For all its edge-of-the-seat dinosaur chases and its (literally) cliffhanging moments, The Lost World is less a storyboard for an action-packed summer blockbuster (although it became one) and more a parable on the dangers of exploiting nature.

At the thematic core of Crichton’s cutting-edge techno-thriller is a concern as old as the Industrial Revolution itself: the prickly relationship between science and nature, specifically the line where scientific research becomes exploitative, invasive, and destructive. When does legitimate research morph into degrading nature into a commodity, a destructive dynamic whose endgame will be, as Malcolm drily points out to Sarah Harding, the extinction of humanity itself?

Crichton does not simplify the issue by setting “good” scientists against “evil” scientists. Really all of the scientists who descend on Site B represent varying degrees of exploitation. Levine, for instance, the quintessential academic researcher content to sit atop the high hide and observe the movements of the dinosaur herds, reduces nature to a vast lab experiment. For Malcolm, nature is little more than a schoolroom where he expounds on his increasingly darkening perceptions of humanity’s future and the fate of the earth. Sarah Harding tries to learn the secrets of animal behavior.