Alrightreads: Dino Trilogy

Jurassic Park was the first grown-up novel I read (aged nine to ten, twice), and I really enjoyed it. At least, I really enjoyed the bits with dinosaurs in. The rest – presumably the majority of the book with boring humans in it – doesn't even exist in my memory, apart from Ian Malcolm's perplexing chaos theory diagrams.

Watching the film again as an adult, scenes that were very familiar from childhood viewings yet somehow devoid of meaning at the same time suddenly cohered into new layers of story that I either didn't grasp or just wasn't interested in back then. I wonder what forgotten surprises the novel has in store. He wrote some others too.


Michael Crichton, Dragon Teeth

1974 (pub.2017) / Audiobook / 320 pages / USA

***

"We kept our hands on our pistol butts."

Dug up after the author's own extinction, there's no science fiction in this historical Bildungsroman, but its escalating action still has an eye to Hollywood. By going back to the dawn of paleontology, it works as a nice if strangely delayed prelude to his more famous dino books. Though I am slightly sceptical that they happened to chance upon a complete unpublished work on the author's most lucrative subject...

Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

1990 / Audiobook / 400 pages / USA

****

I rarely read hard sci-fi books, so didn't mind that the interesting digressions on then-cutting-edge concepts in genetics, maths and computing came at a cost of the characters being stock templates. It doesn't capture the awe of the film, but it's a worthwhile supplement to fill in the background details more than may have strictly been necessary. I remember when Tim exclaiming "holy shit" was by far the naughtiest thing I'd ever read.

Michael Crichton, The Lost World

1995 / Audiobook / 430 pages / USA

**

I was never sure if the inevitably lacklustre film sequel had actually been based on an inevitably lacklustre novel sequel, and apparently it only partly was. It's been a long time since I saw it, but I don't remember the plucky child adventurers making an appearance, and Hollywood decided to race-swap Sarah Harding in their wisdom because a diverse cast would have stretched credibility in an action film about dinosaurs in 1997.

Ranking the Vangelis albums

Back when my angry teenage taste didn't offer much in the way of mood music, Vangelis' Blade Runner score was a euphoric revelation. Opening the gates to more prog rock and classical discoveries, I was always excited to add a new Vangelis album to my collection, which would instantly conjure vivid vistas in my imagination even when it was just a Greek messing around on a Moog.

I don't really know what a Moog is. Here are a non-musician's thoughts on The Top 46 Vangelis Albums and Notable Collaborations (no bootlegs, singles or compilations). Based on feelings 'n' shit.

Ranking the F. W. Murnau films

I'm not a big horror fan, but I am a bit of a goth. Watching Nosferatu as a teenager was mesmerising.

The uncanny jittering and flickering of hand-cranked silent film; the Knightmare-Eyeshield establishing shots; the knowledge that everyone I was looking at was definitely dead while the already-decrepit castle probably still looked exactly the same. The magic wore off a little when I saw more silent films, but there's still something otherworldly about that one.

How about his others? Here are my The Top 12 Murnau Movies That Still Exist.