Jurassic Park | Literary Precedents

Jurassic Park Literary Precedents

Crichton himself has stated that his work has been heavily influenced by the nineteenth-century novel Frankenstein (1818). Mary Shelley's novel owes much to the traditions of gothic horror fiction but also serves as a bridge to more modern genres of literature where scientists and similar methodical thinkers, like detectives, are the main characters. Thus it is not surprising that Crichton's work also reminds one of the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, particularly the Sherlock Holmes series and the adventure novel The Lost World (1912), in which a scientific expedition discovers a remote enclave of living dinosaurs.

It would be a mistake, however, to call Crichton a science-fiction writer.

This genre comes from different roots and its essential philosophy is much less conservative. In Crichton's thrillers the scientific discoveries of the main characters never affect permanent change: they either self-destruct, as in Jurassic Park, or they are...
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