Dinosaurs

The Dinosaurs

Yes, sI have always wanted to write the definitive Dinosaur vs Man tale. There has always been that untangible feeling that makes the extinct monsters special. I always wanted to have my very own pet Protoceratops or Stegosaurus. And, being either special or a wee bit silly, those ideals never went out with the bath water like all other childhood dreams. I guess I never truly grew up. And I wanted to write my own dinosaur tale.

And nSo naturally enough, I wanted my tale to be massive. Not a journey to the centre of the Earth or a scarcely populated planet/island/penintula somewhere (delete as applicable). No, I wanted the whole hog. I wanted what Jurrassic Park should have been. I wanted what Primeval only ever hinted at, and what Doctor Who in the Jon Pertwee years never had the budget for. I wanted dinosaurs, big scary dinosaurs, amok in the streets of London! (Well, actually I wanted them amok in the streets of Glasgow, but I figured readers will know London better and a Raptor attack in Hyde Park would bring more excitement than an Allosaur rampaging across George Square. Well, except for those who know.) I want Velociraptors fighting Deininychus to see who comes out on top and kills the surviving humans. I want Pteranodans flying past Big Ben and Tyrannosaurs eating journalists on BBC News. A full scale panic and invasion, that’s what I want. And no one has ever bothered to give it to me.

But I But I had a problem. We live in a modern age, where enlightened people hardly expect to walk into a Coelphysis around the next corner. So who to bring about dino-mania? Science can hardly be invoked, since Michael Crichton used that to death in the old Park. So I was a loss for years, I wanted the big set pieces and the love, but I could never think of a justification for having the dinosaurs in modern day England.

And tz And then I had my utopia moment. I will never be a hardcore science-fiction author like Michael Crichton or our old pal Gary Gibson. It’s just not my thing. I failed 2^nd year Physics, after all. (I can’t even spell Physics! That’s a fail and a half!) For in the hardcore books of Gibson and co, everything has to have a reason. And every reason has to have a plausibility. But then, I am not a writer of science-fiction, I am a writer of whimsy. Big larger than life tales about boys and ghosts and all that kind of jazz. I often believe the best way to start a story is to go “Once open a time a boy was having a completely mundane and ordinary day, then suddenly a dragon came out of the sky.” I write insanity. So why not dinosaurs. I could easily go “Dinosaur mad boy wishes for dinosaurs in his own city under Star, gets wish.”

Now a All I need to do is write the bastard.