The author's solution comes partly from the well-established mystery genre, where pieces of the puzzle that is the plot are uncovered gradually, from chapter to chapter, by a character who does the detective work. The principal characters in The Lost World are scientists, professional puzzle-solvers who, instead of seeking answers to who committed a crime, work out how things in our physical world got to be what they are and how they operate. An essential part of scientific work is dialogue with other scientists, trading ideas and measuring the usefulness of new theories by observation and experiment. Malcolm and Levine's scientific arguments take place only a few sentences at a time, often shared with the nonscientists in the group so that jargon is minimized, tucked between chapters of intense, even savage action. This technique is foreshadowed in the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of Sherlock Holmes...