Jo Boone Reads and Writes

Newsletter #2

Jo Boone Reads:

When I was a child, I had some sort of anxiety disorder.

This is very vague, simply because when I was a child, children were not diagnosed with anxiety disorders, any more than they were diagnosed with autism-spectrum disorders or ADHD (except perhaps for the occasional highly symptomatic boy). I would have terrible nightmares, and panic attacks that kept my parents up at night. I would sit at the bottom of the stairs that led up to their bedroom and cry, because the terror would not let me sleep, and they would try to persuade me to go back to bed. None of us knew what the problem really was. I didn’t figure it out until much further in to adulthood. It explained a lot.

But even if I didn’t have a name for the problem, I knew perfectly well that some things triggered or intensified it. There were, for example, movies I deeply regretted watching. I watched a S.O.S. Titanic, a made-for-TV movie, when I was about 10 or 11, and for months afterward I had difficulty swallowing because I was such a nervous wreck over it.

And then there was Michael Crichton.

The first Michael Crichton novel that I ever read was The Andromeda Strain. My dad was reading it, too, and he and I often enjoyed the same kinds of books, so while he was at work I would pick up whatever he was reading, read until I had to put the book away, and just memorize which page I was on, so that no one would get mad at me for reading my dad’s books. I don’t know why I thought they would be, but I did. So, whenever I read my dad’s books, I did it secretly.

I got part way into The Andromeda Strain, and was so terrified by the book that I had to put it down. I couldn’t finish. Unfortunately, it gave me horrible nightmares. I couldn’t complain to my parents. What would I say? “I was reading a book I think I wasn’t supposed to read, and it scared me so badly that I can’t sleep now and I have constant nightmares?” What preteen kid is going to say that to their parents? Eventually, I decided the only way to exorcise the book was to finish it, so I snuck back upstairs to my dad’s bookshelf and read through to the end.

More famously, Crichton is the author of Jurassic Park and The Lost World, which became the basis of the Jurassic Park film franchise. I read those, too, and some of Crichton’s other works, but—rollicking reads that they undeniably are—Crichton’s books suffer from a common problem. To wit: by the time I’m four or five chapters in, I’m rooting for the dinosaurs. I’m literally thinking, “All of these people are obnoxious and deserve to die horribly. Go on, you dinosaurs, eat them all!”

It makes it hard for me to enjoy a book, when I’m rooting against the protagonists.

So when I caught sight of a new book that shares some fundamental concepts with Jurassic Park – humans have used genetic engineering to re-create dinosaurs, and the dinosaurs refuse to stay penned up in their carefully-designed enclosures—I was at once excited and skeptical. Excited because Dinosaurs! And skeptical because I read Crichton’s version, and never could wholeheartedly recommend it.

Fortunately, that’s as far as the similarities between Crichton’s work and author James Tarr’s book, Bestiarii, travel together. They diverge early, with Tarr’s newer, more recently researched book breaking new ground and, thankfully, establishing some human characters that are worth rooting for. In Tarr’s book, recreated dinos have escaped from their park into what is essentially a war zone, and when the combatants, the dinosaurs, and a few hapless civilians cross paths, it is possible to emphathize with both the dinosaurs and the humans. My only complaint is that I wish there had been more dinosaurs –the plot is human-centric—but wanting more of something is seldom a reason to mark a book down. Fans of dinosaurs and/or milSF will probably enjoy this book and its sequels (two so far).

Jo Boone Writes:

I am still working on The Celestial Sea, the third book in the Combined Service series. I am trying to increase my productivity as a writer, and I think I’m getting better. I try to write before work, after work, and before bedtime at least, and I try to add 100 words at each session. I am, by this method, getting consistently higher wordcounts. Speaking of nightmares, I had a dream that this one would be released in January. I don’t actually think there’s any way that will happen, but I do intend to try.

Until next time, happy reading and writing!

Jo