2024 read #83: The Dinosaurs by William Stout.

The Dinosaurs: A Fantastic New View of a Lost Era, illustrated by William Stout

Text by William Service; edited by Byron Preiss

Introduction by Peter Dodson

160 pages

Published 1981

Read July 18

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (maybe 3 if I’m generous)

Can we take a moment to notice just how hard Byron Preiss pushed for illustrated dinosaur books for adults? Throughout the decade or so between the Dinosaur Renaissance and the Jurassic Park craze, his name recurs as editorial instigator for a particular sort of publication. We have The Ultimate Dinosaur, Bradbury’s Dinosaur Tales, and this book. Dude was committed to making pop culture dinos happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were even more I’ve yet to learn about (especially since he seems linked to Don Glut’s Dinosaur Society, which cashed in on the ’90s dinomania with its own titles).

I forget the context, but I first heard of this book recently from a fellow writer on social media. She grew up paging through William Stout’s artwork and William Service’s accompanying prose vignettes. The cover is absolutely stunning, an art nouveau Parasaurolophus in 1970s kitchen tones. Naturally I wanted it. I was able to find a cheap copy on eBay, and here we are.

Stout’s artwork, inevitably, is the major selling point here. To contemporary eyes, his dinosaurs look lumpy and veiny, perhaps reminiscent of Frank Frazetta’s shadowy barbarians, though the delightful art nouveau influence runs throughout the book. There is a stunning full-page spread of a Leptoceratops beneath a magnolia in full flower that I want framed on my wall. If the book were exclusively composed of Stout’s art, I’d rate it more highly.

Service’s vignettes are, at best, serviceable (heh), a dry run for the fictionalized approach to paleontology that would culminate in Raptor Red. The concepts Service explores, and the pop science terms he deploys, provide a fascinating glimpse of how deep the tropes of ’90s dinomania reach. For example, this is the earliest I’ve ever encountered the usage of “raptor” as a colloquial catch-all for small, fast, sharp-clawed theropods. Even the contemporaneous Time Safari called them dromaeosaurs. Oddly, Service is out of synch with Peter Dodson’s introduction, returning again and again to the trope of cold-blooded dinosaurs stymied by an errant chill.

Some of the vignettes depict speculative behaviors I don’t think I’ve seen touched elsewhere, such as a Styracosaurus instinctively munching tart bark to help purge toxins it had inadvertently eaten. (This is also the only description of dinosaur constipation I’ve ever read: “At times peristaltic waves of contraction passed down the colon; cloacas trembled and everted in vain.”) This treatment of dinos as living animals makes The Dinosaurs a rewarding read even now, with much of its science forty years out of date.