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Congo by |
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Michael Crichton
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| The author |
Michael Crichton
—
(born
October 23, 1942) is an
author, film producer and
television producer. His best-known works are
science fiction novels,
films and
television programs. Crichton describes his
genre as
techno-thriller which is usually the marriage
of action and technical
details. Many of his novels have medical or scientific underpinnings,
reflecting his medical training and science background. Crichton directed the film Coma, adapted from a Robin Cook novel, and there are other similarities in terms of genre and the fact that both Cook and Crichton are physicians, are of similar age and write about similar subjects. (From Wikipedia, The free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/)
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| The work | The
novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition in the dense forests of
Congo when the expedition team is attacked and killed by an unknown foe and
all contact with them lost. The expedition, searching for deposits of what
are arguably the most valuable diamonds in the world, discovered the
legendary lost city of Zinj. A video image taken by a camera there, and
transmitted by satellite to the base station in the USA, shows a peculiar
race of gorillas
to be responsible for the murders. Those gorillas are different from normal
gorillas in their appearance and behaviour. They are gray and rather small,
and they seem to communicate via wheezing sounds. After two corpses were
studied, it's concluded they are possibly a hybrid of gorilla and chimpanzee
or gorilla and human. They were not considered true gorillas by the study.
They are named Gorilla elliotensis. Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the city of Zinj, and the deposits of the new type of diamond that would change the shape of technology and the world as we know it. This time the searchers take the famous African white mercenary Munro as well as a female gorilla named Amy that can communicate with humans using sign language and her trainer Peter Elliot. They must hurry, as a rival consortium of European and Japanese corporations are out to get the diamonds as well, and the entire expedition becomes a race to reach the city of Zinj first. Unfortunately for Ross and her team run into many delays including getting caught in an African civil war, having to bail out of their plane, and threats encountered in the jungle. Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the City of Zinj and discover the consortium camp, like the original expedition's camp, in ruins and devoid of life. Ross and her team then first encounter the killer gorillas and are attacked. After beating them back, Ross, Elliot, and Munro explore the ruins and discover that the killer gorillas were bred by the ancient inhabitants of Zinj to guard the diamond mines from intruders. After several more attacks, Elliot, with the help of Amy, finds a way to tame the new gorillas (she refers them as "bad things"), but their victory is cut short by the eruption of the nearby volcano, accelerated by the explosives placed by Ross for her geological surveys, that buries the city and the diamond fields under metres of lava. Ross, Elliot, Munro, and the rest of the team's survivors are forced to run for their lives. The team then manages to find a hot air balloon in a crashed consortium cargo plane and use it to escape. (From Wikipedia, The free Encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/)
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