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''Congo'' is a 1980 science fiction novel by Creator/MichaelCrichton, who admitted he was trying to {{remake}} ''Literature/KingSolomonsMines''.

The novel starts with an abrupt end to an expedition sent by Earth Resource Technology Services Inc. in the dense rain forests of Congo when the team is attacked and killed by an unknown creature 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 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 of Japan, Germany, and Holland has also set off into the jungle after 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.

A [[Film/{{Congo}} film adaptation]] was released in 1995.
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!!This book provides examples of:
* AbandonedCampRuins: When the protagonists' expedition arrives to the place where [[SendInTheSearchTeam the missing E.R.T.S. expedition they were sent to find]] was camped, the narration notes that in the weeks in between the missing team's last contact and the protagonists' arrival the whole site has been ReclaimedByNature and cleaned by the KillerGorilla tribe who killed the team, and aside from a couple of gadgets there is no trace left.
* AlwaysABiggerFish: Munro goes on a punitive expedition to wipe out the killer gorillas, finds several of them and is about to open fire [[OhCrap when he realises the entire mountain is swarming with them.]] He beats a hasty retreat.
* BittersweetEnding: Ross, Elliot, Amy, and Munro escape the Congo with their lives, but that's about all they escape with, as most of the porters they brought with them are dead, and the [[spoiler:eruption of Mukenko has buried the Lost City of Zinj, Ross' diamonds, and Elliot's dreams of introducing a new species of gorilla to the world under almost half a mile of lava in one fell swoop.]] The epilogue gives a little more sweetness to their future: [[spoiler:Ross resigns from ERTS and eventually marries a fellow scientist, Elliot sees Amy begin to fully assimilate into a mountain gorilla troop, Amy bears a child to whom she can teach her own sign language (which Elliot witnesses for himself), and Munro is able to return to his old lifestyle after selling a handful of blue diamonds on the market for a handsome profit.]]
* CannibalTribe: The team has to constantly avoid a cannibalistic tribe of natives (the Kigani) who are at war with the Mobutu government. Partly because they were cannibals, but mostly because Mobutu was a vicious dictator running a PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny and he didn't like that said tribe was ignoring him. Nor does it help that the general in charge of battling the tribe, Ngo Muguru, is said to be just as unpleasant as any one Kigani.
* ChekhovsVolcano
* ClosedCircle: What the Lost City of Zinj becomes to the expedition, because of sheer distance from any help, a rival expedition's jamming and eventually sun spots and atmospheric phenomena kills all satellite communications, and because the KillerGorilla tribe has closed off their escape route.
* ContrivedCoincidence: The fact that ERTS is one of the sponsors of project Amy becomes this, not only because of the involvement of apes in the destruction of the first team, [[spoiler:but also because it is eventually revealed that Amy was ''born'' near Zinj and her mother was killed by the grey apes.]]
* CorporateWarfare: Presented here as a sort of Cold War by proxy.
* [[CreepyGymCoach Creepy Teacher]]: An introduction on Ross says that a high school teacher called her "the very flower of virile Texas womanhood". Bad enough for an average high school student, but the introduction also tells us that Ross graduated high school at 12.
* DarkestAfrica: Much of the novel takes place in the Republic of Zaire, which is almost all rain forest. Even today it's a dangerous place to travel on foot, and often there's no other way to travel. In 1979 it was much more so thanks to an even lower level of technology and a raging civil war.
* DeniedFoodAsPunishment: In an early chapter, Elliott says that he sometimes punishes Amy's misbehavior by sending her to bed early without her usual peanut butter and jelly snack. Subverted in that while it ''is'' a punishment, it's just a tasty snack that she enjoys, and she is still getting a full meal - basically, she's still getting dinner, just not any dessert afterwards.
* DiurnalNocturnalAnimal: Played with. The gorillas always attack at night, but a very large group is shown feeding during the day.
* EndOfAnEra: Of the typical JungleOpera, or at least from [[GreatWhiteHunter Munro's]] point of view, with him mentioning how expeditions are depending greatly on technology to plot their course (and even forcing him to learn computer programming language) and solve their problems. Elliot also believes this a bit, quoting Livingstone and Stanley's expeditions on his thoughts.
* EnhanceButton: ZigZaggedTrope: the hunt to enhance a piece of footage that displays one of the [[KillerGorilla killer gorillas]] storming the first ERTS camp requires specialised computer programs (some of which need to be run to counteract a degradation of the footage that the previous program unwillingly created) and a long amount of time, and Ross needs to run several programs to make sure that the resulting slightly-more-clear image is real, as well as needing to convince Travis of this (the resulting picture still looks bad enough that Travis thinks at first it's an "easter egg" from a rookie programmer that Ross unknowingly triggered). It is the speed and efficiency of Ross pulling this off that helps her convince Travis to send her as the needed "[[TheWormGuy console hot-dogger]]" for the second expedition.
* EyeScream: The leader of the first expedition is looking for his friend when something plops next to him. He picks it up and realises he's holding a severed eyeball.
* FunWithAcronyms: W.E.I.R.D. (the defensive package of the expedition), S.D.T.A.G.W ("Some Damn Thing Always Goes Wrong", written on a plaque on Travis' desk).
* GentleGorilla: Amy was raised in captivity by humans and trained to communicate via sign language. She's very friendly and docile, and acts as an interpreter between the humans and the {{Killer Gorilla}}s.
* HeadCrushing: The lost city of Zinj is guarded by gray gorillas who were trained by the city's human inhabitants to [[spoiler:kill intruders by crushing their heads between stone paddles held in each hand. Hundreds of years after the human trainers died out, the gorillas are still training each other to perform this gruesomely effective duty]].
* HiredGuns: Munro is a famous White African mercenary.
* HollywoodNatives: The Kigani tribe run around with spears, bows, face paint and practice cannibalism constantly. They also throw their poop like monkeys for some bizarre reason.
* ImAHumanitarian: The group has to constantly evade a tribe fighting the Mobutu government.
* IceQueen: Ross is a cold, practical, methodical egotist, driven to obtain her goal at any cost including betraying the trust of her teammates. She trusts other people only as far as they are useful to her.
* JungleOpera: An attempt to update the trope.
* KillerGorilla: On the way to the city of Zinj, Karen Ross's team has to contend with a group of deadly gorillas. Played with, in that the gorillas are not inherently aggressive, but [[spoiler:were ''trained'' that way by the former inhabitants of Zinj, and they have been teaching themselves this behavior through succeeding generations.]]
* LethallyStupid: Ross's psych profile states she has a habit of cutting corners and acting rashly when her goal is in sight - and boy howdy, is that on the mark. Despite herself being a geologist who should know about such things, she almost gets the entire team killed when she [[spoiler:ignores Munro's warning about how dangerous it is to set off explosive charges near an eruptive volcano]].
* MeaningfulName: Zinj, also spelled Zanj, means "country of the blacks" in Persian and Arabic (and is the root for both Tanzania and Zanzibar's names, for instance) but is phonetically the same as ''singe'', the French word for ape or monkey (as in ''[[Literature/PlanetOfTheApes La Planete des Singes]]'').
* MisappliedPhlebotinum: The compression algorithm used for voice communication is impressive even for today: real-time audio encoding and decoding on a general-purpose computer somewhere between last-generation [[Platform/Atari8BitComputers 8-bit Atari XE]] and lowest-end [[Platform/IBMPersonalComputer IBM PC]]. But the way they use it, a text chat would've been faster and more convenient.
* ParachuteInATree: This happens to Elliot when the team parachutes into the jungle. Fortunately, he's only four feet above the ground, so he can undo his chute and jump down without getting hurt. It's still a very unnerving experience for him since this is the first time he's ever jumped out of a plane.
* RockBeatsLaser: Zig-zagged.
** Averted HARD with the Kigani tribe who are rebelling against Mobutu's government. They're still at a stone age level of technology with bows, arrows, and spears. It is made VERY clear that these primitive weapons stand no chance in hell against the Zaire army, with its full array of modern attack helicopters, {=RPG=}s, and assault rifles wielded by men from an enemy tribe. This is made even more clear at the end when the protagonists, reduced to only four people (and one gorilla) still manage to hold off and decimate an entire war party of Kigani themselves, armed only with assault rifles (though they quickly run low on ammunition and are forced to escape before the next war party is send against them).
** Played straight when the protagonists go up against the gray gorillas of Zinj. Despite all the high technology they brought with them, they're nearly helpless against the gorillas, who outnumber them and also benefit from the humans' tendency to see the gorillas as dumb animals.
** Subverted when Munro and Elliott get the idea of turning the gorillas' greatest advantage - their intelligence and use of language - into a weapon against them.
* SentryGun: One of three pieces of the expedition's W.E.I.R.D. package (alongside a portable electrified fence, NightVisionGoggles and [[EnergyWeapon Frickin' Laser Beams]] in designator-rifle-mode for the guns). Tripod-mounted, portable, [[HollywoodSilencer silenced]], capable of detecting heat or attack laser-designated targets. They unfortunately (and quickly) become TooAwesomeToUse because of their [[MoreDakka immense firing rate]] eating too much ammo.
* TeamPet: Amy fills this role, yet she's very human in a way.
* TheWormGuy: Two members of the expedition are this: Peter Elliot (because of his knowledge of gorilla behaviour) and Karen Ross (who is a self-proclaimed "console hot-dogger" and the one with the skills to run the expedition's technology and analyse its data faster than it would take if it was sent back to Texas-and later because there is no communication at all).
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The novel, which can be disconcerting as it's also set around the collapse of the Amin regime (current events at the time it was written).
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: The epilogue tells what happens to each of the main characters over the next couple of years. It basically amounts to "back to normal life" for everyone except Ross. She leaves ERTS for a government job that is entirely office-bound, with no fieldwork at all.
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