Fatalis by Jeff Rovin (2000)

Hardback cover blurb

They come from prehistory to stalk and kill...

It begins, as terror so often does, with a disappearance – two men lost in the foothills of the Santa Ynez mountains, a pair of backpacks the only evidence that they'd been near the mysterious sinkhole. An ancient fissure has been jolted open in the hills; the sprawling, teeming metropolis of Los Angeles carries on, oblivious to the constant geological changes in the earth beneath it.

Something is descending, stalking at night, moving ever closer to civilization. The official response to death is more destruction: Sheriff Malcolm Gearhart wants to destroy the creatures before anyone is even sure what they are, to annihilate any beast that would dare to attack man. But anthropologist Jim Grand and local newspaperwoman Hannah Hughes see another way – a dangerous path, but one that might save the last link to a prehistoric time.

And as the humans battle to steer the right course, the cats are getting closer....

My thoughts

Anthropologist Jim Grand is a tough guy, the kind who does 200 push-ups on his fingers, after drinking three cups of coffee, mind you. Tougher still is Sheriff Malcolm Gearhart, a Vietnam vet who doesn’t like liberals, and as a result probably spends his life wondering what god he offended to find himself in Los Angeles. Bringing these two together are a rash of mysterious killings that, at first, baffles both. But soon Grand makes a fantastic discovery: A pride of living saber-toothed cats is behind the attacks.

Grand and a reporter from an alternative newspaper, Hannah Hughes, want to save the cats from a second extinction. Gearhart wants to kill them all, pointing out they’re leaving behind a trail of corpses that would make Freddy Krueger green with envy. The resulting mayhem will carry through the streets of L.A, climaxing at a final showdown at – you guessed it – the La Brea Tar Pits.

Finally, my favorite prehistoric animal gets its own novel… and it’s terrible.

Fatalis is the kind of novel where “chapters” are three to five pages long. It’s the kind of novel where characters are introduced only to be eaten a couple pages later, and where the animals kill far more people than they really need to eat. What made Fatalis particularly egregious to me – other than slandering my favorite cat – is that true big cat attacks are terrifying affairs, read Ghosts of Tsavo for an example. Using a little subtly and portraying the sabertooths as real animals would've have gone a long way toward improving this book. Instead, Rovin has them plod through L.A, with all the grace of Godzilla and no menace whatsoever.

Trivia

• The title Fatalis was taken from the scientific name for the sabertoothed cat, Smilodon fatalis. You can guess what it means. But if Rovin wanted more bang for the buck, then he should’ve picked the cat’s much larger South American cousin, Smilodon populator. The name means, “he who brings devastation.”
  (Source: The Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives)

• Internet rumors from a few years ago alleged Fatalis was picked up by Universal to be made into movie, starring, of all people, Sylvester Stallone. (The cover says a Fatalis movie is "coming soon.") It turns out Rovin also is the author of a Stallone biography. There has been no word about the status of this project for several years, not a good sign.

Reviews

• Tome of Shadowstalking
• BookLoons
  

The Sky People coming out in paperback Oct. 2

S.M. Stirling's homage to pulp sci-fi, The Sky People, is scheduled to come out in paperback on October 2, according to Amazon.com. The novel takes place in an alternate timeline where dinosaurs thrive on Venus -- as imagined by some early pulp writers -- and the Americans and Soviets are engaged in a very heated space race.

GURPS Dinosaurs by Stephen Dedman (1996)

Cover blurb

Tyrant Kings!

Giganotosaurus, the largest carnivore ever to walk the Earth . . . Packs of Deinonychus, the "terrible claws" . . . Triceratops, armed with shield and spears . . . 65-ton Brachiosaurus, tall as a four-story building . . . Ankylosaurus, the living tank . . . the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex . . . cunning Troodons . . . the deadly Utahraptor . . .

Their fossil bones inspired myths of dragons and other monsters. Their images still terrify us today. Visit their world -- or have them visit yours.

GURPS Dinosaurs includes:

• A detailed bestiary of the world before human history, with more than 100 dinosaurs, plus pterosaurs, sea monsters, other reptiles, and prehistoric birds and mammals.

• A chronology of life on Earth, from the Cambrian explosion to the Ice Ages.

• Character creation and detailed roleplaying information for early hominids and humans, from Australopithecus to Cro-Magnon, including advantages, disadvantages and skills.

• Maps and background material for the world of the dinosaurs.

• Plot and adventure ideas for Time Travel, Supers, Horror, Cliffhangers, Atomic Horror, Space, Survivors, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, and even caveman slapstick campaigns!

* Cover and blurb from publisher's web site.

My thoughts

I admittedly don't play roleplaying games that much. Most of my experience with RPGs comes through computer games. I'm vaguely familiar with the GURPS mechanics, but the nice thing about GURPS is you don't need to know how to play it to enjoy its source books. They're some of the best in the business, meticulously researched and well-written. GURPS Dinosaurs is no exception.

The book is basically a bestiary of more than 100 different animals from Earth's history. A large number of them are dinosaurs, but substantial sections of the book are dedicated to the creatures that came before and after the terrible lizards. There are even several stats for modern animals and a lengthy chapter on human evolution. No matter what game system you play, you're likely to find this book useful in your campaign setting. You could plop a few mammoths down in your fantasy world, for example. Or you could stage a time-traveling safari and go gunning for dinosaurs.

One shortcoming of the book is there is little discussion about building campaigns around prehistoric animals. Some more detail about what skills and abilities characters need to roleplay dinosaur encounters, as well as more discussion about plot devices used to resurrect extinct beasts, would have been nice. Another shortcoming is there is no template provided to allow players to build creatures not on the list, although I suspect most GURPS regulars will know how to do that on their own.

Still, it's a good book and probably the best RPG supplement people will find about dinosaurs and other animals. The book is currently available as a $7.95 download on the publisher's Web site.

Trivia

• The "Dinosaur Society" featured prominently on the book's cover no longer exists. (I used to be a member when I was a kid.) However, it does seem to have a British offshoot that is alive and well.

• Paleontologist Jack Horner wrote the book's forward.

Reviews

• RPGnet
  

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (1990)

Hardback cover blurb

The dinosaur is back on earth – alive, now, in Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park.

The story, told with an almost documentary verisimilitude, is an account through an attempt, through a hair-raising twenty-four hours on a remote jungle island, to avert a global emergency – a crisis triggered by today’s headlong rush (virtually unchecked by any government or scientific watchdogs) to commercialize genetic engineering.

In Jurassic Park, Crichton makes brilliant and mesmerizing use of the unique amalgam of suspense and informed science (this time paleontology, biotechnology and chaos theory) that he originated in The Andromeda Strain. Of all his superb scientific thrillers – all of them best-sellers – Jurassic Park is in every way the strongest. It is certain to be his most widely read, talked about, and unreservedly enjoyed novel to date.

My thoughts

Forget the movie. Nearly everything that is clever and unique about the novel was lost in its translation to the big screen. I read this book long before Spielberg’s half-hearted adaptation hit theaters, and I’m glad my fond memories of it weren’t tainted by the film.

Strange things are going down in Costa Rica. A doctor treats a dying man who has been ripped open by a large animal; a little girl is attacked by a strange lizard; babies are being killed in their cribs. All this eventually connects back to Alan Grant, a paleontologist digging up dinosaur fossils in Montana. Before he gets to investigate further, he is whisked away by billionaire John Hammond to inspect a nature preserve on a tropical island. When he arrives, he finds the island populated by genetically engineered dinosaurs!

Make no mistake, Jurassic Park is the reason this site exists. It got me hooked on paleontology and on science in general. What Crichton does so well is paint dinosaurs as real animals rather movie monsters, although, yes, they do chase and eat people. He takes full advantage of the zoo setting to speculate on their behavior and their biology, and isn’t afraid to let his imagination soar in either regard, such as in the case of the spitting dilophosaurs. He also makes a convincing case for accepting the book’s far-fetched plot: The science sounds plausible, and the mistakes made by the people running Jurassic Park are truly head-smacking (in the movie, all it takes is one disgruntled fat guy for things to go wrong).

I first read Jurassic Park at a more innocent time, but now, being slightly more mature, I can see my childhood favorite has flaws. It often reads like a movie novelization with short chapters and sparse descriptions. The characterization is thin and stereotypical, especially in the case of Hammond, a businessman so greedy he doesn’t even care if his grandchildren get eaten by dinosaurs, just as long as the park opens on time. Still, it’s a damn fun read. Jurassic Park is a book where the entertainment value overshadows its negatives, probably as pure a "summer read" as you'll ever find.

Trivia

• The seed for Jurassic Park was planted in Crichton's mind for many years before it had the chance to bloom. The author said he wrote a screenplay about a genetically engineered dinosaur in 1981 but discarded it because he wasn't happy with the script. (Source: The Making of Jurassic Park)
  

• The author's web site is at http://www.michaelcrichton.com.

• Anyone interested about the science behind the novel should check out The Science of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, or How to Build a Dinosaur by Rob DeSalle and David Lindley. Most of the book is about biotechnology, but the final chapters explore the practical implications of keeping dinosaurs in the modern world.

• The PBS documentary series NOVA also explored the science behind the book and movie in The Real Jurassic Park. The bad news: It is pretty much impossible to bring back dinosaurs through cloning. Well, maybe it's not so bad if you are a goat...
  

Reviews

• Steven Jay Gould (comparing the movie to the book)