West of Eden by Harry Harrison (1984)

Paperback cover blurb

IMAGINE THE WORLD AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN…

THE WORLD WEST OF EDEN

From a master of imaginative storytelling comes an epic tale of the world as it might have been, a world were the age of dinosaurs never ended, and their descendants clashed with a clan of humans in a tragic war for survival.

It is the tale of Kerrick, a young hunter who grows to manhood among the dinosaurs, escaping at last to rejoin his own kind. His knowledge of their strange customs makes him the humans’ leader, the dinosaurs’ most feared enemy.

My thoughts

West of Eden is the start of a trilogy of novels set on an alternate earth where the dinosaurs never went extinct and have survived to the modern day. The asteroid (or comet) that killed off the great reptiles missed entirely, so mammals never got the chance to take over. One group of reptiles, the mosasaurs, have evolved into the intelligent but cold-blooded Yilane. However, humans also have evolved in North America, where the chilly climate has allowed mammals to out-compete the cold-blooded dinosaurs of Harrison’s world. A coming ice age is forcing the Yilane to spread out to find new territory, resulting in a violent clash between the two species.

West of Eden is essentially a more literary take on One Million Years B.C., although Harrison would probably loathe hearing it described it as such. Nonetheless, through the genre of alternate history, he managed to figure out a way to place dinosaurs and cavemen side-by-side and still keep some measure of plausibility in the story (more on that in a bit). The plot isn’t as original as the setting, but it serves its purpose. Kerrick, the main character, is captured by the Yilane as a small boy after the intelligent reptiles wipe out his tribe. He grows up among them, learning their language, their customs and some of their technology, before he is rescued by the leader of another human tribe. The Yilane want to exterminate the humans, seeing them as little more than vermin. Only Kerrick’s special knowledge of the reptiles will be able to save the human race.

What works best about the novel is the Yilane. Harrison spent a great deal of time crafting the species and actually sought out the help of two scientists in designing their biology and their language. Females are dominant, with the males giving birth. Their entire society is defined by their cold-blooded physiologies: They have no concept of metallurgy, because their bodies can’t stand the heat of an open flame, so their civilization is instead based on millions of years of selective breeding and genetic manipulation of other organisms. They make fascinating villains. Still, from a purely scientific point of view, it should be pointed out that the Yilane are impossible given it takes a warm-blooded metabolism to support human-like intelligence. And the species seems a little too alien for anything that could have evolved on earth. Why Harrison chose to have them descend from mosasaurs rather than a land-dwelling dinosaur is a mystery to me.

Given the effort he put into his villains, it’s too bad Harrison didn’t spend any time fleshing out the rest of his alternate world. Instead of having dinosaurs evolve in new and weird forms after 65 million years of evolution, he just plops in creatures known from the fossil record, even if they were already extinct by the time the asteroid came crashing down. The same is true for the mammals, which have evolved into their ice age forms rather than into forms fitting the alien environments they live in. The dinosaurs of Harrison’s world also are depicted as sluggish and cold-blooded despite the fact that other science fiction writers had already embraced more modern theories about active dinosaurs by the time the author was penning West of Eden. Harrison shows a remarkable disinterest in paleontology given the subject matter of the novel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of his research of the science came from reading a couple children’s books about dinosaurs.

That said, West of Eden still works as an old-fashioned adventure story with a good sense of wonder. The Yilane are appropriately evil (although they do have good individuals), and it’s easy to sympathize with the Stone Age humans who are trying to avoid genocide at the hands of a technologically superior race. The only let down story-wise is the deus ex machina ending. It’s a book worth reading, even if more science-literate readers will be left wishing Harrison had used a little more imagination in crafting his world.

Trivia

• West of Eden was republished in 2004, although I’ve never had any trouble finding copies of the book in used-book stores.

• The author’s web site is www.harryharrison.com

• West of Eden has a Wikipedia entry.

Apparently, All the Interesting Dinosaurs Have Been Discovered

By: Michael Swaim

As a child of Jurassic Park, I still get a rush of adrenaline when one of my pals from the San Diego Junior Archaeological Society calls me on the phone I had installed just for the purpose (it’s shaped like a Dimetrodon) to tell me about a new species.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I was informed by a decidedly glum Tommy Franklin (Junior Dino-Cadet, Pteranodon Unit) that scientists have just discovered a dinosaur dubbed “the cow of the Mesozoic era.” I was so upset I dropped and shattered the commemorative Dr. Hammond glass I’d been holding.

A cow?! Dinosaurs are meant to strike awe and fear into the hearts of man, not remind them to pick up some brisket on the way home. Lest you think I’m overreacting, above’s a side-by-side comparison of the Nigersaurus and some other, more deserving animals granted the title “Dinosaur.”

7 Dinosaurs You Could Take In A Fight

By: Michael Swaim

So, you’ve traveled back to the age of the dinosaurs, and monsters that time forgot (but nerds remember) are towering over you. What’s a scientist, bumbling lab assistant or transdimensional God-being to do?

The important thing to remember is that ancient history is just like prison: to survive, you’ve got to either make someone your bitch, or become someone’s bitch. And unless you like the thought of gobbling down velociraptor dongs for 65 million years (and remember, there’s no fossil evidence indicating that they weren’t barbed), I suggest you start kicking some dino-tail.

Assuming your iPhone’s still got coverage, here’s a handy shopping list of dinosaurs to start beating with a mop handle posthaste.

7. Compsognathus

Why You Could Take It: Better known as “compys,” these are the little guys from Jurassic Park II that are basically the only dinosaurs in the movie the humans don’t consider a threat at all. In fact, in the video game version, you ate them for health. That’s how pathetic they are; they were relegated to the status of a power-up. To further their humiliation, Compsognathus were even the stars of their own childrens’ book, Pernix and Viva, which taught kids that it’s okay to be small as long as you have love (and don’t get devoured alive by bigger kids). Killing a mess of compys won’t do tons for your reputation, but at least the other dinosaurs will know you’re willing to crush those weaker than yourself.

Preferred Method of Dispatch: Boots. A club. Some dried mud. Basically anything you’ve got laying around.

Dino-Bonus: Compys are believed to have had a strong pack mentality, so there’s a good chance that if you can kill their leader the rest will follow you and do your bidding. Again, not really a formidable fighting force, but they could certainly fetch things for you or carry you around as a living throne.

6. and 5. Archaeopteryx and Microraptors

Why You Could Take It: These are a couple of winged dinosaurs, one with two wings and one with four. Together, they’re considered part of the evolutionary bridge between dinosaurs and birds. The downside of being an evolutionary bridge is that, while you’re good at getting creationists to shut the hell up, you’re not so good at any of the things your various component parts are good at.

It’s not like these are airborne stegasauri. No, these guys are basically dinosaurs with feathers instead of protective scales, who can’t fight and don’t really fly very well either. It’s thought that they probably just glided, and if they did fly, they did so clumsily. So in the end, you’re left with a dinosaur the size of a pigeon warbling drunkenly through the air a few feet off the ground.

Preferred Method of Dispatch: There’s something especially poetic about knocking one out of the air with a two-fisted hammer blow, stopping its vain quest for the sky and driving it back into the primordial ooze from whence it came.

Dino-Bonus: At four wings a pop, it should be fairly easy to gather enough feathers to make your own gliding outfit, or at the very least a kite.

4. Epidendrosaurus

Why You Could Take It: Take an Archaeopteryx and pluck all its feathers out, and you’ve basically got an Epidendrosaurus (plus you’ve given an Archaeopteryx a lot of pain; kudos!). Instead of flying, they climbed, probably to hide the fact that they look like boiled monkeys who are perpetually flipping you off as emphatically as possible. One of their finger-like claws was a third the length of their entire body, although in fact it’s not their middle fingers which were elongated, but their pinkies, meaning that they were also the fanciest dinosaurs of all time.

Preferred Method of Dispatch: Unlike the other birdlike dinosaurs on this list, Epidendrosaurus would actually be difficult to catch, because it didn’t waste all its time trying to fly like an asshole. You’d probably have to make a net or burn the trees down. I suggest the latter, as they fall pre-cooked.

Dino-Bonus: Their hands make perfect garden claws. Just be glad it wasn’t any other appendage that’s a third the length of their bodies.

3. Nigersaurus

Why You Could Take It: The Nigersaurus’ name means “Niger Lizard,” which qualifies it both as having the least imaginative dinosaur name ever and being only one letter away from having the most offensive dinosaur name ever. Although an herbivore, the Nigersaurus had 50 rows of teeth that got replaced at a rate of one a month per row. Luckily for you, those teeth were all oriented around a flapping, rubbery hole through which the animal sucked up its food, earning it the nickname “the vacuum of the dinosaur kingdom.” Not jet engine. Not Sarlacc pit. Vacuum.

Preferred Method of Dispatch: As many young boys have learned through erotic, but ultimately tragic run-ins with the pool intake, a vacuum is no place to wedge delicate body parts. But really, that’s all this thing’s got. Roll a grenade or two in front of it, let it suck them up and enjoy the grimy fireworks. If you didn’t bring grenades, you could always try clogging its vent with a few pinecones or some dead Compys.

Dino-Bonus: The Nigersaurus skull is believed to house the most teeth of any dinosaur, so they’re basically a one-stop shop for all your necklace and slingshot ammo needs.

2. Therizinosaurs

Why You Could Take It: Yes, they were huge (they can’t all be Compys). When you’re fighting dinosaurs, you’re going to have to down some big fellas. It’s all part of the game; ask Turok. In fact, Therizinosaurs grew up to 30 feet in length. Plus, they had giant claws and their name means “scythe lizard,” which conjures the image of a cloaked Grim Reaper with foot-long teeth and a reptilian tail.

Yet none of that changes the fact that these were basically giant turkeys. Or zebra-turkeys, depending on what tactic the illustrator used to try and make them look less awkward.

Preferred Method of Dispatch: As the geeky fatasses of the late Cretaceous, Therizinosaurs don’t have much going for them in a fight besides those ungainly claws and their ability to fall on you. My advice would be to hurl some rocks at their tiny heads, then run in a zig-zag pattern until they topple over or clothesline themselves on a low-hanging limb.

Then all it takes is one well-placed kick to their pipe cleaner-sized throats.

Dino-Bonus: They’re excellent stuffed with bread crumbs, apple chunks and cinnamon. For a crisp skin, bake at 400 degrees for 96 hours, or until golden brown. Serves everyone.

1. Carnotaurus

Why You Could Take It: The Carnotaurus is what happens when a T. Rex just kind of wanders off halfway through the dinosaur assembly process. While superficially resembling their more deadly cousins, Carneys are much smaller (only nine feet tall) have Gandalf-caliber eyebrows that they try to pass off as bull horns and were stuck with arms somehow even more retarded than Rex’s.

Not only are they smaller in comparison to their body (seriously, we’re talking Q-Tips here), but the hands are facing the wrong way, palms out, as if pathetically awaiting a high five that will never come, eternally left hanging by its less laughable counterparts.

Preferred Method of Dispatch: The Carnosaur is legitimately threatening, and, as its name suggest, carnivorous. It’s probably the highest level dinosaur you’re likely to kill without a minigun or a Timecop backing you up, so I’d only recommend tackling one after you’ve had plenty of experiencing wiping out the other species on this list. If you are going to go for it, my advice would be to capitalize on your natural advantages by challenging it to a sword fight or juggling competition. Then when its weeping in impotent frustration, stab it in the gut with a sharp stick.

Dino-Bonus: You can probably get away with telling the other dinosaurs you killed a T. Rex. They’re not that bright.

Final Note: Whatever you do, never fight this.

READING MATERIALS

These include the anthology The Complete Dinosaur, edited by J. O. Farlow and M. K. Brett- Surman; David Norman’s Illustrated Dinosaur Encyclopedia; John Noble Wilford’s The Riddle of the Dinosaur; and Don Lessem’s Dinosaurs Rediscovered (originally titled The Kings of Creation). Almost as valuable as the Farlow and Brett-Surman anthology is the Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs (San Diego: Academic Press, 1997), edited by P. J. Currie and K. Padian. Good books on particular types of dinosaurs include John Horner and Don Lessem’s The Complete T. rex (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993) and Peter Dodson’s The Horned Dinosaurs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). Gregory S. Paul’s Predatory Dinosaurs of the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) is interesting and contains the author’s own excellent illustrations but makes many very controversial claims about how fast these creatures ran and how they lived.

Some of the most interesting recent books on dinosaurs attempt to reconstruct their lives and habits. John Horner’s books can be particularly recommended as works that try to tell us about dinosaur behavior and lifestyles. His book Digging Dinosaurs: The Search That Unraveled the Mystery of Baby Dinosaurs (New York: Workman, 1988), cowritten with J. Gorman, tells about his discovery of dinosaur eggs and nests. These discoveries prompted Horner to name one dinosaur Maiasaura, which means “good mother lizard,” because of evidence that it kept nests and nurtured its young. A more recent book coauthored with E. Dobb, Dinosaur Lives: Unearthing an Evolutionary Saga (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1997), gives evidence for other aspects of dinosaur behavior.

There are two college-level textbooks on dinosaurs, Dinosaurs: The Textbook by Spencer G. Lucas (Dubuque, IA:William C. Brown Publishers, 1994) and The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs by David E. Fastovsky and David B. Weishampel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Both are very good, well illustrated, and considerably livelier than the usual cut-and-dried textbooks.

A word of caution: There are many good books on dinosaurs. I have been able to list only a few of them here. However, there are also many very bad books on dinosaurs, especially books for children. These books are often written by people who do not know much about dinosaurs and who don’t mind making a few bucks by passing on their ignorance to others. Some years ago Don Lessem and other paleontologists formed the Dinosaur Society to safeguard against misinformation. If a book bears the seal of the Dinosaur Society, it will contain accurate information—otherwise, caveat emptor.

EXTINCTION?

The smell of rotting flesh travels far on the breeze, through the woodlands and valleys a young male Tyrannosaurus rex is one of the first to pick up the odour and begins to follow the scent.

The dinosaurs, and many other creatures such as the pterosaurs, mosasaurs, and ammonoids, went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. There is considerable evidence that dinosaurs, after reaching a peak of diversity about seventy-four million years ago, began a gradual decline. Unquestionably, though, something delivered the coup de grâce. In Chapter 8 I tell the story of the bitter, vicious controversy that raged over the reasons for the mass extinction that ended the Mesozoic. Many regard the dinosaurs’ demise with sadness. Many a kid has fantasized that somehow, somewhere, there is a lost forest where T. rex continues to prowl. But if the dinosaurs had not gone extinct, it would be most unlikely that we would be here. During the Mesozoic, our mammalian ancestors were small, nondescript, probably nocturnal creatures. While dinosaurs were dominant, there simply was no free ecological space for large mammals to occupy. Only after the extinction of the dinosaurs did the remarkable evolutionary radiation of mammals occur.

The dinosaurs were the lords of the Mesozoic. Their demise offers a deep lesson to us: The earth does not grant tenure. On the contrary, 99 percent of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Even more sobering is the realization that several different hominid species have lived on Earth. Only one survives—Homo sapiens. We tend to think that the “sapiens” part of that name, our intelligence, gives us an edge that will allow us to escape the fate of other species. Well, we certainly have been successful in the short term—there are six billion of us on the planet, making us by far the most numerous species of large animal. By contrast, only about two thousand tigers survive in the wild. But the deepest lesson of the dinosaurs is the awful, incomprehensible depth of time. Sixty-five million years from now, will any of our descendants be alive? If so, will they be in any sense human? Will they remember any of our literature, our art, our science, our religions? After all, geological time shows that the only thing permanent is the fact of change. Evolution on Earth began with the first self-replicating molecules four billion years ago, and it will continue until the sun dies.

Subterranean by James Rollins (1999)

Paperback cover blurb

TRAVEL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH…

to a place you never dreamed existed.

BENEATH THE ICE…

a hand-picked team of specialists makes its way toward the center of the world. They are not the first to venture into this magnificent subterranean labyrinth. Those they follow did not return.

OVER THE ROCKS… ACROSS THE YAWNING CAVERNS…BEYOND THE BLACK RIVER…

You are not alone.

INTO THE DARKNESS…

where breathtaking wonders await you—and terrors beyond imagining…Revelations that could change the world—things that should never be disturbed…

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE EARTH IS THE BEGINNING.
KEEP MOVING…

toward a miracle that cannot be…toward a mystery older than time.

My thoughts

It takes a lot of nerve to write a lost world story set in the modern day, particularly one that borrows heavily from Journey to the Center of the Earth. But that’s exactly what we have in this techno-thriller.

Subterranean opens when the two main characters, paleoanthropologist Ashley Carter and expert caver Ben Brust, are recruited by the U.S. military to investigate an enormous cavern in Antarctica. There are archaeological ruins inside the cave dating back before humankind had evolved. Who -- or more precisely, what -- built the ruins? The answer lies deeper in the cave system. Carter and Brust will lead an expedition into the depths of the Earth to find out, a journey that a previous team attempted, but never returned.

The monsters populating Subterranean are not prehistoric survivors in the strictest since, but the plot and the setting rely heavily on paleontology, so I'm not bending the rules too much. The novel is about finding out what creatures inhabited Antarctica in the 30-million-year gap between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the coming of the ice. Many authors would've used aliens to explain away the pre-human ruins, and I will give Rollins credit for coming up with a more imaginative and more interesting idea.

That said, Subterranean isn't a good book by any stretch of the imagination, with boring characters and frequent action sequences that defy logic. The main villain will offend some readers because of the ethnic stereotyping, and the monsters will feel very familiar to anyone who has seen Jurassic Park. Still, for some reason, I liked it. Why? I'm not quite certain. Perhaps because it is an old-fashioned lost world story with an appropriate sense of mystery and wonder. Or maybe because I read it at a time in my life when I was looking for some popcorn-movie escapism, and it fit the bill.

Subterranean is a good "bad book" -- not one I could recommend if you prefer your literature to be, well, literary, but a fun one as long as you don't take it seriously. Be warned that it does weigh in at a whopping 430 pages, which is about 130 pages more than the author honestly needed to tell the story.

Trivia

• James Rollins is the pen name for veterinarian and amateur spelunker Jim Czajkowski. He has written several thrillers where evolutionary biology and archeology are the main focus.

• The author's web site is www.jamesrollins.com

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1864)

This is where paleo-fiction started.

A Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne was first published in 1864. The famous story is the first major work of fiction to feature prehistoric creatures surviving to the modern day.* Ironically, there are no true dinosaurs in the novel, since the beasts hadn’t captured the public’s imagination at the time the book was written.

The novel is narrated by Axel, a young man who is apprenticing under his geologist uncle, Professor Otto Lidenbrock. The two come across a cryptic manuscript alleging that a passageway to the center of the Earth exists inside an extinct volcano in Iceland. It’s a crazy claim, but Lidenbrock is open-minded -- or gullible -- enough to mount an expedition to the volcano in hopes of making the greatest scientific discovery of his time. The two are joined by a guide, and together the trio descend into the bowels of the Earth, finding a lost world hidden for millions of years. Getting out will be a different matter, however.

That’s admittedly a short description of a novel that has had a profound influence on science fiction, but the story is so well-known that most people know it by heart. A Journey to the Center of the Earth has been adapted into comics, cartoons, video games and movies numerous times, although few have been faithful to the source material. The best-known adaptation is probably a 1959 movie starring James Mason and country gospel star Pat Boone. (Boone recently called evolution a “false religion” in an opinion column, apparently forgetting that he once starred in a dinosaur movie.)

The book itself is one of Verne’s more famous titles, but I’ve never really considered it one of his better works. It’s a bit sluggish in parts, and it lacks any particularly memorable characters such as Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The humor seems forced by modern standards, and the whiny narrator can come across as annoying rather than funny.

Nonetheless, it would be unfair of me to leave you with the impression that this is a bad book. While it may not be Verne’s best, it’s still fun. There is a terrific sense of wonder in it missing from most of today’s science fiction. Verne just throws wonder after wonder at the reader, so much so that it isn’t until you’re near the end of the novel that you realize it doesn’t have much of an actual plot. No adaptations have really captured the full extent of Verne’s imagination, so even if you have seen two or three versions of the story, you’re still likely to be surprised by what the explorers find in the underground world they discover.

Also, how many science fiction novels are there where the authors write so lovingly about geology? It’s a topic that most writers find drab compared to quantum physics or space travel, but is just as fascinating in its own right. Paleontology really isn’t the central focus of A Journey to the Center of the Earth, and it’s pretty clear from reading the novel that Verne considered it a branch of geology rather than a separate science. The prehistoric creatures here are just window dressing, although when Verne does use them, he does so for maximum effect.

The novel is available for free on many places on the Internet, including this Web site.

* Some of the above information about the novel came from Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction by Allen A. Debus.