with a head wound and no memory of the last few days. His last memory is walking on the Harvard campus, but he quickly realizes that he is now in Florence. Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors tending to him, tells him he suffered a concussion from being grazed by a bullet and had stumbled into the emergency ward. Suddenly, Vayentha, a female assassin who has been following Robert, breaks into the hospital, shoots the doctor in charge of Robert's care, and approaches Robert's room. Sienna grabs Robert and they flee to her apartment.

After Sienna recounts the details of his admission to hospital, Robert finds a cylinder with a biohazard sign in his jacket and decides to call the U.S. consulate. He is told that they are searching for him and want his location. Per Sienna's guidance, Robert gives them a location across the street from Sienna's apartment to avoid getting Sienna more involved in his mysterious situation than she already is. Soon, Robert sees an armed Vayentha pull up to the location Robert gave the consulate. At this point Sienna and Robert believe the U.S. government wants to kill him.

Robert decides to open the container and finds a small medieval bone cylinder fitted with a hi-tech projector that displays a modified version of Botticelli's Map of Hell. At the bottom of the illumination are the words "The truth can be glimpsed only through the eyes of death." Suddenly, soldiers raid Sienna's building; Sienna and Robert narrowly escape.

Robert and Sienna head toward the Old City, believing the cylinder must have something to do with Dante. However, they find that Florentine police and Carabinieri officers have sealed the bridges and are searching for them. They run into a construction site near the Boboli Gardens where Robert illuminates the modified "Map of Hell" again, notices that individual letters, which collectively spell "CATROVACER," have been added to each of the ten layers of the Malebolge, and that the layers have been rearranged. Moving them back to the order in the original Botticelli "Map of Hell" yields the words "CERCA TROVA". Robert recognizes these are the same words on the painting The Battle of Marciano by Vasari, located in the Palazzo Vecchio. Robert and Sienna manage to evade the soldiers and get into the Old City using the Vasari Corridor.

Robert stands in front of The Battle of Marciano trying to figure out where to go next by connecting the "eyes of death" phrase in the modified "Map of Hell" with his location. A custodian sees Robert snooping around and gets the director of the museum in the Palazzo Vecchio, Marta Alvarez. Marta recognizes Robert, having met him and Ignazio Busoni, the director of Il Duomo, the previous night. She leads Robert and Sienna up a set of stairs by The Battle of Marciano, and Robert realizes the top of the stairs is on the same level as the words "cerca trova" in the The Battle of Marciano painting. Marta tells Robert that she showed them Dante's death mask the previous night, which sits in a room down the hall from the Battle of Marciano painting. Robert realizes he is retracing his own steps from the previous night. Marta takes Robert and Sienna to the mask who find that it's gone. They look at security footage and see Robert himself and Ignazio stealing the mask. The museum guards turn on Robert and Sienna. At this moment, Marta calls Ignazio's office to question him but is greeted by his secretary, who informs Marta that Ignazio died of a heart attack the other night but left a message for Robert moments before he died. Ignazio's secretary asks to speak with Robert and plays to him Ignazio's message. In it Ignazio esoterically tells Robert where the mask is hidden, referring to "Paradise 25."

Robert and Sienna escape the guards, but the soldiers arrive. They cross the attic over the Apotheosis of Cosimo I, where Sienna pushes Vayentha to her death. Robert connects the phrase "Paradise 25" to the Florence Baptistry, where he and Sienna find the Dante mask along with a riddle from its current owner, a billionaire geneticist named Bertrand Zobrist. A man named Jonathan Ferris, with a large bruise on his chest which he hides from the two, claiming to be from the World Health Organization (WHO), comes and helps them escape the soldiers. They follow the riddle to Venice, where Jonathan suddenly falls unconscious. Robert is captured by a group of black-clad soldiers while Sienna escapes.

Robert is taken to Elizabeth Sinskey, the director-general of the WHO, and is given an explanation of what is going on: Zobrist, who committed suicide the week before, was a mad scientist and Dante fanatic who has supposedly developed a new biological plague that will kill off a large portion of the world's population in order to quickly solve the problem of the world's impending overpopulation. Elizabeth raided Zobrist's safe deposit box, found the cylinder, and flew Robert to Florence to follow the clues. However, Robert stopped communicating with Elizabeth after meeting with Marta and Ignazio, and the WHO feared he betrayed them and was working with Zobrist to unleash the plague. The soldiers were the WHO's emergency response team and never meant to kill Robert.

Zobrist had paid a shadowy consulting group called The Consortium to protect the cylinder until a certain date. When Elizabeth took it away, they were obligated to protect whatever the bone cylinder pointed to. They kidnapped Robert after the meeting with Marta and Ignazio, but Robert hadn't yet solved the whole riddle. They gave Robert benzodiazepine drugs to erase his short-term memory, created a fake head wound, and staged every event up to this point so that Robert would be motivated to solve it. Sienna, Vayentha, and Jonathan are all actors working for The Consortium; the call to the U.S. consulate was also staged. The leader of The Consortium, having become aware of the bioterrorism plot, has agreed to cooperate with the WHO.

Sienna goes rogue, and The Consortium realizes she was a secret supporter and lover of Zobrist. She learned where the plague is being kept after Robert solved the riddle and acquires a private jet to get to it before everyone else. Robert, the WHO, and The Consortium team up to stop her by going to the riddle's actual location: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, where Enrico Dandolo is buried. Robert and the others find the plague is in the Cistern, but discover that Sienna is already there. The bag that held the plague had already been broken for an entire week, spreading through the outer world via visiting tourists. Sienna runs out of the Cistern yelling something in Turkish, which causes panic among the tourists who stampede out into the city.

It is discovered Sienna didn't puncture the bag; it was water soluble and had dissolved one week previously in the Cistern waters, meaning that the whole world has already been infected. It is also discovered that Sienna was trying to stop the virus herself, but didn't trust the WHO because samples of the virus would certainly find their way into the hands of governments performing weapons research. The leader of The Consortium tries to escape WHO custody with help from disguised underlings, but is caught later by Turkish police. It is implied that The Consortium will be investigated and ruined. Sienna receives amnesty in exchange for working with the WHO to address the crisis, since she is a medical doctor and transhumanist writer.

The plague that Zobrist created is revealed to be a vector virus that randomly activates to employ DNA modification to cause sterility in 1/3 of humans. Even with future generic engineering technology, changing the human genome back would be hazardous. The human race, therefore, has been forced into a new age.

Congo

Congo is a 1980 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense rain forest of Congo. Crichton calls Congo a Lost World novel in the tradition founded by Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, featuring the mines of that work's title.

The novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition sent by Earth Resource Technology Services Inc. in the dense rain forests of Congo (unspecified which Congo) when the team is attacked and killed by an unknown creature and all contact with them is lost. The expedition, searching for deposits of valuable diamonds, discovered the legendary lost city of Zinj (in Arabic Zinj or Zanj refers to the southern part of the East African coast). A video image taken by a camera there, and transmitted by satellite to the base station in Houston, shows a peculiar race of grey haired gorillas, to be responsible for the murders.

Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the city of Zinj, where there are believed to be deposits of a certain diamond, type IIb, which are naturally boron-doped and thus useful as semiconductors, though worthless as gemstones. This time the searchers bring along the famous White African mercenary Munro, as well as a female gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot. Time is of the greatest essence, as a rival consortium of Japan, Germany, and Holland has also set off into the jungle after the diamonds, turning the entire expedition into a race to the city of Zinj. Unfortunately for Ross and her team, the American expedition encounters many delays along the way, including plane crashes, native civil wars, and jungle predators.

Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the City of Zinj and discover the consortium camp, like the original expedition's camp, in ruins and devoid of life. Ross and her team lose contact with the ERTS HQ due to a massive solar flare, then encounter the killer gorillas and are attacked. A brief battle ensues and several gorillas are killed. After studying the corpses and performing a rudimentary field autopsy, it is concluded the animals are not "true" gorillas by modern biological standards, but presumably a gorilla-chimpanzee or gorilla-human hybrid: their mass and height is closer to humans than gorillas, their skull is greatly malformed (the "ridge" that makes gorilla heads look "pointy" is nearly nonexistent) as well as their pigmentation is on the border of albinism: light gray fur and yellow eyes.

In addition, they exhibit different behavior: they are much more aggressive, ruthless and partially nocturnal (attacks are always at night, yet a very large group was observed feeding during the day). Peter Elliot intends to name them Gorilla elliotensis after himself. Afterwards, Ross, Elliot, and Munro explore the ruins and discover that the killer gorillas were bred by the ancient inhabitants of Zinj to serve as guard dogs to protect the diamond mines from intruders. After several more attacks, Elliot, with the help of Amy, finds a way to translate the language of the new gorillas (she refers to them as "bad gorillas") and piece together three messages ("go away", "don't come", "here bad"); they stop fighting the humans and become confused, leaving the camp. Their victory is cut short by the eruption of the nearby volcano, accelerated by the explosives placed by Ross for her geological surveys, that buries the city, the diamond fields and all proof of the "new" species under 800 meters of lava. Ross, Elliot, Munro, and the rest of the team's survivors are forced to run for their lives. The team then manages to find a hot air balloon in a crashed consortium cargo aircraft and uses it to escape. In an epilogue, it is revealed that Munro was able to retrieve a few hundred carats of the valuable diamonds and sold them to Intel for use in a revolutionary new computer processor, while Amy was reintroduced into the wild and was later observed teaching her offspring sign language

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park is a science fiction novel written by Michael Crichton. Often considered a cautionary tale on unconsidered biological tinkering in the same spirit as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it uses the metaphor of the collapse of an amusement park showcasing genetically recreated dinosaurs to illustrate the mathematical concept of chaos theory and its philosophical implications. In 1993, Steven Spielberg adapted the book into the blockbuster film Jurassic Park. The book's sequel, The Lost World (1995), was also adapted by Spielberg into a film in 1997. A third film directed by Joe Johnston and released in 2001, drew several elements, themes, and scenes from both books that were ultimately not utilized in either of the previous films, such as the aviary and boat scenes.

The narrative begins in August 1989 by slowly tying together a series of incidents involving strange animal attacks in Costa Rica and on fictional Isla Nublar,[1] the main setting for the story. One of the species, a strange, small, lizard-like creature with three toes, is identified later as a Procompsognathus. Paleontologist Alan Grant and his paleobotanist graduate student, Ellie Sattler, are abruptly whisked away by billionaire John Hammond — founder and chief executive officer of International Genetic Technologies, or InGen — for a weekend visit to a "biological preserve" he has established on a remote island off the coast of Costa Rica.

Upon arrival, the preserve is revealed to be Jurassic Park, a theme park showcasing cloned dinosaurs. The animals have been recreated using damaged dinosaur DNA found in mosquitoes preserved in prehistoric amber. Gaps in the genetic code have been filled in with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. To control the population, all specimens on the island are lysine-deficient females. Hammond proudly touts InGen's advances in genetic engineering and shows his guests through the island's vast array of automated systems.

Recent events in the park have spooked Hammond's investors. To placate them, Hammond means for Grant and Sattler to act as fresh consultants. They stand in counterbalance to a well-known mathematician and chaos theorist, Ian Malcolm, and a lawyer representing the investors, Donald Gennaro. Both are pessimistic about the park's prospects. Malcolm, having been consulted before the park's creation, is especially emphatic in his prediction that the park will collapse, as it is an unsustainable simple structure bluntly forced upon a complex system.

Countering Malcolm's dire predictions with youthful energy, Hammond groups the consultants with his grandchildren, Tim and Alexis "Lex" Murphy. While touring the park with the children, Grant finds a Velociraptor eggshell, which seems to prove Malcolm's earlier assertion that the dinosaurs have been breeding against the geneticists' design. Malcolm suggests a flaw in their method of analyzing dinosaur populations, in that motion detectors were set to search only for the expected number of creatures in the park and not for any higher number. The park's controllers are reluctant to admit that the park has long been operating beyond their constraints. Malcolm also points out the height distribution of the Procompsognathi forms a Gaussian distribution, the curve of a breeding population, rather than the distinctive pattern that a population reared in batches ought to display.

In the midst of this, the chief programmer of Jurassic Park's controlling software, Dennis Nedry, attempts corporate espionage for Lewis Dodgson, a geneticist and agent of InGen's archrival, Biosyn. By activating a backdoor he wrote into the park's computer system, Nedry manages to shut down its security systems and quickly steal frozen embryos, two for each of the park's fifteen species. He then attempts to smuggle them out to a contact waiting at an auxiliary dock deep in the park. However, during a sudden tropical storm, he exits his stolen vehicle to get his bearings and is killed by a pack of Dilophosauri. Without Nedry to reactivate the park's security, the electrified fences remain off and dinosaurs escape. The adult and juvenile Tyrannosaurus Rex attack the guests on tour, destroying the vehicles, killing public relations manager Ed Regis, and leaving Grant and the children lost in the park.

Malcolm is gravely injured during the incident, but is soon found by Gennaro and park game warden Robert Muldoon and spends the remainder of the novel slowly dying as, between lucid lectures and morphine-induced rants, he tries to help those in the main compound understand their predicament and survive.

The park's upper management — engineer and park supervisor John Arnold, chief geneticist Henry Wu, Muldoon, and Hammond — struggle to return power to the park, while the veterinarian, Dr. Harding, takes care of the injured Malcolm. For a time they manage to get the park largely back in order, restoring the computer system by shutting down and restarting the power and resetting the system. Unfortunately, a series of errors on their part soon plunge the park into greater chaos. During their time trying to restore the park to working order, they fail to notice that the system has been running on auxiliary power since the restart; this power soon runs out, shutting the park down a second time. Furthermore, since the auxiliary generators did not produce enough electricity to power the fences, the fences were not reactivated when the system was reset, meaning all the fences — including the holding pen containing the park's Velociraptors, quarantined due to their intelligence and aggression — had been offline the whole time. Escaping their enclosure, the Velociraptors kill Wu and Arnold and injure Muldoon, Gennaro, and Harding. Meanwhile, Grant and the children slowly make their way back to the Visitor Center by rafting down the jungle river, carrying news that several young Velociraptors, bred and raised in the island's wilds, were on board the Anne B, the island's supply ship, when it departed for the mainland.

While Ellie distracts the Velociraptors, Grant manages to turn the park's main power back on. After escaping from several Velociraptors, Grant, Gennaro, Tim, and Lex are able to make it to the control room, where Tim is able to contact the Anne B and tell them to return to the island. The survivors are then able to organize themselves and eventually save their own lives. Word soon reaches them that the crew of the Anne B has discovered and killed the Velociraptor stowaways.

Gennaro tries to order the island destroyed as a dangerous asset, but Grant rejects his authority, claiming that even though they cannot control the island, they have a responsibility to understand just what happened and how many dinosaurs have already escaped to the mainland. Grant, Ellie, and Muldoon set out into the park to find the wild Velociraptor nests and compare hatched eggs with the island's revised population tally. Cautious in this pursuit, they emerge unharmed. Meanwhile, Hammond, taking a walk around the park and contemplating making a park improving on his previous mistakes, hears the T-Rex roar and falls down a hill where he is eaten by a pack of Procompsognathi. Concerning the dinosaurs' breeding, it is eventually revealed that using frog DNA to fill gaps in the dinosaurs' genetic code enabled a measure of dichogamy, in which some of the female animals changed into males in response to the all-female environment.

In the conclusion, before boarding helicopters, the group tell the Costa Rican air force that the dinosaurs had been killing people. The air force then say that the island is dangerous and releases napalm over the island, destroying the island and the dinosaurs. It is implied that Malcolm dies. Survivors of the incident are indefinitely detained by the United States and Costa Rican governments. Weeks later, Grant is visited by Dr. Martin Guitierrez, an American doctor who lives in Costa Rica and has found a Procompsognathus corpse. Guitierrez informs Grant that an unknown pack of animals has been migrating through the Costa Rican jungle, eating lysine-rich crops and chickens. He also informs Grant that none of them, with the possible exception of Tim and Lex, are going to leave any time soon.

The Lost World

The Lost World is a techno-thriller novel written by Michael Crichton and published in 1995 by Knopf.It is a sequel to his earlier novel Jurassic Park.Like Arthur Conan Doyle's novel of the same name, Crichton's novel concerns an expedition to an isolated Central American location where dinosaurs roam—though in this case, the dinosaurs were recreated by genetic engineering, rather than surviving from antiquity.

Six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm—who is revealed to have survived the events of the previous novel via a retcon—teams up with paleontologist Richard Levine after learning about Isla Sorna, the "production facility" where the park's dinosaurs were hatched and grown near Isla Nublar (the Jurassic Park site). When Levine leaves without Malcolm, he plans a rescue, with a team consisting of Doc Thorne, Eddie Carr, and two stowaway children, R.B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis.

Simultaneously, another group—geneticist Lewis Dodgson, Howard King and George Baselton—also go to Isla Sorna, with plans to steal dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of InGen, the company that created Jurassic Park. On the way to the island, Sarah Harding, an animal behaviorist who has worked in the African savanna, is on her way to meet with Dr. Thorne and Malcolm when she encounters Dodgson and his party. Dodgson at first dismisses Sarah until she reveals she is trying to make her way to Isla Sorna. He then offers to take her, but just before they reach the island, Dodgson throws Harding off the boat and leaves her for dead; she is then rescued by Malcolm's group. The entire rogue group is later killed by dinosaurs on the island.

The group finds Levine alive and well, but bitten. A velociraptor attack leaves Eddie dead and Malcolm is injured by the Tyrannosaurus Rex parents looking for their baby. Malcolm then spends much of the novel high on morphine, leaving him prone to talk at length about evolution on Isla Sorna, whose raptors are antisocial compared to those living on Isla Nublar. He discovers that InGen fed dinosaurs sheep infected with prion disease, which causes life spans of dinosaurs to be shorter than normal. The disease passes to animals bitten by them, leading to an eventual extinction of the dinosaurs on Isla Sorna. Kelly discovers a boat in an abandoned building and the group escapes the island. On the boat, Malcolm tells Levine about the prion disease, which was spread island wide by the scavenger procompsognathus species, but tells Levine his bites are fine and the disease would only infect dinosaurs.