Product Description

A space probe, designed to collect organisms and dust for study, falls to earth in a desolate area of north-eastern Arizona. In a nearby town, bodies lie flung about, faces frozen in surprise. The terror has begun. This bestseller is by the author of "Jurassic Park".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6146 in Books
• Published on: 1995-10-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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

Customer Reviews

Brilliant book !
I bought this novel to read on the plane from Gatwick to Glasgow and read half of it in that time. I couldn't put it down, even while munching on soggy sandwiches and lukewarm coke. The book reads very well and manages to be fast paced and highly enjoyable.

I read it whole in about 3 or 4 hours and am going out now to get some more of Crichton's work.

Obviously the book is not classical literature so don't analysis it as such - it is a great idea (often copied) and well written to keep you turning the pages.

Read and enjoy.

Very disappointing
I'm going to go against everyone else's opinion here and say I hated this book. It started well promising great things and indeed you truly do wonder if it was based on a real event. Then things just start to get silly. 5 top biologists working in a huge, secret facility in the Nevada desert to figure out how to stop the spread of an organism that had already wiped out the entire population of a town...they work for days analysing and trying out many different theories on the organism with limited success and in the end it was discovered the spread of the organism could be stopped by something a 15 year old studying his GCSE in science would have easily discovered. Without giving away what this is, it would have been the first thing I myself would have tried, mostly because it's the only thing I'd be able to do, but I would've thought it would've taken 5 top scientists with the specialist equipment they had a matter of minutes to discover. After that the story was wrapped up so abruptly at the end it seemed to me that Crichton was either working to a major deadline and was well behind schedule or he completely lost interest in the story altogether and just couldn't figure out how to end it. I've only read a few of his books but the others I have read were much better than this and I advise anyone looking for a good Crichton book to look at the rest of his collection.

Scary possibility, quite well written
This is an enjoyable book which is unfortunately let down by a poor ending. This book is a mock report of a supposedly real event where a rogue element is introduced into the earth's atmosphere which causes instantaneous death to many members of a town in America and the surrounding events. It is a bit of a page turner but not in the same class as Airframe or Timeline, as with all Michael Crichton books it is excellently researched and ultimately believable but there's no real twists as in other books by Crichton, in fact the ending is rather weak which I was very disappointed with - if this is going to be your first Crichton book then I'd advise you to read one(or all!) of either Jurassic Park, Congo, Airframe or Timeline (if you want a real page turner then I'd go with timeline but if you've already read these it's worth reading but you'll be slightly disappointed I think.