3.5 Stars
I was very intrigued by the premise od this novel because I read it in the midst of the 2020 global pandemic. The story started out slow and it took me a while to get hooked in. My favourite aspects of this novel were the sections involving the hard science, specifically in the field of biology. I found it fascinating to learn a lot about the history and modern processes surrounding pathology. I enjoyed seeing how the scientists tried to puzzle how this mysterious virus spread and why certain people were immune. I know I didn't fully understand the parts about human immunity, but I still enjoy reading those parts. I'm interested in checking out the sequel to see how the story (& virus) evolves.

The sixth novel by Michael Crichton but the first published (in 1969) under his own name and the first in which he bent science fiction and suspense together in ways that would propel Crichton to the top of the bestseller lists and into cinemas for the next thirty years, The Andromeda Strain didn't retain many surprises for me, but in its own delightful way, reminded me of a science and technology museum exhibit and the docent giving me a tour: "And here we have a pioneering thriller of technology run amok, where mankind's hubris unleashes terror from a top secret laboratory which only white men can stop. Some of you may recall this theme in Jurassic Park."

Oooh! Aaah!

Divided into four sections representing four days--Contact, Piedmont, Wildfire and Spread--the conceit of the novel is to document a scientific clusterfuck classified top secret. Outside the town of Piedmont, Arizona (pop. 48), an Army lieutenant and private have been dispatched to recover a crashed Air Force satellite. Observing no movement in the town, the men roll into Piedmont and report to Mission Control at Vandenberg Air Force Base lots of bodies in the streets. When Mission Control loses contact with the unit, a reconnaissance jet is dispatched to Piedmont and confirms the dead bodies but at least one civilian who seems to still be alive. Project Wildfire is put on alert.

Dr. Jeremy Stone, a thirty-six year old professor of bacteriology at Stanford and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is retrieved by MPs from a dinner party he's hosting with his wife. The other members of the Wildfire team are: Dr. Peter Leavitt, a clinical microbiologist experienced in the treatment of infectious disease. Dr. Charles Burton, a professor of pathology at Baylor College of Medicine known as "The Stumbler" for his clumsiness. A Yale anthropologist is in the hospital for an appendectomy and unable to respond, so the last man on the team is Dr. Mark Hall, a surgeon and compromise candidate chosen by virtue of being a single man who fits something called the Odd Man Hypothesis.

An MP hands Dr. Stone a report on Project Scoop, brainchild of the Army Medical Corps tasked with sending satellites into near space to hunt for organisms that might exist there. Any scientific benefits of this project conceal the true aim of Project Scoop: to recover organisms which might be developed into biological weapons. Seventeen orbital satellites weighing thirty-seven pounds have been built and six launched. Scoops I-VI either burned up in the atmosphere or were retrieved with only standard earth organisms. Scoop VII, believed to have been launched February 5, 1967, leaves stable orbit after two and a half days and mysteriously crashes in northeastern Arizona.

Stone and Burton are dispatched to Piedmont by helicopter pilot who has orders, upon Stone and Burton's unlikely demise, to return to Wildfire installation in Nevada where his craft is to be incinerated in midair, with the pilot. Stone and Burton note that the corpses in the street died suddenly, clutching their chests. The victims didn't seem to be in pain. Recovering the Scoop satellite in the clinic of the town doctor, Burton performs a field autopsy on the physician and finds the victim's liquid blood has coagulated into solid. More interesting, they find two survivors: a one-year male infant crying in his crib, and a sixty-seven-year old drunk who collapses in the street.

Meanwhile, Leavitt escorts Hall into the Wildfire installation, a zero contaminant facility buried underneath a functioning U.S. Department of Agriculture station in Nevada. Each of the levels is more sterile than the last and requires extensive decontamination before the visitor is admitted to Level V, where the satellite and the two survivors have been moved. In the event of a containment breach, an atomic device will automatically destroy the facility in t-minus three minutes. Hall is given the only key to cancel the self-destruct sequence and learns the psychology behind the Odd Man Hypothesis, which holds that bachelors are less likely to chicken out and abort the self-destruct if worse comes to worst.

* Helpful tip: When a scientist in a Michael Crichton novel assures you that some awesome new technology is perfectly safe, you don't walk, you run.

The flaws in The Andromeda Strain are numerous and easy to spot if you choose to dwell on them. In the days before integrated workplaces, the name characters are uniformly white and male. Worse, they're driven by archetype. Stone, the 36-year-old Nobel prize winning protagonist (Crichton was 27 years old at the time of the novel's publication) is a Gary Stu, a leader in his field who commands respect and adoration, keeps a steady hand at the wheel and was likely considered a bore by everyone except the author and his mother. The sterile work environment of the book doesn't inject any life into the characters either. For most of the story, I was rooting for the bacteria.

The reasons I enjoyed the novel were manifold. The conceit that extraterrestrials will visit earth in spaceships is turned on its head by Crichton with the eerie possibility that first contact could take place with a plague brought back by astronauts. This concept remains as potent today as it must have been in 1969 and is dealt with cerebrally, with the Wildfire scientists considering they may be destroying a highly advanced form of alien life in their petri dishes. A science dunce, I enjoyed Crichton detailing the various biological responses the human body undertakes to combat pathogens and how we co-exist with bacteria, 97% of which has evolved to pose no health risk to humans.

Crichton's dry, methodical take on the material (there's no room for flirting or even witty banter in the Wildfire installation) lends the book a sense of reality. This makes is more suspenseful and at times, terrifying. I find my inherent paranoia toward military research programs, the hubris of brilliant minds and the violence of scientific discovery to be well bred in Crichton's work. His high concept plots--involving space plagues, dinosaurs, time travel--are effective because I can imagine them being hatched in an undisclosed location where proper security protocols have been overlooked by the lowest bidder. Whoops. The Andromeda Strain is the book that started it all.

Five stars only because you can't give it 6. One of the 7-8 most beautiful books I've ever read. Maybe it's because I read it just in the years when I was starting to love reading, but I don't think so. It's a really nice book of its own. Michael Crichton in his heyday: a beautiful idea, a very accurate and scientifically plausible development, the Unpaired Man's theory, the mystery of the old alcoholic man and the newborn who do not die, the fractals, the experimental process to find out the cause of the biological catastrophe, everything is perfect to create that setting so compelling that it does not detach you from the book EVER. Over the years, I believe I have read it 10 times, and every time I rediscover it with pleasure. A masterpiece.

liked the beginning, thought the end was unbelievably anticlimatic.

There's a good story in here, somewhere. If Crichton tackled this idea later in his career it would have undoubtedly been a great book. There's just far too much science and not enough thriller.

The Andromeda Strain (Andromeda #1), Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain is a 1969 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton. A team is deployed to recover a military satellite which has returned to Earth, but contact is lost abruptly.

Aerial surveillance reveals that everyone in Piedmont, Arizona, the town closest to where the satellite landed, is apparently dead.

The duty officer of the base tasked with retrieving the satellite suspects that it returned with an extraterrestrial contaminant and recommends activating "Wildfire", a protocol for a government-sponsored team of scientists intended to contain threats of this nature.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و دوم ماه اکتبر سال 2002میلادی

عنوان: ن‍ژاد آن‍درم‍دا؛ نویسنده: م‍ای‍ک‍ل‌ ک‍رای‍ت‍ون‌‏‫؛ مت‍رج‍م: ف‍ائ‍زه‌ دی‍ن‍ی‌ (طب‍اطب‍ای‍ی‌)؛ ت‍ه‍ران: روزن‍ه‌‏‫، 1379؛ در 372ص؛ مصور، جدول، کتابنامه از ص 364، تا ص 369؛ شابک 9643340546؛‬ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

در یکی از شب‌های سرد زمستان سال 1964میلادی، ماهواره ی آمریکایی «اسکوپ هفت»، در نزدیکی دهکده ی دورافتاده‌ ای، در بیابان «آریزونا»، فرود می‌آید.؛ جویندگان ماهواره، که از سوی «ناسا»، برای بازگرداندن آن فرستاده شده‌ اند، دهکده را، در وضعیتی غیرعادی می‌یابند، زیرا نشانه‌ ای از حیات، در آن جا مشاهده نمی‌شود، البته جز لاشخورهایی که بر فراز دهکده چرخ می‌زنند.؛ آنان در دهکده، با صحنه‌ ای هولناک روبرو می‌شوند، زیرا شبحی سپیدپوش، به سوی آنان می‌آمد؛ و...؛

داستان «نژاد آندرمدا»، روایت داستان پردازانه‌ ای از بحران علمی هراسناکی، در دهه ی هفتم سده ی بیستم میلادی است، که در پی آزمایش‌های «ناسا»، برای دست‌یابی به شکل‌های تازه‌ تری از جنگ افزارهای میکروبی، در آمریکا رخ داد؛ سپس دامنه و پیامدهای آن بحران، تا مدت‌ها از سوی مقامات امنیتی آمریکا، پنهان نگاه داشته شد.؛ در کتاب «نژاد آندرمدا»، ابعاد پنهانی همان بحران آشکار می‌گردد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 12/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Andromeda Strain is probably a four or five star book, but it was just way too technical for me. I found myself skimming all of the technical stuff and skipping ahead to the part where the scientist would explain what he just said in "dummy speak". On the bright side, it is not a very long book, so it didn't feel like it was dragging. I thought the ending was great. I was very suprised, because it was not at all what I was expecting.

An ubiquitous small town in the remote Arizona desert , a pleasant area of the late 1960's such a wonderful place is the setting as startled but curious , often bored people in Piedmont where nothing ever happens it does tonight, they look up in the dark sky something is falling, drifting slowly... down just north of the hamlet. Finding a capsule obviously from outer space..However what should they do, give it to the local doctor the silly man opens the object and promptly expires, as will the rest...the fifty others all except a two- month -old baby and a sixty-nine- year-old man, the whole town succumbs why? When finally discovered , two satellite retrievers don 't come back, Vandenberg Air Force base (the Cape Canaveral of the west coast) sends jets to look around , safely thousands of feet high above the troubles...not good, bodies scattered over the little town and the hungry vultures are having a feast. A SECRET OPERATION Project Wildfire named by the government brings in scientists to test those lucky two and investigate the case, so many gadgets so little time the massive machines give the untrained a huge headache. Must keep the virus from spreading through the country killing millions if not all and tell the citizens nothing they would panic cause riots and looting, butchering each other, everyone for themselves but maybe not...Should they nuke the place...Better hurry this thing is contagious. The stressed four scientists Drs. Jeremy Stone bacteriology, Charles Burton pathology, Mark Hall surgeon and Peter Leavitt microbiologist the victims, the pressure of working and feeling the tension in a hidden government facility more like 1984 than 1969 when this book was published, up to these able four men to save the world... find a cure... now ...how's that for an assignment, volunteering can get rough and you think you have problems? o in the endless number of gifts by the great I really need not say name, Dr. Michael...
Crichton, his books show us he was a master of excitement, the king of high tech thrillers giving pleasure to readers and a little bit of knowledge too, this couldn't hurt we all require facts to make the right decisions. An appropriate novel for the days of the pandemic, who could have guessed that fifty years later the book becomes sadly relevant, the writer knew a plague sooner or later inevitably would cause a global catastrophe...

I read this for my Lifetime Challenge.

I chose this book to read for the year 1969 over a number of others because a) it's Michael Crichton and b) it's a thriller. I thought it would be more exciting than something literary. :-)

I read a lot of Crichton years ago -- Prey, Congo, Timeline, Jurassic Park, Disclosure, Rising Sun. I love his blend of cutting edge technology, reality, and paranoia. I am easily sucked in by his "what if this went horribly wrongs".

I have never read The Andromeda Strain, mainly because I'd already seen the movie. I was hoping that reading it now wouldn't feel disappointing because I already knew the plot. It had been long enough ago since I'd seen the movie that I didn't recall all the details, and though I remembered them as the book progressed, it didn't stop my enjoyment of the novel.

I'm giving this five stars for a few reasons. First, I admire the research Crichton poured into this. There's a ton of military, medical, and scientific protocol, from the details about how the secure lab is set up, decontamination procedures, the tests they run, how viruses work, etc. Most of this isn't as apparent in the movie as it is in the book, and to me, it's really fascinating stuff and makes the book worth reading. These details give the story an authentic (and thus scarier) vibe. Second, the story itself is quite intense and frightening and really held my attention.

In sum, a space satellite crash lands and everyone in the nearby town dies. The big question explored in the book is: what viruses and bacteria might exist in space that we have no biological defenses for, and what would happen if one of our many space probes brought one back? In the book, the US's brilliant scientists are prepared for such a doomsday scenario and have a secret lab bunker and protocol in place for just such a contingency. It immediately goes active once this town of the dead is discovered. For the rest of the story it's a race to figure out what came back on that satellite and how to combat it.

This scenario is quite believable. Far from giving in to epic doomsday hysterics, Crichton's exploration remains small in scope (focusing on the team of scientists working on the problem), and explores questions such as human error, the natural evolution of pathogens, and both the advances and limits of science.

In light of Trump's America, this is an interesting read because the science of the 1960's is highly respected and it seems like it can do anything. Compare that to today's apparent dismissal and reviling of science and... well, it's pretty sad. Can I go back to 1969?

The Audiobook
I listened to the audiobook by narrator David Morse. Morse is good--his voice is mature and smoker-gravelly, which worked for the 50's scientists in the book. However, the text isn't an ideal one for audio narration. Crichton includes diagrams and transcripts and reports, things that don't read well. Many of the diagrams are not in the narration at all and other things don't translate well. There was one point that I had to skip in the audio because it drove me nuts -- it was a transcript of radio communication and each line had a long time stamp on it. That's the sort of thing your eye would just skim over, but the narrator read this long time stamp before every line and it was super annoying. Nevertheless, the regular story narration was good. I mostly listen to audiobooks these days because I can be doing other things at the same time, but if you have the option the ebook is probably a better experience.

Not as good as his others but since it was one of his first it’s a must read. A full review will be upnon my booktube channel at http://YouTube.com/peterlikesbooks

Yawn…

While perhaps a curiosity of sorts for today’s reader with its depiction of late ‘60s hi-tech kicked into high gear in response to an alien organism which has crash landed in the Arizona desert, unfortunately The Andromeda Strain is so dull from start to finish and ends on such a stupendous moment of anti-climax that it’s hard to believe this novel was once hailed back in the day as a great thriller, and not only became a Book of the Month Club offering, but was regularly forced on high school students as a high-interest read, a crime the high school where I taught continued to commit into the early ‘90s for some strange reason.

My copy is an old paperback from my school that had been sitting on my classroom shelf over the last three decades waiting for me to read it. Some young DaVinci from the past has penned a big ol’ wiener swinging between the legs of the man’s image on my book’s back cover, a fitting form of reader response to the novel. Maybe if I’d read this back in the ‘70s, I might have been more charitable toward what Crichton has written here, but I dunno. Even in the ‘70s, I think I would have found it dry as dust and the attempt at faux verite, or whatever you want to call the lab reports, tech docs, and computer printouts incorporated throughout the book, to be poorly done and oh-so tedious.

Over the last year and a half I’ve been reading a boatload of pandemic novels. This one is a slog to get through and you’ll spend much of the book waiting for something big to happen until you finally realize that your patience is not going to be rewarded. However, in terms of the historical context in which it was written, The Andromeda Strain does provide readers with a window into real scientific concerns of the time related to the potential for the nascent space exploration program to come into contact with new microorganisms capable of wreaking havoc on Earth.

A pretty gripping read. My first Michael Crichton book and I think I'm going to read more of his works.

I loved the premise, how it was developed and concluded. Although, in my opinion, the story would have been much more thrilling if it was a narration of ongoing events instead of a recounting of the past, especially considering the ending.

Nevertheless, the story had my attention locked on for most of the time. The narration gets into scientific details quite a few times and I've read that the same is the case with most of the author's works. I personally liked the extensive use of technical jargon and explanations. But others might find it to be a turn off and a buzzkill in a thriller, so just a heads-up for prospect readers.