The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (Epub)

Description

From the author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes a captivating thriller about a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism, which threatens to annihilate human life.

Five prominent biophysicists have warned the United States government that sterilization procedures for returning space probes may be inadequate to guarantee uncontaminated re-entry to the atmosphere. Two years later, a probe satellite falls to the earth and lands in a desolate region of northeastern Arizona. Nearby, in the town of Piedmont, bodies lie heaped and flung across the ground, faces locked in frozen surprise. What could cause such shock and fear? The terror has begun, and there is no telling where it will end.

User’s Reviews

Amazon.com

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ At the time 1969, this was strictly science fiction with perhaps some mysticism. Not so much today. Read it for the first time in 1971 at 15 yrs old and did not understand it. From today’s viewpoint, Andromeda was almost a real thing and not a story device, but MC and the world did not know that in 1969. No name for that back then. Prion. The “actual” equipment probably still works well, but is now stored in the Smithsonian along with dot matrix printers. The human element that produced disaster as displayed in the book is still profoundly up to date. Perhaps more so now. An unexpected good read helped by 30 years in science as a vocation. Read straight through and finished at 3 am. The book and movie are different in character but very similar. I feel the book is better and can be read again in 50 yrs. Human incompetence never goes out of style. 2069 indeed.

⭐ Definitely not my favorite Crichton book. Bought it recently to re-read – first time was many years ago. It wasn’t so boring that I had trouble getting through it – in fact, I read it in one sitting. But it wasn’t nearly as exciting as I remembered. It’s very intentionally scientific at many points, to the extent that it feels like you’re reading a journal article complete with charts/graphs instead of a novel.The climax of the story, in my opinion, kind of comes and goes without a whole lot of memorability and the story ends pretty suddenly. I found myself thinking, “Wait, is that it?” towards the end. Felt like a lot of build up for a kind of mediocre finish.As usual, Crichton did a ton of research while writing his book and it shows. There’s no lack of very specific terminologies and procedural descriptions.One thing that may not affect other people like it did me – sometimes my wife and I like to read together with each of us taking turns reading sections out loud. We started this book that way, but had to stop because of the many graphs and charts that we kept having to try to describe. Curious how an audiobook version would handle this.Overall, I’d read it again in several years but it didn’t leave much of an impression.

⭐ I would love to stay awake long enough to get somewhere with this book but it’s so dry I fall asleep as soon as I pick it up.If I can manage to get to the end by next year I’ll update this review.Update:I finished the book 27 days after starting it. Things pick up during the last 80 or so pages and you think hey maybe it’s worth it.But then you read the end.The ending just did it for me.

⭐ Eerie, frightening, suspenseful……and (even though the book is overly 50 years old now), in this day & age of the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, more relevant than ever.RANDOM STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS:—p. 19: “At the time of Andromeda, there had never been a crisis of biological science, and the first Americans faced with the facts were not disposed to think in terms of one.” Prescient vis-a-vis COVID-19 novel Coronavirus?—p. 20: MAJ Manchek is an Army officer, nor Air Force, yet he keeps getting posted at Air Force bases (Wright-Pat, Vandy) and specialises in spacecraft??—p. 31: “A mathematician once joked that binary numbers were the way people who have only two fingers count.”—p. 38: “Mrs. Stone was annoyed: she had been raised in official Washington, where one’s second cup of coffee, offered pointedly without cognac, was accepted as a signal to go home. Unfortunately, she thought, academics did not follow the rules.” Ha, absent-minder professors and academic stuffed-shirts!—p. 44: “Physically, Stone was a thin, balding man with a prodigious memory that catalogued scientific facts and blue jokes with equal facility.” Haha, bully for the blue jokes!European Economic Community, wow, the predecessor of the EU.—p. 49: “Barely two years after his letter to the President, Stone was satisfied that ‘this country has the capability to deal with an unknown biologic agent.’ He professed himself pleased with the response of Washington and the speed with which his ideas had been implemented. But privately, he admitted to friends that it had been almost too easy, that Washington had agreed to his plans almost too readily.” Prescient? Is life imitating art now with COVID-19?—p. 52: “Vandenberg is used for west-to-east orbits, as opposed to Cape Kennedy, which launches east-to-west;” hmmm, interesting, I wonder if this is still true?—p. 53: Ah, back in the day when the Indian city was still called Bombay and not Mumbai.—p. 54: “though he could not balance his own checkbook, mathematicians often came to him for help in resolving highly abstract problems.” Haha, sounds like my own Dad (God rest his soul)—p. 58: “As he grew older, however, Leavitt had stopped traveling. Public health, he was fond of saying, was a young man’s game; when you got your fifth case of intestinal amebiasis, it was time to quit.” Gadzooks!—p. 78: “It gave him a strange feeling to see the wrist and leg sliced open, the chest exposed—but no bleeding. There was something wild and inhuman about that. As if bleeding were a sign of humanity. Well, he thought, perhaps it is. Perhaps the fact that we bleed to death makes us human.” Yep, as opposed to octopus, squid, and cuttlefish, which evidently don’t bleed no matter how thoroughly you slice ‘n’ dice ‘em.—p. 95: “A guard in the corner was making a telephone call; he had a machine gun slung over his shoulder.” Um, as in submachine gun or automatic rifle? Because a true full-sized machine gun is not meant to be casually slung over one shoulder unless you’re built like Hulk Hogan.—p. 100: “Hall found himself looking at nine of the largest German shepherds he had ever seen.” Okay, but were any of them solid black GSDs? —p. 107: “Stone was there, standing stiffly erect and alert, as if he had just taken a cold shower.” Um, any double-entendre intended?—p. 109: Hudson Institute!—p. 116: “Then Stone lay down on one of the couches and fell instantly asleep. It was a trick he had learned years before, when he had been conducting experiments around the clock. He learned to squeeze in an hour here, two hours there. He found it useful.” Hmmm, similar to Demo Dick Marcinko’s concept of the “combat nap?”—p. 181: “‘He’s a book-learning fool, you know. Lawyer. Talks real big, but he hasn’t got the sense God gave a grasshopper’s behind.’” Haha, good one!—p. 191: Um, a Major is supposed to address a Colonel as “Sir,” not the other way around.—p. 192: “Goddard Spaceflight Center, outside Washington.” Hey, some kind of good omen job-wise, perhaps?—p. 243: “SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL ONCE SAID that ‘true genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.’”

⭐ “The Andromeda Strain” is a decent science fiction story authored in the late 1960s and set in the western United States. The story starts out in a fairly interesting manner. There are times it bogs down and moves slowly. There is a lot of scientific terminology and lengthy descriptions of tests and procedures that may slow things down for a reader not really interested in going too deep “into the weeds” of science. On the other hand a student of biology or medicine might like some of the detail.This novel,is of medium length. Generally I do not like reading condensed or abridged versions of novels. This novel is an exception. This novel could be condensed by perhaps one third and most of the story would remain intact for the average person simply seeking an entertaining light reading experience.As described above, the novel is of medium length with a good deal of scientific jargon and procedures. On the other hand there is little character development. I really did not care about various characters. Also there were some tangential incidents that were more or less glossed over that could have been more interesting to me than the heavy scientific chapters. That is all a matter of taste and it really comes down to what one is looking for in a novel.I liked the novel and am glad that I read it, but except for a few episodes I was not really enthralled by the novel. It was OK. At this particular time in American History, I have often thought about this novel and wondered why it was not being mentioned more. Having now read it, I can see why. It is a pretty good, but not great novel that seems more of a scientific fiction than a science fiction.Thank You….

⭐ I get that part of my issue with this book is how long ago it was written, but I don’t get why Crichton felt the need to go into such exhaustive detail about lab equipment and scientific theories.

⭐ Overly technical with a clearly rushed, unsatisfying ending. Undeveloped and unrelatable characters. Premise was interesting and hook was successful but after that it was needlessly academic and the ending was phoned in.

⭐ I was revisiting an old acquaintance in reading Andromeda Strain again. It scared me silly as a kid but reading it decades later is a fun nostalgic trip. In particular, the dot matrix outputs and the 1960’s idea of supercomputers was fun, but also added to the claustrophobic setting by creating virtual and physical constraints. The setting and characterization is a bit clunky and dated, but the plot and the satisfaction and believability of the human elements work just as well as they did when I first read it, which is remarkable. And the Andromeda Strain itself is every bit as scary and possible as it ever was. People born after 1990 might might be stunned by details like the computers, and smoking indoors, and the gender dynamics but it works as both historical thriller and as a vision from the sixties, and it’s a great read for people living with anxiety about covid19. A geek mental SEAL team responding to a potential plague, with everyone working together? What could be more comforting!?

⭐ The book is very interestingly writen – it is a science fiction story and more or less an scientific report at the same time. Although many criticize Crichton for this because the book seems them to be dry, I really apreciated this unussual way of writing. But, I have to say that if one is accustomed with reading of scientific papers, the book can be comprehended more easily.Andromeda Strain is not only a story but also critical account on how easily a local crisis can develop to enormous size. It shows how series of small mistakes, oversights and errorneous assumptions, not very important if taken separately, can lead to almost disaster.I would recommed this book to anybody looking for something new (although the book itself is not very new) and unussual. Especially sci-fi fans with some scientific background could enjoy the book most.

⭐ Well that was unique.I feel like this was less a historical fiction / pandemic book and more of a biology information book presented in a story-telling style. In other words, not much happened in this book, but damn did I get a whole bunch of information on biology.I mean, it was still pretty good. Fascinating in some regards, and an interesting thought experiment, but I’m not exactly chopping at the bit for more. I liked it, but honestly, I could have saved the $12 for something better.

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