- The Lost World was written by Dr. Michael Crichton, who has authored more than a dozen books throughout his long career. His novels have been described as being "intense, action-packed, controversial books, which perk the curiosity of the public." Early in his career, Crichton wrote "thrillers of the James Bond type", secretly, while trying to get through medical school. At the time, it was very unusual for an aspiring doctor to be an author, so Crichton wrote novels under several pseudonyms, such as John Lange and Jeffrey Hudson. But after his books, Terminal Man and The Andromeda Strain, became best sellers, he knew that writing was what he wanted to do. Like most authors, Michael Crichton’s goal is to entertain the reader while at the same time educating him. Sometimes Crichton's novels put him into the middle of heated controversy. After he wrote Rising Sun, many people called the book "Japanese Bashing". The plot centered on a murder, but the underlying point of the novel was to inform the reader about how the Japanese are penetrating America. When Rising Sun was made into a box-office movie in 1993, it was boycotted by thousands of Japanese Americans. Fascinated by dinosaurs since he was a child, the idea came to him to write Jurassic Park while buying stuffed animals for his daughter. Needless to say, the novel became an instant hit, and the rest is Jurassic Park history.
- "Something has survived", states the back cover of Michael Crichton's book, The Lost World, the sequel to Jurassic Park. Published by Alfred A. Knopf in late 1995, the story takes place a six years after Jurassic Park. "It is now six years since the secret disaster at Jurassic Park, six years since that extraordinary dream of scientists and imagination came to a crashing end--the dinosaurs destroyed, the park dismantled, the island indefinitely closed to the public....there are rumors that something has survived." Indeed, something did survive, and a team of scientists set out on an expedition to another island. What they find there is an abandoned research facility where, they assume, Hammond and his team of scientists hatched and raised the dinosaurs that would eventually populate Jurassic Park. After further investigation, they realize that a deadly virus was killing off the dinosaurs, and the scientists couldn't figure out why. Mixed in with all this is another rival expedition, who are determined on discovering the hidden secrets of the island. From the Borders book review:
"In his second dino-adventure, Crichton's tightly strung prose keeps the animals menacing and real, even though the mere idea of them alive and walking around on the earth no longer excites. Intrigue comes as the scientists who search them out discover how the dinosaurs live, survive, and interact with other members of their own species -- observations that may illuminate what Crichton sees as man's own doomed existence."
Besides the strange plot idiosyncrasies between this book and Jurassic Park (for example, Ian Malcom was killed at the end of the first book, yet he's walking and talking here), The Lost World is just as captivating as the first book, written in the signature Crichton style that makes you read the last 150 pages in one sitting.