I had high expectations for The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. He's written some of my favorite books, and some of my favorite movies as well. Unfortunately, I wasn't as nearly as invested in this as I was hoping to be. The book has no excuse being this boring. I guess I was expecting more of a thriller.

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton is an excellent novel that communicates the possibilities of epidemiological apocalypse in hard science fiction technobabble. Before Stephen King’s The Stand, Crichton tells of a near possibility that requires little consideration before it explodes into a horrifying nightmare scenario. Because I listened to it as an audiobook, the staid scientific oratory was even more frightening for its emotionless delivery. It reminded me of college lectures where I said to myself, “Why am I here?” because it seemed like everyone around me was nodding their heads as if they understood, and I alone was sitting there with a look of utter confusion on my face. It’s that kind of very REAL horror. Very much not something I should have read during the Covid lockdowns.

Πάνω από έξι μήνες πέρασαν από την τελευταία φορά που διάβασα βιβλίο του Κράιτον και όσο να'ναι μου έλειψαν τόσο οι ενδιαφέρουσες ιστορίες του όσο και το τεχνολογικό μπλα μπλα του. Αυτό είναι το δεύτερο πιο πολυδιαβασμένο έργο του συγγραφέα μετά, φυσικά, το κλασικό Τζουράσικ Παρκ, το μόνο σίγουρο είναι ότι πρόκειται για ένα από τα καλύτερα μυθιστορήματα του.

Δεν χρειάζεται να πω και πολλά για την πλοκή, είναι γενικά αρκετά γνωστή και από την κλασική ταινία του 1971: Ένας εξωγήινος ιός έκανε την εμφάνισή του στη Γη και κάποιοι επιστήμονες, σ'ένα υπόγειο εργαστήριο υψίστης ασφαλείας κάτω από την έρημο της Νεβάδας, προσπαθούν να αναλύσουν και να εξουδετερώσουν τον πραγματικά επικίνδυνο και άγνωστο αυτό ιό, πριν εξαπλωθεί και αφανίσει τον ανθρώπινο πληθυσμό.

Έχουμε να κάνουμε με ένα αρκετά ενδιαφέρον και συναρπαστικό βιολογικό θρίλερ επιστημονικής φαντασίας, γεμάτο με τις γνώριμες επιστημονικές λεπτομέρειες που μας έχει συνηθίσει ο συγγραφέας. Δεν λέω, σε σημεία μπορεί να κουράσουν τον αναγνώστη, είναι όμως απαραίτητες για να είναι όσο γίνεται πιο πειστικό το σενάριο της επαφής της Γης μ'έναν άγνωστο εξωγήινο ιό, με όλες τις διαδικασίες που θα ακολουθήσουν οι υπεύθυνοι και όλα τα επακόλουθα της επαφής αυτής (ή εισβολής, όπως το δει κανείς).

Σε σχέση με άλλα βιβλία του που έχω διαβάσει, έχει λιγότερη δράση, αλλά αυτό είναι μάλλον αναμενόμενο λόγω της θεματολογίας του. Πάντως και το σασπένς του το έχει και την αγωνία του για την κατάληξη. Το τέλος, βέβαια, μου φάνηκε κάπως απότομο και ίσως εκτός κλίματος, δεν με χάλασε και τόσο όσο περίμενα όμως (με βάση αυτά που διάβασα σε διάφορα σχόλια). Η γραφή είναι καλή και αρκετά ευκολοδιάβαστη, αν λάβει κανείς υπόψιν τις τεχνικούρες. Η ατμόσφαιρα επίσης είναι πολύ ωραία και σχετικά αγωνιώδης.

Αφού διάβασα το βιβλίο, θα ψάξω να βρω την κλασική ταινία του 1971, που φαίνεται να είναι στο ίδιο υψηλό επίπεδο ποιότητας, και ίσως ρίξω μια ματιά στην τηλεταινία του 2008, που δεν φαίνεται άσχημη (και νομίζω ότι διαφέρει από το βιβλίο σε μεγάλο βαθμό).

This was my first Crichton book, and I have to say, I wasn't terribly impressed. I know, I know, this is a Science Fiction Classic, but I just kept waiting for something to happen.

I suppose if I was a scientist, or a biologist, I wouldn't feel that way. Probably, if I was a researcher, I would have found this book riveting, fascinating and terrifying. As a human of roughly average intelligence, I found it none of those things, and I felt like I should have.

The premise is excellent: a satellite returning to Earth brings back an alien substance that causes the rapid death of everyone in town except two; researchers rush to find a cause and/or cure. Scary because it could potentially happen. Awesome. I like plague stories, and this sort of fit, like rounded corners on the square peg- it'll still make it through the square hole, but it's not an exact fit.

I'd wanted to see the movie for a long, long time, but I held out until I could read the book first. Unfortunately, now that I've read the book, I'm not too sure I want to see the movie. I just kept flipping to the back cover of the book where the Pittsburgh Press is quoted as saying the book is "Relentlessly suspenseful... A hair-raising experience." and the San Antonio Express-News calls it a "Crackerjack of a novel... Filled with gut-wrenching tension". Yeah, I didn't get any of that. After quite a lot of experiments, and explanations of experiments, theories and explanations of theories, etc, I was just ready for the suspense to start. I flew through the last 25 pages, which I will admit were getting exciting, but the end of the book left me very unsatisfied. Very. I'd see the movie now only because I'm curious as to how they kept the audience's attention.

The characters didn't seem to be well fleshed-out, so when they FINALLY saw some danger, I was concerned, but not overly. I understand that this was Crichton's first novel, so it's understandable that the characters were just characters. I hope that his later books improved upon this. It just seemed to me that the book focused more on the scientific than the human aspects, and that's not my cup of tea. I like a bit of excitement and entertainment with my science-fiction.

Puees... Oye, ni tan mal. Muy interesante todo lo científico aunque el final es un poco rapidillo, flojo y benevolente.

**Alerta Spoiler!

Una bacteria? desconocida llega a la tierra en una sonda y desencadena una especie de enfermedad que coagula la sangre y vuelve locas a algunas personas. A primera vista puede parecer que nos va hablar de algo tipo zombies y supervivencia, pero no, se centra en la parte científica, que sí, en algunos momentos llega a ser enfarragosa, pero no se me hizo particularmente pesado.
Me gustó mucho más de los que esperaba aunque el final me parecio demasiado happy.

En fin, 3,5 estrellas sobre 5 que se quedan en 3, porque fue mejor de lo que esperaba y muy interesante.

**Popsugar 2022 categoría 35. Un libro con una constelación en la portada o en el título.

5 Stars for The Andromeda Strain (audiobook) by Michael Crichton read by David Morse. This is such a classic. I think this is one of the first audiobooks I listened to back in the 90’s.

A returning space probe crash lands in a forgotten American town, unwittingly putting it on the map and sparking a potential dangerous outbreak of a catastrophic deathly virus, of which very few people would be immune from. With the human race facing potential extinction it is up to a select few individuals to save the population, whilst keeping the secret under wraps and themselves alive in the process.

Crichton is an undeniable sci-fi genius yet this release was a little on the dry side for me. Just as in his other work that I have so far read, scientific backing was prominent and seemingly sound. However, given the short length of this book, it dominated the story in the way it failed to do in his other work. I was invested in the scarily realistic premise but the thrills it emitted were short lived when intersected with drier sections that both took away from the story and the emotions surrounding it.

This book is all about the tension, not the payoff.

As with most entertainment, this book pulls you in by asking some questions. "What is it?" "How does it work?" "What happened?" While those questions are still being asked, this book is a fairly thrilling read.

If you don't like books that get too technical about things, though, this isn't the book for you. It's full of pages from government documents, computer readouts, and the like. That only helps the book go by quicker, because I just skipped most of that stuff.

For the most part, the book lacks a main protagonist. Even the best candidate for main protagonist isn't given too much to do, and when he is, it's forced.

I guess this book works because of the fear of the unknown. Without that, it would be full of boring descriptions of scientific and medical procedures.

Yes, it’s nostalgia time again as I once more take a trip down memory lane to rediscover one of the books that I read in my formative years. This installment of “Books That Mike Read As A Kid That Made Him Into the Nerdy Adult He Is Today” is brought to you by Tang, the official drink of the astronauts!

I probably first read “The Andromeda Strain” when I was about 12 years old. I had seen the 1971 movie version of the story several times by then, but I had never tackled the book. But both the movie and the book were absolute milestones for me. Here was hard science-fiction that didn’t scrimp on the science. In point of fact, “The Andromeda Strain” made science look absolutely COOL, at a time in American education when we as a society still valued the importance of a solid grounding in rational thinking. Goodreads is a book site, so I won’t go overboard with my love for the movie. Suffice it to say that it was way ahead of its time and managed to do a great job of bringing the story to the big screen. Taut and suspenseful, it keeps the science intact while still telling a riveting tale.

The novel version of “The Andromeda Strain” was first released in 1969. It was the book that pretty much established Michael Crichton as a genre author, and it introduced themes that he would expand upon in later works. I have seen the book labeled as a “techno-thriller,” but make no mistake, “The Andromeda Strain” is pure science-fiction. The central story of the introduction of an alien organism into the Earth’s biosphere is the stuff of nightmares, and its sheer plausibility gives an air of authority to the proceedings. Crichton himself had an educational background that lent itself to biological thrillers. He had a Bachelor’s Degree in biological anthropology and later earned his MD, though he was never actually licensed to practice medicine. Crichton’s experience and gravitas in biology and medicine give “The Andromeda Strain” a serious air of authenticity, with solid science to propel the events of the plot along.

The basic story itself is easy to summarize. A secret government project to collect possible extraterrestrial organisms called “Scoop” is utilizing specialized satellites to fulfill its mission. The latest “Scoop” launch encounters some sort of a collision with an object in orbit, and it quickly comes back down to Earth, landing near the fictional town of Piedmont, Arizona. Piedmont is a sleepy little burg, but things go quickly awry when the capsule is brought back to town and opened by the town physician. All hell breaks loose as the residents of the town either experience almost instantaneous death, or worse yet, seem to go insane and commit suicide in various bizarre ways. All the residents but two, that is, a 69 year-old Sterno drinker and a howling infant. The book opens as surveillance of the town increases after the deaths of the two Army grunts whose job it was to retrieve the wayward satellite. The capsule is recovered and sent to a top-secret underground facility named Wildfire, a five-level containment laboratory specifically designed for biological emergencies. A team of hand-picked scientists and a surgeon have been chosen to study and isolate the new organism, code-named Andromeda. Wildfire has a fail-safe atomic weapon placed in its bowels in case of a contamination emergency…….and I just bet that you can see where all of this is headed.

The infant and the old man survived, but why? What mechanism killed the population of Piedmont, or drove them crazy enough to kill themselves? How can it be isolated and stopped before it escapes into the general population? All of these questions can be answered by…...SCIENCE!!!! Pure, methodical, grindingly exact SCIENCE!! And it’s exciting as all hell, because Crichton is smart enough to assume that his intended audience is just as smart. He goes into great detail about the chemical and biological characteristics of the Andromeda organism, and he makes no effort whatsoever to dumb down the information. The whole thing comes off as entirely believable and it is all the more terrifying because of it. Even the Wildfire facility comes off as totally plausible, and the sterilization protocols encountered as the team descends in levels makes for great fun. There is a constant yet muted theme of covert government shenanigans going on, and Crichton uses that tension to keep things on the periphery of the story interesting. It’s a far cry from the paranoia of Stephen King’s “The Shop,” but it’s clear from the outset that Wildfire is not your standard-issue experimental installation.

BONUS GEEK POINTS 1A: At one point in the book, Crichton references a real concept in astrobiology, known as The Messenger Theory. This postulates that radio waves and other forms of communication at galactic distances are inherently inefficient. Messenger Theory holds that the cheapest and easiest way to send information across long distances would be to encode data in cellular form. Each single organism would carry the potential to replicate itself and eventually grow into a form that would be able to interact with its new environment. Thus if an extraterrestrial civilization wanted to touch base with us, it would make the most sense to send an emissary in the form of a microscopic spore or other type of host. This makes perfect sense. Cellular structures carry the potential to encode massive amounts of information. If Andromeda were such a bug, then killing it might amount to intergalactic murder.

BONUS GEEK POINTS 2B: Crichton also uses a fictional device to drive the plot along, this one called the Odd Man Hypothesis. Odd Man states that an unmarried male will be more able to perform a task which carries inherent potential for self-destruction in the event of a crisis situation. In this case, we have that nasty thermonuclear device at the heart of Wildfire…..set to detonate three minutes after loss of containment unless otherwise stopped by an agent….the Odd Man. Yeah, I know. Easy to guess where this all leads to……

“The Andromeda Strain” has a couple of small flaws that become evident, but given the era in which it was written, it’s more or less easy to excuse them. There is a distinct lack of female characters in the book, and the ones who are there fill stereotypical roles such as nurses or telephone operators. The movie version tried to correct this by changing the sex of one of the main players from male to female, but the book itself is pretty much a sausage-fest. Crichton also writes his primary cast in very broad strokes, offering little in the way of personality or character development along the way. The novel still works, though, because the real star of the show is the Andromeda organism itself. All of the tension, all of the suspense is a result of dogged determination to try and figure out just what the hell this thing is before it can multiply and cause widespread devastation. “The Andromeda Strain” is quite simply one of the best examples of what hard science-fiction can be when an author has respect for their audience. It’s smart, smart stuff, and it seems just as credible now as it did when I first read this book some 40+ years ago.

I own a second Dell paperback printing dated 1970, and I’m glad I pulled it off of the shelf. It was a ton of fun to visit this old friend of mine again. It’s highly recommended as far as I’m concerned. Read the book. See the 1971 movie. I can’t say anything about the 2008 mini-series reboot, but I heard that it wasn’t so hot. I’ll stick with the classics, thank you very much. Old school is the best school……...

https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/201...

Dopo tanti anni riprendo a leggere un'opera del mitico Crichton, colui che scrisse Jurassik Park! E riconfermo che era un bravo scrittore: in questa storia, dove si parla di una "invasione" extraterrestre insolita, sottoforma di batteri, riesce a tenerti incollato per tutte le trecento e passa pagine, incuriosendoti e appassionandoti a tutti gli esami, ipotesi, studi che vengono mano a mano svolti per scoprire questo ceppo chiamato "Andromeda" cosa sia e come si può sconfiggere. Riuscirà l'umanità a salvarsi? Per quanto riguarda le parti scientifiche, piene di formule e teorie varie, non mi sono per niente annoiato, anzi, Crichton riesce a farti appassionare alla biologia, alla medicina, addirittura anche alla vivisezione dei cadaveri! Che dire, si merita le quattro stelline, e come!

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n  "Human intelligence was more trouble than it was worth. It was more destructive than creative, more confusing than revealing, more discouraging than satisfying, more spiteful than charitable."n

My first Michael Crichton and a great introduction. The Andromeda Strain is a fast paced and highly enjoyable techno-thriller.

The writing style in this one is a little dry and science heavy, but in my opinion that adds to it's authenticity. It really feels like you're receiving a report on actual events. Plus Crichton gets the technical information across in an understandable way, so you'll finish the book feeling like you've learned something.

n  "The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark."n

The premise is excellent. A space probe returning to the earth's surface, a small town in Arizona, is carrying alien bacteria. Bacteria that is extremely deadly to anything it comes into contact with. I mean this stuff will kill you in three seconds.  A crack team is assembled to deal with this and Crichton does some excellent character work in making each member distinct and getting you invested.

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for me, considering the book is fifty years old, it was well ahead of its time and holds up well today. It's about time I read a book by this author and I'll certainly be reading more. A solid four stars.