Book info

• Title The Andromeda Strain
• Author Michael Crichton
• Year 1969
• Genre Science Fiction

Five prominent biophysicists give the United States government an urgent warning: sterilisation procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, Project Scoop sends seventeen satellites into the fringes of space in order to 'collect organisms and dust for study'. Then a probe falls to the earth, landing in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona. A little while later, in the nearby town of Piedmont, bodies are discovered heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. But the terror has only just begun, because when they try to find the cause of death, the scientists don't realise just what kind of unearthly danger they are dealing with...

Thoughts

A space probe falls out of orbit and crashes to earth, way off from the designated site. There appears to be a new form of bacteria on it, and when a team of scientists go to investigate, they find this is going to be far more than they bargained for. A national disaster could be in the making.

You don’t really get much chance to draw breath and get to know the characters involved in this story, which is probably good because you’re never sure who is going to survive and there’s far too much else happening to spend a lot of time on someone’s back story.

There are four main scientists to be focused on - one doesn’t want to be involved in the project, one wants to hide his condition, one misses all the vital clues and the last who created the project in the first place.

That’s all you get to learn, and that’s all you need to know, I suppose. I’d be hard pushed to ever say I dislike one of Crichton’s books. He has a special place in my heart and even if the story didn’t grab me, the writing was still great to read. It is one of my least favourite of his though. The story zips along without having time to develop, and then seemed to be over before it had ever really got going.

Rating: 3 / 5