Jurassic Park

Read the paperback decades ago, maybe a year before the film - which was so good that I remember it instead of the last quarter of the book. This is to say yes, the book is different, slightly better and definitely worth reading.

Very satisfying techno thriller, with computer tech jargon and early touch screens. Great descriptions of dinosaurs and DNA. Highlights the sheer exuberance of scientists and the stupidly rich, all narrated by Ian Malcolm, in a role that Jeff Goldblum was born to play.

However... there's just too much Malcolm towards the end of the book. Pages and pages of dialogue, and all of it a slight pause between thrill events. Sure, the character the excuse of being whacked out on morphine - but what was the author's excuse? Minor quibble, but I think the movie does a better job of balancing.

In the author's acknowledgements, Malcolm was inspired by physicist and part time chaos theoretician Heinz Pagels, who died just two years before the book was released. Goldblum was so popular in the film that Crichton brought Malcolm back for the second novel.

"Life finds a way."