Gravity - Softcover

Gerritsen, Tess

4.07

14,953 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671016776 ISBN 13: 9780671016777

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2000

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

A young NASA doctor must combat a lethal microbe that is multiplying in the deadliest of environments--space--in this acclaimed blockbuster of medical suspense from Tess Gerritsen, bestselling author of Harvest, Life Support, and the Rizzoli and Isles series. Dr. Emma Watson has been training for the adventure of a lifetime: to study living beings in space. But her mission aboard the International Space Station turns into a nightmare beyond imagining when a culture of single-celled organisms begins to regenerate out of control--and infects the space station crew with agonizing and deadly results. Emma struggles to contain the outbreak while back on Earth her estranged husband, Jack McCallum, works frantically with NASA to bring her home. But there will be no rescue. The contagion now threatens Earth's population, and the astronauts are stranded in orbit, quarantined aboard the station--where they are dying one by one...

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Tess Gerritsen used to be a doctor, so it comes as no great surprise that the medical parts of her latest thriller are very convincing, even if most of the action happens in a place where few doctors have ever practised--outer space.

Dr. Emma Watson and five other hand-picked astronauts are about to take part in the trip of a lifetime--studying living creatures in space. But an alien life form, found in the deepest crevices of the ocean floor is accidentally brought aboard the shuttle Atlantis. This mutated alien life form makes the creatures in Aliens look like backyard pets.

Soon the crew are suffering severe stomach pains, violent convulsions and eyes so bloodshot that a gallon of Optrex wouldn't help. Gerritsen brilliantly describes the difficulties of treating sick people inside a space module, and how the lack of gravity affects the process of taking blood and inserting a nasal tube. Dr. Watson does her best, but her colleagues die off one by one and the people at NASA don't want to risk bringing the platform back to Earth. Only Emma's husband, a doctor/astronaut, refuses to give up on her. As we read along, eyes popping out of their sockets, all that's missing is one of those bland NASA voices saying, "Houston, we have a problem--we're being attacked by tiny little creatures that are part human, part frog and part mouse."

Here are some other examples of Gerritsen's controlled medical horrors:Bloodstream, Harvest, and Life Support. --Dick Adler

Review:

"Pulls readers in with fearful force."

-- "USA Today"

..."combines the tension of ER and Apollo 13."

-- "New York Post"

"Pulls readers in with fearful force."

-- "USA Today"

.,."combines the tension of ER and Apollo 13."

-- "New York Post"

Stephen King She is better than Plamer, better than Cook...yes, even better than Crichton.

"Pulls readers in with fearful force."

-- "USA Today"

."..combines the tension of ER and Apollo 13."

-- "New York Post"

"Pulls readers in with fearful force."
-- "USA Today"

..".combines the tension of ER and Apollo 13."
-- "New York Post"

"Pulls readers in with fearful force."
-- USA Today