.gif)
Carnosaur (novel)
Encyclopedia
Carnosaur is a horror novel written by Australian author
John Brosnan
, under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight. A film adaptation
was made in 1993 by Adam Simon
.
The novel bears several similarities to Michael Crichton
's Jurassic Park, though Carnosaur preceded the latter work by six years. Brosnan feared that the public would have thought that his Gollancz reissue of Carnosaur would have been seen as a plagiarism to Jurassic Park. He admitted he liked the scene in the Crichton novel film adaption
involving dinosaurs rampaging through a museum, as it bore direct similarities to an incident featured in Carnosaur.
, England
, the novel opens in a chicken farm which is attacked one night by a mysterious creature, leaving the farmer and his wife dead. A story circulates that the killer was a Siberian Tiger which had escaped the private zoo of an eccentric lord called Penward. A reporter named Pascal investigates the carnage and notices that the blood stained room where the attack has taken place has been thoroughly cleansed in a seeming attempt at covering the killer's footprints. A few days later, the creature attacks a stable, killing a horse, the keeper and her daughter, leaving one survivor, an 8 year old boy. Pascal arrives at the scene, only to find Penward's men already there, towing a concealed animal with a helicopter. Pascal interviews the boy who reveals that the killer was not a tiger, but a dinosaur. After unsuccessfully trying to interview Penward's men, Pascal moves on to begin a sexual relationship with Penward's nymphomaniac wife, who eventually takes him to her private quarters.
From there, Pascal enters the zoo, only to discover that it is filled with dinosaurs. He is captured and given a tour of the establishment. He sees a variety of different species, mostly carnivorous, including the dinosaur that had escaped earlier which is identified as a Deinonychus
, a sexually frustrated Megalosaurus
and a Tarbosaurus
. Penward explains that he recreated the dinosaurs by studying the DNA fragments found in dinosaur fossils, then using them as a basis for restructuring the DNA of chickens. He goes as far as saying that he intends to let his dinosaurs loose in remote areas of the world where they could flourish and eventually spread after what he considers an inevitable Third World War. Pascal is imprisoned, only to be rescued by Lady Penward, but only after promising that he permanently commit to her. As they make their escape, Pascal notices that his ex-girlfriend Jenny, a reporter herself, has been caught in the act of infiltrating Penwards zoo. Enraged at his insistence on helping her, Lady Penward releases the dinosaurs and other animals present in the zoo. Lord Penward is seriously wounded by an escaped bull and captures his maddened wife.
Pascal and Jenny escape to the authorities, but are not believed until reports begin flooding in on mysterious deaths. A pleasure boat is attacked by a Plesiosaurus
, a Dilophosaurus
kills a Member of Parliament
, a Megalosaurus
gets run over by a truck, a Altispinax
attacks a herd of cows, a Euoplocephalus
confronts a scorpion tank, and the Tarbosaurus destroys a pub before invading people's gardens. The British Army
is called, and soon many dinosaurs are killed. The next day, Pascal goes to visit Jenny at her home, only to find her badly injured, and her family dead; killed by a Deinonychus which Pascal kills with a pitchfork. Meanwhile, the dying Lord Penward imprisons his wife in a farmhouse, where she is devoured alive by newly hatched Tyrannosaurus
. At the conclusion of story, aside from the baby Tyrannosaurus
, the only other dinosaur left alive is the baby Brachiosaurus
.
. Brosnan sent his manuscript to Star Books and it was published in 1984. Brosnan was disappointed that the predicted boom in dinosaur films never occurred, and the novel received little attention in the UK. The novel was first published in the USA in 1989 by Bart Books, though with little success.
Although Brosnan disliked Roger Corman
's film adaptation of the novel, he nonetheless credited it with having raised greater awareness of his original story.
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
John Brosnan
John Brosnan
John Raymond Brosnan was an Australian writer of both fiction and non-fiction works based around the fantasy and science fiction genres. He was born in Perth, Western Australia, and died in South Harrow, London, from acute pancreatitis...
, under the pseudonym of Harry Adam Knight. A film adaptation
Carnosaur (film)
Carnosaur is a 1993 horror film starring Diane Ladd as a mad scientist who plans to recreate dinosaurs and destroy humanity. The film is loosely based on a the novel Carnosaur by John Brosnan that was released in 1984, but the two have little in common...
was made in 1993 by Adam Simon
Adam Simon
Adam Simon is an American screenwriter and film director.-Writer:*The Haunting in Connecticut *Bones *The American Nightmare *The Typewriter, the Rifle & the Movie Camera...
.
The novel bears several similarities to Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton
John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...
's Jurassic Park, though Carnosaur preceded the latter work by six years. Brosnan feared that the public would have thought that his Gollancz reissue of Carnosaur would have been seen as a plagiarism to Jurassic Park. He admitted he liked the scene in the Crichton novel film adaption
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...
involving dinosaurs rampaging through a museum, as it bore direct similarities to an incident featured in Carnosaur.
Plot
Set in a rural village in CambridgeshireCambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the novel opens in a chicken farm which is attacked one night by a mysterious creature, leaving the farmer and his wife dead. A story circulates that the killer was a Siberian Tiger which had escaped the private zoo of an eccentric lord called Penward. A reporter named Pascal investigates the carnage and notices that the blood stained room where the attack has taken place has been thoroughly cleansed in a seeming attempt at covering the killer's footprints. A few days later, the creature attacks a stable, killing a horse, the keeper and her daughter, leaving one survivor, an 8 year old boy. Pascal arrives at the scene, only to find Penward's men already there, towing a concealed animal with a helicopter. Pascal interviews the boy who reveals that the killer was not a tiger, but a dinosaur. After unsuccessfully trying to interview Penward's men, Pascal moves on to begin a sexual relationship with Penward's nymphomaniac wife, who eventually takes him to her private quarters.
From there, Pascal enters the zoo, only to discover that it is filled with dinosaurs. He is captured and given a tour of the establishment. He sees a variety of different species, mostly carnivorous, including the dinosaur that had escaped earlier which is identified as a Deinonychus
Deinonychus
Deinonychus was a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur. There is one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This 3.4 meter long dinosaur lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago . Fossils have been recovered from the U.S...
, a sexually frustrated Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic period of Europe...
and a Tarbosaurus
Tarbosaurus
Tarbosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that flourished in Asia about 70 million years ago, at the end of the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils have been recovered in Mongolia, with more fragmentary remains found further afield in parts of China. Although many species have been...
. Penward explains that he recreated the dinosaurs by studying the DNA fragments found in dinosaur fossils, then using them as a basis for restructuring the DNA of chickens. He goes as far as saying that he intends to let his dinosaurs loose in remote areas of the world where they could flourish and eventually spread after what he considers an inevitable Third World War. Pascal is imprisoned, only to be rescued by Lady Penward, but only after promising that he permanently commit to her. As they make their escape, Pascal notices that his ex-girlfriend Jenny, a reporter herself, has been caught in the act of infiltrating Penwards zoo. Enraged at his insistence on helping her, Lady Penward releases the dinosaurs and other animals present in the zoo. Lord Penward is seriously wounded by an escaped bull and captures his maddened wife.
Pascal and Jenny escape to the authorities, but are not believed until reports begin flooding in on mysterious deaths. A pleasure boat is attacked by a Plesiosaurus
Plesiosaurus
Plesiosaurus was a genus of large marine sauropterygian reptile that lived during the early part of the Jurassic Period, and is known by nearly complete skeletons from the Lias of England...
, a Dilophosaurus
Dilophosaurus
Dilophosaurus was a theropod dinosaur from the Sinemurian stage of the Early Jurassic Period, about 193 million years ago. The first specimens were described in 1954, but it was not until over a decade later that the genus received its current name...
kills a Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
, a Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus
Megalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic period of Europe...
gets run over by a truck, a Altispinax
Altispinax
Altispinax is a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Obernkirchen Sandstein of Niedersachsen, Germany. Material has also been referred to it from the Hastings Beds , Purbeck Beds , and Lower Greensand of England, and the Weald Clay of England and Belgium, but this material...
attacks a herd of cows, a Euoplocephalus
Euoplocephalus
Euoplocephalus was one of the largest genera of ankylosaurian dinosaurs, at about the size of a small elephant. It is also the ankylosaurian with the best fossil record, so its extensive spiked armor, low-slung body and great club-like tail are well documented.-Description:Among the...
confronts a scorpion tank, and the Tarbosaurus destroys a pub before invading people's gardens. The British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
is called, and soon many dinosaurs are killed. The next day, Pascal goes to visit Jenny at her home, only to find her badly injured, and her family dead; killed by a Deinonychus which Pascal kills with a pitchfork. Meanwhile, the dying Lord Penward imprisons his wife in a farmhouse, where she is devoured alive by newly hatched Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...
. At the conclusion of story, aside from the baby Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus
Tyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...
, the only other dinosaur left alive is the baby Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus
Brachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...
.
Background
Brosnan wrote that he first became interested in writing a novel on dinosaurs in 1983, when a film journalist colleague of his returned from Hollywood and told him that dinosaur films would be an upcoming fadFAD
In biochemistry, flavin adenine dinucleotide is a redox cofactor involved in several important reactions in metabolism. FAD can exist in two different redox states, which it converts between by accepting or donating electrons. The molecule consists of a riboflavin moiety bound to the phosphate...
. Brosnan sent his manuscript to Star Books and it was published in 1984. Brosnan was disappointed that the predicted boom in dinosaur films never occurred, and the novel received little attention in the UK. The novel was first published in the USA in 1989 by Bart Books, though with little success.
Although Brosnan disliked Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
's film adaptation of the novel, he nonetheless credited it with having raised greater awareness of his original story.
Dinosaurs and other extinct animals featured
- DeinonychusDeinonychusDeinonychus was a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur. There is one described species, Deinonychus antirrhopus. This 3.4 meter long dinosaur lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million years ago . Fossils have been recovered from the U.S...
- MegalosaurusMegalosaurusMegalosaurus is a genus of large meat-eating theropod dinosaurs of the Middle Jurassic period of Europe...
- PlesiosaurusPlesiosaurusPlesiosaurus was a genus of large marine sauropterygian reptile that lived during the early part of the Jurassic Period, and is known by nearly complete skeletons from the Lias of England...
(identified as a generic plesiosaur; most likely to be Elasmosaurus) - TarbosaurusTarbosaurusTarbosaurus is a genus of tyrannosaurid theropod dinosaur that flourished in Asia about 70 million years ago, at the end of the Late Cretaceous Period. Fossils have been recovered in Mongolia, with more fragmentary remains found further afield in parts of China. Although many species have been...
- DilophosaurusDilophosaurusDilophosaurus was a theropod dinosaur from the Sinemurian stage of the Early Jurassic Period, about 193 million years ago. The first specimens were described in 1954, but it was not until over a decade later that the genus received its current name...
- BrachiosaurusBrachiosaurusBrachiosaurus is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Jurassic Morrison Formation of North America. It was first described by Elmer S. Riggs in 1903 from fossils found in the Grand River Canyon of western Colorado, in the United States. Riggs named the dinosaur Brachiosaurus altithorax,...
- EuoplocephalusEuoplocephalusEuoplocephalus was one of the largest genera of ankylosaurian dinosaurs, at about the size of a small elephant. It is also the ankylosaurian with the best fossil record, so its extensive spiked armor, low-slung body and great club-like tail are well documented.-Description:Among the...
(identified by the now invalid synonym Scolosaurus) - AltispinaxAltispinaxAltispinax is a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Obernkirchen Sandstein of Niedersachsen, Germany. Material has also been referred to it from the Hastings Beds , Purbeck Beds , and Lower Greensand of England, and the Weald Clay of England and Belgium, but this material...
(said to walk on all fours ; possibly the same animal as Becklespinax) - TyrannosaurusTyrannosaurusTyrannosaurus meaning "tyrant," and sauros meaning "lizard") is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex , commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other...
- Unidentified theropod