Author's Note and what to expect

This story will be based on book lore from the Jurassic Park and The Lost World novels, but with a more reasonable John Hammond character who's more akin to the rich eccentric from the films, than the arch-capitalist from the books. Along the way, I'll be taking a deeper dive into the fictional science presented in the books, keeping it consistent (as far as possible) with historical developments in genetic engineering and the techniques that would have been available to InGen at the time. I don't have any formal training in molecular biology, so this may or may not ring true to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about, but hopefully it'll be a little less smoke-and-mirrors than the books.

Similarly I wanted to present a slightly more reasonable backstory for InGen than 'Japanese investors throw unfeasible amounts of money at a highly speculative venture.' $870 million (as per the original novel) is a serious raise by present day standards. Back in 1985, it would have been a ridiculous amount of money.

Just by way of a heads up, I do not plan to include any chaos theory stuff. I am not a big fan of those parts of the books or Malcolm's pontifications - reasonable fans may differ here but I'm firmly in the 'Jurassic Park failed because of dumb decisions rather than esoteric mathematical inevitability' camp. See also 'a more reasonable John Hammond character'.

One last thing - we're starting in 1977 and currently, the Park is due to open roughly on the schedule from the original novel. So it's going to be a slow burner with the dinosaurs showing up relatively late in the story. 12-13 years is still an awfully short amount of time to develop paleocloning technology from scratch, clone a load of dinosaurs, and build a park to keep them in, but I thought it was a little more plausible than the five years it took in the book.

And without further ado...

2nd North American Paleontological Convention
University of Kansas
9th August 1977

I will say this about the Americans – they know how to run a proper convention in a proper venue, with proper facilities and proper catering. I hope those penny pinchers at the Paleontological Association are taking notes.

If I'm being quite honest though, most of the presentations have been disappointing. Lots of plants, lots of filling in small details. Nothing to change the big picture and not even too many dinosaurs. Fascinating to those in the field, I'm sure, but not very interesting for financiers and educated laypeople. Indeed, the one bright spot in a pedestrian schedule was a talk on preserved insects. The slides of whole mosquitoes trapped in amber were really quite striking, especially compared to the endless parade of leaf fossils we had to sit through in the other talks.

If the schedule has been pedestrian, the delegates certainly haven't. In my experience, palaeontology tends to attract interesting characters (apart from the usual suspects at the funding agencies who appear to be here for the promise of Foundation money and very little else) but I did not expect to find a professor of genetics here. Norman admitted to being a 'dabbler' in palaeontology but I suspect that he was being modest. I don't know anything about genetic engineering but I do know whether I'm talking to a fraud. When someone can explain something very complicated to me in simple words, that's a good sign that they're the 'real deal'.

Norman's main research interest is molecular cloning. I thought cloning was a) only found in penny dreadful science fiction stories, and b) all to do with copying people, but apparently molecular cloning is real science and, as Norman put it, is all about 'cutting and pasting bits of DNA between different organisms'. Naturally, since we're at a palaeontology conference (and were a few whiskies to the better by then), I asked whether anyone had ever found any dinosaur DNA to cut and paste. Apparently not but, to his credit, Norman actually gave the question some thought. He decided that DNA was probably too fragile to be preserved. If any did happen to survive, he thought that it would be too fragmented to reveal anything about the creature that the fragments came from. They'd be an interesting scientific curiosity certainly, but not much more than that.

Sharp, excellent taste in single malt whisky, and a charming willingness to stand his round. I think I rather like Dr Atherton.

3:37 am. Mosquitoes in amber. Mosquitoes drink blood – dinosaur blood? If the whole mosquito is preserved, is the blood preserved too? DNA? Need to speak to Norman!

2nd North American Paleontological Convention
University of Kansas
10th August 1977

After a sleepless night thinking about the possibilities, I managed to buttonhole Norman at breakfast and drag him away to a quiet corner to talk about my wee hours bolt from the blue. Disappointingly, he was skeptical to begin with. The basic idea was far more promising than looking for DNA in normal fossils but there were certainly no guarantees. (I refrained from pointing out that truly revolutionary ideas never come with guarantees.)

If we could extract intact blood cells though, then Norman thought he could see a way to clone whatever creature (dinosaur?) they came from by using egg cells from modern animals, although the procedure would be technically demanding and highly dependent on finding the right species of egg donor – if one could be found at all. Starting with naked DNA and having to rebuild the chromosomes from scratch would make the job exponentially harder and probably impossible.

Fortunately, I've had plenty of experience in dealing with details people. The trick is to get them thinking about how they would solve a problem and what they would need to do it. Encourage them, get them to break down the impossible problem they can't solve into a chain of smaller problems that they can, whilst gently allowing them to think that you can find them enough money (believe me, it always comes down to money but never make any promises) to do the work. Once you see the wheels start to turn behind their eyes and they start talking to you as a fellow details person, then you know you've got them.

So it was with Norman. I could practically see the excitement growing, the more he thought about the actual details. Of course, for all that they pretend to be dispassionate seekers of truth, you only have to scratch a good scientist to find a competitive spirit lurking beneath their skin that would make the average CEO blush. To quote Norman this morning. "If I – sorry, if we – can get any of this to work, nobody is going to care about Boyer or his little company. And if we get it all to work…"

I decided that mentioning Nobel prizes would have been rather crass.

We ended up missing the entire morning session (no great loss if the presentation titles were anything to go by) but by the time everyone came in for lunch, we had a proof of concept plan roughed out. I would find the amber and bring it to Norman's lab. He would see what he could extract from inside the trapped insect and, time and fortune permitting, would try sequencing some of it using a variation on Wu's method from Cornell. That should give us enough data to decide whether our larger ambitions were feasible.

We decided that it would be best if I secured the amber. Norman thought that he could probably find somebody to lend him a suitable specimen in exchange for a name on whatever papers came out of the work. He looked a little shamefaced at that point and admitted that writing up the work would be the proper thing to do but that he would be reluctant to publish the proof of concept work if it would give everyone a leg up into the far more interesting work to come.

Naturally, I reassured him that publishing the work was absolutely the right thing to do but I could quite understand that he'd prefer to make a bigger mark if he could.

Yes – I rather like Dr Atherton.

Hammond Foundation office
Seattle
23rd October 1977

I like to think of myself as a bit of a polymath, but I never expected to have to learn quite so much about the amber industry. Unfortunately, it appears that the oldest ambers (which we shall need) are mined in rather unsavoury parts of the world, so acquiring the stuff in bulk may require some deft legal footwork to avoid obvious Foundation involvement. We have do have a reputation to maintain after all.

I think a phone call to Michael Cowan will be in order at some point – he and Swain have some good people.

Possible alternative - securing controlling stake in one of the more reputable mining companies? It might be cheaper than buying the material on the open market, especially since there seems to be a growing demand for amber fossils amongst palaeontologists and private collectors. Again, will need some thought to keep everything at arms length from the Foundation. I can see Cowan's bills ticking upwards as I write. Why must everything involve lawyers?

But I digress. Sourcing a single specimen for Norman was easier than expected. I eventually found a local jeweller who specialises in amber, and who happened to have a nice little side business selling any interesting pieces to the university's palaeontology department. Perhaps I'm being overcautious at this early stage, but I thought it best not to risk speak to her on behalf of the Foundation in case word of our interest got back to anyone we know at the university.

The amiable old duffer with his daft laddie prattle never fails though.

My cousin is terribly fond of amber and I was looking for something special for her birthday. I don't suppose you have anything that might be suitable. Oh yes, that's pretty – I'm sure she'd like it very much but… ohh, now that one looks perfect. Very striking with that insect inside – what do you suppose it is? Or was, I should say, hahaha. Oh, it's reserved? What a pity. It's terribly cheeky of me, but may I ask how much a piece like this would normally sell for? No, no, I quite understand that that one isn't for sale, but perhaps another one with an insect in, if it happened to be available?

The usual act.

In the end, a discreet markup was enough to persuade her that perhaps the university could live without one little fossil. Nothing ostentatious of course – nothing that she'll remember me by in a few weeks – but enough to get what I needed.

Time to book a flight to San Francisco!