Michael Crichton: Jurassic Park

It’s difficult these days to fully appreciate the impact of Jurassic Park, the novel. We’ve watched the movies, bought the merchandise, played the computer games and been exposed to over a decade and a half of advertising and media hype, so no wonder it’s a little hard to recapture the freshness and audacity of Michael Crichton’s original concept. But I think it well worth the try.

Humans and dinosaurs are a potent mixture, as novelists and moviemakers have always known. We have the brains; they have the brawn. Humans have the technology; dinosaurs have size, grace, ferocity, speed and power, not to mention voracious appetites. The problem has always been to get the two together in the same era. Humans are from the Cenozoic, dinosaurs are from the Mesozoic and never the twain should meet, in normal circumstances.

Previous to Jurassic Park, there were two main ways to get around this impasse. You either had to find a remote spot on the planet where dinosaurs might have survived until recent times (a plateau in South America, a lost continent in the Pacific, a cavern somewhere under the Earth’s crust) or you had to invent time travel in order to send humans back to the Age of Reptiles.

There are problems with these two methods. Since the Victorian era it has become increasingly difficult to find a hard-to-reach spot where an animal the size of a brachiosaurus could lurk undiscovered. And time travel brings with it a whole parcel of paradoxes, hurdles and conundrums which every author who attempts it needs to address.

At a stroke, Crichton dispenses with these. Instead, he invokes an emerging technology which has become ever more potent and convincing in recent times – genetic engineering. His scientists recreate dinosaur DNA from fragments preserved inside mosquitoes caught in prehistoric amber. Pow! It’s an absolutely brilliant idea, and still gives me goose bumps when I think about it.

But there’s more to the book than that. What we also get is the splendid idea of a dinosaur theme park (as opposed to a mere lab somewhere) and the trademark Michael Crichton slide from order into chaos, all wrapped up in a fast-moving and highly readable thriller. It even has decent characters, in particular the acerbic and eccentric Dr Ian Malcolm, who alone would have made Jurassic Park a cut above your average airport paperback.

What I also especially relish is Crichton’s message, not that technology is bad or that progress is evil, but that we can easily become overconfident and fail to see that which our mindset has excluded. A telling scene is the one in which the operators of the park realise – very late in the day – that they have relied too much on the computer system they have installed to count the dinosaurs. The lesson is clear – make incorrect assumptions and however sophisticated your software might be, you will have set yourself up for a fall. Climate modellers, please take note.

Should we try to resurrect the dinosaurs? My head says there are more important things to aim for, but my heart says: absolutely! Dinosaurs, mammoths, the dodo, the aepyornis – yes, bring them back and create comfortable and interesting habitats for them to live in (better not put them all in the same one, though.) I would pay good money to go and see a live T.rex, hopefully before he sees me.

But before we venture down that road, I think we should make sure that we take the lessons of Jurassic Park to heart. There is a fine line between confidence and hubris, which we would do well not to cross. And although we have devised immensely powerful computing machines, they are not (yet) gods or oracles but tools, basically, which are liable to be misused by the unwise and incompetent.

I was sorry to hear about the death of Michael Crichton last month. Although he never wrote anything quite as amazing as Jurassic Park in the years since 1990, a new Crichton novel was always something to look forward to. I will miss him.

And to anyone who has enjoyed the movies, eaten the popcorn and played with the action figures but has not yet read this book, I most heartily recommend it.

© Alex Cull, 27th December 2008

(Another Planet Bookworm review.)

Stuck in a Rut

It can happen to any of us. One moment you’re working contentedly away, doing what you do every day to earn a wage and bring home the bacon (or the tofu, if your family have gone vegetarian.) The next moment – something has changed. Maybe it’s the realisation that you’ve been in this job for eleven years without promotion. Or that everyone seems to have received training on the new instant messaging software – except you. Or that your line manager is the same age as your daughter. (Or perhaps even worse, she actually is your daughter.)

Whatever the reason, the outcome is this: the knowledge that your career has stalled in its tracks, has faltered, and that this faltering has been going on for some time. Like a horse and cart trundling down the same stretch of country lane every day of the year, you find that the wheels of your career have worn such a deep groove in the surface of the road that it would seem almost impossible to change direction, and that you are in danger of getting bogged down for good.

In other words, you have become stuck in a rut.

I’m about to tell you that this is not always a bad thing to happen. But it’s difficult to think that way, if you’re sitting there at the reins of your cart, despondent. What you need to do – really what everyone could benefit from doing, whether they feel they’re a success or not – is to step down from the cart, take a stroll, sit for a while on a small hill some distance off. In other words, develop some detachment. Take a few moments to survey the scene (the horse won’t mind, he’ll use this opportunity to chomp some grass.) Take stock.

To those of us still working in the old-fashioned sort of corporation, with its established hierarchy and all its multifarious layers, branches and twigs of management (which can – when displayed in an org chart – uncannily resemble a very complex organic molecule) getting stuck can feel depressing, frustrating, scary even. We’re supposed to be forging onward and ever upward, climbing the corporate ladder vigorously, rung by hard-won rung. Either vertically (from grovelling tea-boy up to supreme leader) or sort of diagonally, by moving sideways to another department or another company and then upwards again – a bit like moving up the board in a game of snakes and ladders (without landing on a snake, of course; I mean, that just wouldn’t do.)

You keep the momentum up, because if you didn’t keep moving, progressing and evolving within the career niche you inhabit, then – gasp – something might be horribly wrong with you. Maybe you hadn’t got what it took, after all. Maybe you were just not cut out for success, or you didn’t have enough of the right stuff. Pick your cliché. Even in this informal age, it’s still possible to fall under the spell of all the rules and the rituals and the roadmaps of the workplace. Caught up in the daily grind, when is it ever a good time to stop, appraise your work-life and start asking yourself the important questions?

This is where getting stuck in a rut comes in. It can be a golden opportunity. (Or possibly a silver one, or bronze at the very least, depending on how well you use it.)

In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) they have a saying: there is no failure, only feedback. And this is true (with the proviso that you have to survive or otherwise be in a position to benefit from the feedback – this might not apply to situations involving snapped bungee cords or loaded revolvers.) Another way of putting it is: failure happens, but if you change your frame of reference, it can become crucial feedback enabling you to change course and achieve a different kind of success. And before you start thinking that “different kind of success” is just a polite way of saying “pig with lipstick”, read on.

Actually, if you consider it, failure is not really the problem. If you had messed up utterly and got slung out of school, college, fame academy, corporation, or whatever institution it was that you were in, either one of two things would probably have happened.

One – you would have known beyond all doubt that this was not your mission in life. This would have enabled you to advance a step closer to your true mission, with the slate wiped clean.

Or two – you would have become all fired up to persevere and prove your critics wrong. This is what happens when the Elvis Presleys, Marilyn Monroes and Thomas Edisons of this world show what they’re made of. “Never in a million years will you amount to anything as a (singer/actor/inventor/board game designer.)” “Oh yes, I will. I’ll show you and everyone else too, that I am simply the best, so shove that in your pipe!” (Maybe not in those very words, you understand.)

But you don’t even have to first be a ghastly flop to find your true calling, although, as I say, it probably helps. The fact that you’re stuck in a rut means that, ironically, you have been all too good at some sort of activity – creating pivot tables in Microsoft Excel, for example – that isn’t really part of your life’s mission.

Being mediocre, adequate or even good at one thing, doesn’t mean you can’t be even better at something else. However – here’s the crux – you need to find out what this elusive “something else” is. And I can’t help you there. Or maybe I can, but that will have to wait for a whole different essay.

Someone who illustrated this well was Albert Einstein. He was a good clerk in the Swiss patent office between 1902 and 1909, apparently competent and well-liked – they even promoted him. Then, of course, he decided to go off and become a world-famous professor of physics. But the day job suited him just fine, while he was there – he did patent office stuff during the day, and thought deep thoughts about matter and energy in his free time.

And this conveniently brings me to my next point. Who says you have to go mad, throw away your sensible job in the circus and run away to be an accountant (or even vice-versa)? Why should it need to be an either/or proposition, when a both/and proposition could be just as doable, and probably more lucrative too? Be a trapeze artist by night and study for your accountancy exam by day.

You don’t need to be a super-genius to make this work. But it takes discipline, energy and focus (which, as a trapeze artist, you should know, really.)

Where was I? Ah, yes. To summarise, getting stuck in a rut can help you, as per the following points:

1) It provides a much-needed opportunity to stand back, break the spell, develop some detachment and take stock.

2) The realisation of failure or mediocrity can provide a springboard for success as something else entirely. Dick as a world statesman – not that wonderful; Dick as a sheep farmer – runaway success. Jane as a sheep farmer – dull; Jane as President – winner!

3) Or lead you to the knowledge that you could have a second string to your bow, and develop a parallel career. Have both security and fulfilment; by day, a humble supermarket shelf-stacker, by night – drag artiste extraordinaire! But you need to be self-organised for that.

4) There isn’t actually a 4). But this is perhaps as good a place as any to reflect that now, more than ever before, the world of work is rife with uncertainty, in flux and undergoing transformation. Job titles exist now that never before existed in the entire history of employment. More and more people are dispensing with jobs altogether and doing things like making a fortune selling stuff online, and not caring that it creates huge gaps in their CV, or that they’ve spent the whole of Tuesday in their pyjamas. Could this be you?

To summarise the summary, getting stuck doesn’t have to be the end of the world, career-wise. And even if it is the end of the world, it could signal the creation of a brand new world, or even an entire new solar system, all there just for you to discover.

Returning to my original horse-and-cart metaphor (which I’ve grown quite fond of, by the way), after you have wandered off to gain some detachment and perspective, you will need to wander back and pick up the reins again, to put your insights to the test. And you may find, to your surprise and delight, that what you thought was a boring, rutty old country lane – has just become a crossroads.

(After the success of my Thank You piece, I thought I’d write another article for the Jobs & Careers section of Helium.com. And now this one seems to be doing very well too. So… expect a few more career-related essays and reviews from me in the New Year.)

Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows

For me, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is one of those childhood books (like The Hobbit, like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) that were not so much well-loved books – although they were and are, of course – than they were a vital part of my inner life, as personal as the memories of dreams.

It was an interesting and worthwhile experience, therefore, to re-read Willows this year, as an adult. There were some things I had never forgotten – the escapades of Toad, Mole’s rediscovery of his riverbank home, and also the Wild Wood. There were also details I had forgotten but were brought splendidly back to life, upon re-reading the book. And there were things, curious things, that I had never really noticed before, but now strike me as intriguing and strange.

The story itself is very simple, and a summary might be: Mole meets Rat, Mole and Rat meet Badger, Mole, Rat and Badger then get involved in Toad’s misadventures and help him to recapture his ancestral home. And that’s basically it, apart from a few chapters where odd, unconnected things happen. It’s a bit like a river, really; meandering along, slow here, then fast, then a bit slow again, nothing too complicated. Take away the saga of Toad, and there wouldn’t, narrative-wise, be very much left.

But that doesn’t matter. Grahame’s delightful characters carry the show: timid yet plucky Mole, cheerful Rat, gruff and sensible Badger and of course the incomparably impulsive, irresponsible, lovable, larger-than-life Toad of Toad Hall. Their interactions and conversations are a joy to read. And the world they inhabit is also a joy, a sort of cosy, rural, sunlit Edwardian riverscape that never existed in the “real world” but nevertheless does exist, in the imaginations of those who have read and loved this book.

Many things are just as I remembered them. As a child, I found the Wild Wood scary, and this episode still has a sinister, unsettling charge to it. Sitting in my warm room in front of the computer, I can read it with equanimity; outdoors in the wintry dark, this is the sort of stuff than can come back to haunt. And Badger’s house – you know, if I ever became single again, this is the kind of place I would like to inhabit, a bachelor’s comfortable, snug, fire-lit den, preferably underground, with lots of passages and well-stocked larders and, of course, a stout door to keep the Wild Wood out…

There are other aspects of the book of which, as a child, I was completely oblivious. Like the fact that the characters could be said to lead rather privileged lives, defending the interests of the landed gentry against a horde of bolshie upstarts and lower-class types. Or that the characters are also talking animals, who dress and behave like humans, but exist in a world where there are also animals (such as horses) who look and behave just like animals, and humans who are humans but who are also somehow the same size as the animals (how else could Toad disguise himself convincingly as a washerwoman?)

However, it’s best not to expend too much analytical thought on all that, for it matters not a whit. The story exists outside normal time, space and historical realities, and it abides by dream-logic, which is perfectly fine, and logic enough for the story’s purposes.

There are a couple of strange things, though, not noticed much when I was reading it as a child, but which now stand out. The abandoned underground city, with its vaults and pillars and pavements, which is connected by passageways to Badger’s home. And the unearthly but benevolent Presence encountered by Mole and Rat, when they go searching for the missing Little Portly (Chapter VII, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.) Lost cities and pagan gods, what can it all mean? Well, I’m not sure if I’ll ever know, but again there’s nothing to lose sleep over. The reader’s sense of wonder is engaged, and that’s the thing that matters.

The Wind in the Willows was first published in October 1908, almost exactly a hundred years ago, and since then it has not lost a fraction of its ability to entertain and enchant.

Happy centenary, old friend.

(I posted this review last month on Planet Bookworm, and thought I’d better add it to my blog before the end of 2008. How time flies!)