Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain

During the 1960s Michael Crichton had written several thrillers under pseudonyms. The Andromeda Strain, which appeared in 1969, was his first novel published under his own name and was his first foray into science fiction. It is perhaps better considered as a techno-thriller since the technology in the story is cutting-edge present-day tech rather than futuristic tech.

The Andromeda Strain was made into an excellent 1971 movie.

It all begins when the Scoop VII satellite returns to Earth. There is something important about that Scoop satellite which is revealed early in the novel but is kept under wraps until very late in the movie. It doesn’t come down where it was supposed to. It comes down near Piedmont which is a tiny town, more a hamlet really, in Arizona. A couple of Air Force guys are sent to retrieve it. They don’t come back, but they do transmit a disturbing message. Everybody in the town is dead. A flyover by a reconnaissance jet confirms that disaster has struck Piedmont. There are bodies everywhere. Including the bodies of the two Air Force guys.

This means a Wildfire Alert has to be activated.

Project Wildfire was set up to deal with the possibility that a spacecraft might one day return to Earth carrying an extraterrestrial organism. This is most likely to be a micro-organism. The possibility that such an organism could be dangerous has been considered. Wildfire can deal with this. They have an incredibly well-equipped underground laboratory in Nevada with layer upon layer of security. There is no chance at all of a micro-organism getting loose once it’s been isolated at the Wildfire lab. When a Wildfire Alert is called a team of five crack scientists will be assembled at the Wildfire lab. If these guys can’t figure out what makes an extraterrestrial organism tick and how to deal with the possible dangers then no-one can.

And there’s one final absolutely foolproof safeguard. If something goes wrong the lab will self-destruct. There’s a nuclear warhead there to take care of this. And of course if a spaceship returns to Earth carrying alien organisms the landing site will be nuked.

If there’s a theme to this book it’s that no matter how much thought you put into preparing for possible disaster, no matter how many levels of security you have, some minor unpredictable thing will always go wrong. And even the most brilliant scientists can make very simple mistakes.

There’s obviously a deadly micro-organism. It is given the name the Andromeda Strain. But it seems to work in bizarre ways. It kills with breathtaking speed. Except when it doesn’t. Then it kills slowly. And there were two survivors. They seem totally unaffected. But they have nothing in common.

And then there’s the crash of the Phantom jet. Something very very strange caused that crash. Something that cannot be connected to the extraterrestrial organism. And yet it must be connected. The Phantom crashed immediately after flying over Piedmont.

Crichton goes to great lengths to give the impression that this is some kind of semi-official account. He gives us printouts of scientific test results. We’e not expected to read them. They’re there to make it seem like the author had access to official documents. The style is very brisk and matter-of-fact. It all works. We feel like this could all have really happened.

Crichton doesn’t get distracted by character stuff. That would ruin the illusion that this is an historical account of real events. And science fiction doesn’t need characterisation. It gets in the way. Crichton keeps his story moving along very briskly. We don’t want the book slowed down by the internal emotional agonising of the characters. We just want the facts.

There’s an intriguing scientific mystery to be solved and there’s plenty of suspense. The reader knows things that the Wildfire scientists don’t know, and we know that this really is a race against time.

The Andromeda Strain is top-notch stuff. Highly recommended.