At first, it seemed like a wonderful dream: a park where once-extinct prehistoric beasts would roam as astonished visitors watched in awe. This at least was the vision of the park's owner, the starry-eyed John Hammond. When I read the novel I could not help but see similarities between Hammond's world-view and that of socialist "central planners." Like the socialist romantics of the early 20th century, Hammond believed he could mold the world according to his will. And, as with those quixotic collectivists, idealism blinded Hammond to the reality that the earth and its inhabitants are harder to control than he imagined.

Planned Chaos

Throughout the novel, John Hammond brushes off criticisms of his beloved park. When it's pointed out to him that dinosaur behavior has never been observed and is thus unpredictable, he naively replies that running Jurassic Park will be as easy as running a zoo.

To this, Hammond's interlocutor, the mathematician Ian Malcolm can only laugh. From the beginning, Malcolm believes that Jurassic Park is doomed to failure. As a proponent of chaos theory, he warns that Hammond could never account for all of the variables involved and the park would soon fall into utter disorder. "You're going to have to shut the thing down," he tells the incredulous Hammond.