The Lost World
Michael Crichton
 Six years after the disaster at Jurassic Park, Ian Malcolm &mdash; who is revealed to have actually survived the events of the previous novel &mdash; teams up with wealthy paleontologist Richard Levine after learning about Site B, the secret "production facility" where the park's dinosaurs were hatched and grown; the site is located on Isla Sorna, an island adjacent to Isla Nublar. When Levine disappears, Malcolm fears that he might have discovered Site B's exact location and went there without his knowledge. Doc Thorne and Eddie Carr, who provided Levine with equipment, and R.B. "Arby" Benton and Kelly Curtis, two schoolchildren who assisted Levine, deduce the island's location. The adults organize a rescue operation and utilize an advanced fleet of field vehicles. Stowed away with them as they leave are Arby and Kelly, who plan to rescue Levine as well. At the same time, geneticist Lewis Dodgson and his underlings, Howard King and George Baselton, head to Isla Sorna in the hopes of stealing dinosaur eggs for Biosyn, the rival company of the now bankrupt InGen. Sarah Harding, a wildlife observer who had a previous relationship with Malcolm, accompanies them. However, Dodgson throws her off their boat and leaves her for dead. Once the team comes across the nest of a Tyranosaurus Rex, Dodgson forces King and Baselton to proceed with the mission. When trying to steal some eggs, King steps on a baby T-Rex's leg and breaks it. Baselton is too scared to enter the nest, causing Dodgson to grab one himself. In the process, the black box he has brought along is separated from its power supply and stops emitting the sound designed to keep the parent T-Rexes at bay. The T-Rexes eat Baselton and destroy Dodgson's SUV. Dodgson survives while King is eventually killed by Velociraptors. Coming across the baby T-Rex, Eddie brings it back to the base camp, where Malcolm and Sarah fix its broken leg. The absence of the infant is noted by its parents, who track their offspring to the camp by smell. Malcolm and Sarah are rescued by Thorne, but Malcolm's leg is injured, and he ends up spending most of the remainder of the story immobile and high on morphine. Meanwhile, the other team members are attacked by Velociraptors. Eddie is killed, but Arby manages to lock himself in a nearby cage. He is quickly abducted by the raptors, who bring him to their lair. Thorne and Levine rescue Arby, and the survivors take shelter in an abandoned InGen gas station. There, they encounter two Carnotaurus, but manage to scare them away with flashlights. Once daylight comes, Sarah attempts to retrieve the team's Ford Explorer. After evading a group of aggressive Pachycephalosaurus, she encounters and dispatches Dodgson. Dodgson is then taken by one of Tyrannosaurs to their nesting site, where his leg is broken and he is left for the babies to eat. After Sarah fails to reach the helicopter in time, Kelly locates an abandoned building with a functional boat inside. After making a quick getaway from a group of Velociraptors, the survivors are able to reach the boat and escape the island. While on the boat, Malcolm and Harding tell Levine, who was bitten by one of the animals, that some of the carnivores, including the Velociraptors and the Procompsognathus, are infected with prions due to InGen's decision to feed them contaminated sheep, and any animal bitten by them will be infected also. This means that all the dinosaurs on the island are fated to die due to the uncontrolled spread of the prions. Levine panics about the possibility of being infected with prions, but Malcolm states it shouldn't be harmful to humans. With that said, Thorne finally declares that is time for all of them to go home. As with the first book, the main conflicts the characters must face is fending off attacks from Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor and Procompsognathus. Throughout this second novel, Malcolm and Levine talk about various evolutionary and extinction theories, as well as the nature of modern science and the homogenizing and destructive nature of humanity. A particularly strong theme is the ethological and sociobiological concept of learned social behavior in animals (for example, Crichton's velociraptors, deprived of being reared among natural raptors with developed social pack behavior, instead show a tendency towards violent, antisocial behavior even amongst themselves). The book also discusses the role of prions in brain diseases, which has been at the root of concerns over Mad Cow Disease.