Dinosaur Summer
Voyager London, 1998
ISBN 0-00-648367-4
Monika says:
Who doesn’t know Arthur Conan Doyle’s story about the lost world?
High up on the plateau of El Grande fantastic creatures have survived
since the Age of the Dinosaurs. They were discovered by Professor
Challenger who in the beginning of the 20th Century presented a
Pterodactyl in London. Greg Bear’s book DINOSAUR SUMMER picks up where
Conan Doyle left off. It takes place almost 50 years after the discovery
of this prehistoric world when the last of the dinosaur shows is closed
down and the remaining animals are to be brought back to their original
home. Among them are several small dinosaurs, but also Sammy the
centrosaur and Dagger, a large theropod who endangers the project with his
temper.
The story is told from the point of view of expedition photographer
Anthony and his son Peter who document the events for National Geographic
Magazine. Another member of the expedition is 27-year-old Ray Harryhausen
whose job are the moving images. For years access to the Tepui has only
been granted to a few scientists – some of whom never returned.
Therefore the bridge that is the only way over the gorge is in a pretty
bad state. Inevitably our heroes find themselves trapped in an environment
untouched by any kind of civilization, surrounded by creatures they couldn’t
have imagined in their wildest dreams.
To write a sequel to a classic is a risky affair, but Greg Bear solved
the problem elegantly. I can recommend DINOSAUR SUMMER to everybody who
always wanted to know what happened after the discovery of the last
dinosaurs. The sequel is also a look into the depths of the human soul. As
was to be expected dinosaurs were exploited commercially without scruples,
but after almost 50 years people grew tired even of such fantastic beasts
so that all the dinosaur shows have to go out of business. Lothar Gluck,
the owner of the last dinosaur circus, plans to turn the surviving animals’
journey back to El Grande into a big publicity event. Virtually over night
he changes from greedy showman to dedicated environmentalist determined to
make the best of a great muddle. His two- and four-legged charges and the
humans who accompany them have no idea how much the world they once left
behind has changed.
The picture Greg Bear draws of El Grande is a fantastic vision of what
65 million years of evolution since the end of the Cretaceous might have
produced. Not only the dinosaurs survived here, but also other, even older
and more bizarre creatures related to the ancestors of mammals. The
evolution of the birds never stopped either and produced the fearsome
Death Eagle, the undisputed new ruler of the Tepui. Even if it seems so at
first time hasn’t stood still in El Grande anymore than elsewhere in the
world. DINOSAUR SUMMER is a fantastic journey into a different reality, a
very special reading adventure. |
Any comments? Write us:
Monika Hübner
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