SOURCE: "Dinomania," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XL, No. 14, August 12, 1993, pp. 51-6.

Gould is an American paleontologist, educator, critic, and prizewinning essayist. In the following excerpt, he discusses the novel and film versions of Jurassic Park, comparing their presentations of characters and science.

Contemporary culture presents no more powerful symbol, or palpable product, of pervasive, coordinated commercialization than the annual release of "blockbuster" films for the summer viewing season. The movies themselves are sufficiently awesome, but when you consider the accompanying publicity machines, and the flood of commercial tie-ins from lunch pails to coffee mugs to T-shirts, the effort looks more like a military blitzkrieg than an offer of entertainment. Therefore every American who is not mired in some Paleozoic pit surely knows that dinomania has reached its apogee with the release of Steven Spielberg's film version of Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park. As a...