Dinosaur Wars [Paperback]

Thomas Hopp (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2000

A U.S. space probe discovers a 65 million-year-old derelict outpost at the moon's south pole. Now the owners of the moonbase are returning to reclaim their home world-our world. In Montana, wildlife biologist Chase Armstrong and rancher's daughter Kit Daniels survive attacks by T-Rex and deadly Megaraptors to find that they are at ground-zero, where the invaders' lost city lies buried under a mountain of sandstone. Deep in the underground catacombs, trapped by human-sized, intelligent carnivorous dinosaurs, they may be mankind's last hope for survival. "Solid science and pacing that never quits." -Kay Kenyon, Philip K. Dick Award nominated author of Maximum Ice "Fills the void since Jurassic Park. And, Hopp's book may be better." -Steve Brusatte, DinoLand Review

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

The time is tomorrow morning. The place is Earth. You wake up to the sonic booms of an invasion fleet from space, and the stage is set for Dinosaur Wars. Science fiction novelist Thomas P. Hopp has created a gripping, fast-paced chiller of the ultimate in wildlife re-introduction programs, when creatures who fled the asteroid impact that ended the Age of Dinosaurs return to claim their home world -- our world! Not an alternative history, not a time-warp story, Dinosaur Wars takes off plausibly with Jet Propulsion Laboratory space scientists discovering 65 million year old ruins in a crater at the south pole of the moon. From there, mankind's fortunes go downhill as astronaut explorers of the moon base trigger an automated program to invade the Earth and repopulate it with creatures from the Cretaceous Era, including a species of human-sized, intelligent carnivorous dinosaur. Faced with a massive invasion, America's aircraft and tanks are suddenly hard-pressed to save humanity from extinction.

From the Inside Flap

Readers will find in Dinosaur Wars a combination of story lines that captures, in a single book, the terror of H.G. Wells' Earth invasion in The War of the Worlds, the awe of dinosaurs returning to life in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, the epic scope of George Lucas' science fiction adventure Star Wars, the gee-whiz amazement of prehistoric beasts in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and the gung-ho military action of Tom Clancy's doomsday thrillers.

Skillfully woven, from an unprepossessing opening scene in which Jet Propulsion Lab scientists use a lunar orbiter to discover a 65 million year old derelict moon base, to a rip-roaring climax in a clash of U.S. tanks and helicopter gunships with laser-blasting fighter walkers of the invading dinosaurian troops, Dinosaur Wars carries the reader forward in a page-turning frenzy of danger, thrills, and scientifically accurate, up-to-date dinosaurs, right down to the feathered crest on T-rex's head.

In the midst of so much, Hopp still finds time for those touches that humanize a story. His young hero and heroine, Chase Armstrong and Kit Daniels, are drawn together for the sake of survival in a Montana landscape gone mad with thundering dinosaurs and roaring tanks, but they find more than mere survival -- they find each other, and love.

With a story line so deeply woven that the reader almost needs to keep notes, Hopp has built a rich rewarding read, and one that keeps the pages turning to its unexpected, thrill-a-minute conclusion.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: iUniverse (October 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0595146449
• ISBN-13: 978-0595146444
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,467,478 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thomas Patrick Hopp was born in Seattle, Washington, and lived his earliest years in a housing project on the banks of the Duwamish River. Despite a tough start in life, good grades at West Seattle High School and the University of Washington plus a perfect score on the Graduate Record Examination gained him entry to the Ph.D. program in biochemistry at Cornell University Medical College. He studied protein chemistry there and genetic engineering at Rockefeller University and went on to help found the multi-billion-dollar Seattle biotechnology company, Immunex Corporation. He created the first commercially successful nanotechnology device, a molecular handle called the Flag epitope. He plays guitar and bass and has performed onstage with blues legend John Lee Hooker and rock supergroups The Kingsmen and The Drifters. He has lived in San Diego and on Manhattan Island but currently resides in Seattle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hopp's DinoWars story a great night's escapist feast, September 29, 2005

By 

K. D. Kragen "author of The KillWare Chronicles" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dinosaur Wars (Paperback)

If you like disaster and alien-attack novels, dinosaur resurrection novels, survival novels, crazy-wild sc-fi\fantasy that reads fast and fun, with a cliff-hanger feel from chapter to chapter, Thomas P. Hopp's DinoWars story is a great night's escapist feast. It is a first novel, so there are issues of polish that I anticipate will disappear in subsequent offerings by the author.

The unexpected plot builds well around believable characters. And there are great lines throughout that makes you feel like you are somewhere between a Flash Gordon or Edgar Rice Burroughs episode and an "Aliens" movie. For example (from page 56):

Chase was dumbstruck. Seeing his confusion, the man spat some tobacco juice. "You been up in the hills or something? That's some sort of alien death ray up there." The man cast a worried glance at the moon. "The whole world's under attack. That's what's wrong with the radio. Moon ray took out the radio station. Good country music. I'm gonna miss it."

With T-Rex's "blood-curdling roar" in the front yard, a real "death ray from space," and a friendly family of hay-eating parasaurolophuses waiting for their next meal to be dropped to them from the hayloft, Thomas Hopp pulls off a great addition to the growing sci-fi/fantasy dinosaur subgenre. The second book in the series is available, "Dinosaur Wars: Counterattack," and a third is in the works. I look forward to reading more. Visit his website at: http://thomas-hopp.com/

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved Dinosaur Wars!, March 29, 2001

By 

Gar Thekra (San Diego) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dinosaur Wars (Paperback)

This is one of the best adventure stories I have read in a long time. The dinosaurs are realistic and very scary. The heroes are a male/female pair who could be played by Brad Pitt and Jennifer Love Hewett -- easy! They are real heroes too, not the dark and evil types so often portrayed these days. He's a wildlife biologist (a noble profession) and she's studying paleontology at Montana State -- what a perfect couple to get involved with dinosaurs, and each other! The romance is light and suitable for all ages.

This book is well written. You never know which way the plot will turn. My favorite scene: Kit Daniels fends off a T-rex with a pitchfork while Chase Armstrong loads his rifle.

In my opinion, this is one of the better dinosaur adventures published in recent years, and that includes the Jurassic Park novels. With strong male and female lead characters, it outdoes many other adventures of this type.

I am a fan of dinosaurs in literature, so I enjoyed the up-to-date science. Dinosaurs with feathers, raptors bigger than velociraptors, charming tiny pterodactyls, it's got it all.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Jurassic Park, January 2, 2011

By 

NoZee - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dinosaur Wars (Paperback)

Like the promo for this book says, it's like Jurassic Park meets Star Wars. Very hard to put this one down till I had finished it. There is non-stop action and suspense, and the characters were delightful. Great heroes and villains, people and creatures you want to follow to the end to find out what happens to them. I really think this is much better reading than Jurassic Park because the characters are so very interesting. A young man, a young woman, a love interest while the world seems to be coming to an end, with space invaders, dinosaurs roaming the earth again, and danger everywhere. It really is like a Star Wars story, with lasers blasting. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole way.