Congo (novel)
First edition cover
|
|
| Author | Michael Crichton |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre |
Science fiction novel, Adventure novel |
| Publisher | Knopf |
|
Publication date
|
1980 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 348 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 6602970 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.R48 C6 1980 |
| Preceded by | Eaters of the Dead |
| Followed by | Sphere |
Congo is a 1980 science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. The novel centers on an expedition searching for diamonds and investigating the mysterious deaths of a previous expedition in the dense rain forest of Congo. Crichton calls Congo a lost world novel in the tradition founded by Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, featuring the mines of that work's title.
The novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition sent by Earth Resource Technology Services Inc. in the dense rain forests of Congo (Zaire) when the team is attacked and killed by unknown creatures and all contact with them is lost. The expedition, searching for deposits of valuable diamonds, discovered the legendary lost city of Zinj (in Arabic Zinj or Zanj refers to the southern part of the East African coast). A video image taken by a camera there, and transmitted by satellite to the base station in Houston, shows a peculiar race of grey-haired gorillas to be responsible for the murders.
Another expedition, led by Karen Ross, is launched to find out the truth and to find the city of Zinj, where there are believed to be deposits of a certain diamond, type IIb, which are naturally boron-doped and thus useful as semiconductors, though worthless as gemstones. This time the searchers bring along the famous White African mercenary Charles Munro, as well as a female gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language, and her trainer Peter Elliot.
Time is of the greatest essence, as a rival consortium from corporations in Japan, Germany, and Holland are also searching for the diamonds, turning the entire expedition into a race to the city of Zinj. Unfortunately for Ross and her team, the American expedition encounters many delays along the way, including plane crashes, native civil wars, and jungle predators.
Eventually, Ross and her expedition reach the City of Zinj and discover the consortium's camp, like the original expedition's camp, in ruins and devoid of life. Ross and her team lose contact with the ERTS HQ due to a massive solar flare, then encounter the killer gorillas and are attacked. A brief battle ensues and several gorillas are killed.
After studying the corpses and performing a rudimentary field autopsy, it is concluded the animals are not "true" gorillas by modern biological standards, but gorilla-human hybrids: their mass and height is closer to humans than gorillas, their skull is greatly malformed (the "ridge" that makes gorilla heads look "pointy" is nearly nonexistent) as well as their pigmentation is on the border of albinism: light gray fur and yellow eyes. In addition, they exhibit different behavior: they are highly aggressive, ruthless and partially nocturnal. Unlike normal gorillas, the grey animals are also extremely social, a troop consisting of over a hundred, compared to a normal troop of a dozen animals. Elliot intends to name them Gorilla elliotensis after himself.
...
Wikipedia