The Andromeda Strain - Hardcover

Michael Crighton

3.91

255,559 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0712659153 ISBN 13: 9780712659154

Publisher: Knopf, 1969

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"Relentlessly suspenseful...A hair-raising experience."
THE PITTSBURGH PRESS
The United States government stands warned that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. When a probe satellite falls to the earth two years later, and lands in a desolate area of northeastern Arizona, the bodies that lie heaped and flung across the ground, have faces locked in frozen surprise. The terror has begun....

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Review:

Some biologists speculate that if we ever make contact with extraterrestrials, those life forms are likely to be--like most life on Earth--one-celled creatures or less, more comparable to bacteria than little green men. And even though such organisms would not likely be able to harm humans, the possibility exists that first contact might be our last.

That's the scientific supposition that Michael Crichton formulates and follows out to its conclusion in his excellent debut novel, TheAndromeda Strain. A Nobel-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility, to sterilise returning astronauts, satellites and spacecraft that might carry such an "unknown biologic agent." The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top- secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the US Army initiates the "Scoop" satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, they end up getting more than they asked for.

The Andromeda Strain follows Stone and rest of the scientific team mobilised to react to the Scoop crash, as they scramble to understand and contain a strange and deadly outbreak. Crichton's first book may well be his best, with an earnestness missing from his later, more calculated thrillers. --Paul Hughes, Amazon.com

Review:

Praise for Michael Crichton and The Andromeda Strain

"Compulsive reading. . . . [Crichton] has perfected the fusion of thriller with science fiction." --Los Angeles Times

"Canonical." --The Atlantic

"A reading windfall--compelling, memorable, superbly executed. . . . Achieves something important." --The New York Times

"The master of the high-concept technothriller. . . . [Crichton] has a knack for plotting at megahertz speed." --Chicago Sun-Times

"The Andromeda Strain invented a new genre, the technothriller. . . . [Crichton] could make most readers lose sleep all night and call in sick the next day." --San Francisco Chronicle

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